Liberal ballot support, Trudeau’s personal numbers on downward trend: Nanos

As they prepare to unveil their 2023 budget in a few weeks, the federal Liberals are in an uphill battle against the Conservatives in both ballot support and preferred prime minister numbers, according to Nanos Research.

Health care is still a top national issue for Canadians, with the Liberals enjoying significant increases in public support in January and early February; Healthcare financing transactions with regions highlighted in headings.

This led to their positive movement behind the weekly Nanos polls for four weeks, the Nanos research desk said. Nick Nanos On the latest episode of CTV News Trend Line.

“But what we’ve seen now in recent weeks is that the numbers of liberals are going down,” Nanos said.

Tracking Nanos weekly ballot support as of March 15, 2023.

There has been no significant change for Pierre Poulevre’s Conservatives over the past four weeks, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have seen a five percent drop.

“What’s happening right now is conservative numbers are holding up,” Nanos said, while “liberals are under downward pressure.” He added that “any number with a ‘two’ in front of it is bad news for liberals.” [for them]”.

SOUND WORSHIP SCENARIO

Meanwhile, the NDP’s numbers remain unchanged, while the Bloc Québécois is up a few percentage points to nine percent nationally.

“Nine per cent for the national bloc is actually significantly higher in the province of Quebec,” Nanos said. And when the NDP was in the 20s and the alliance took off, “that’s the scenario that creates vote splits,” Nanos said.

“It splits votes in Quebec, it splits votes in Ontario, British Columbia. And those vote splits usually hurt the Liberals, and they help when it comes to creating seats for the federal Conservatives and the New Democrats.”

INTENDED PRESIDENT

When it comes to leadership and public support, the Liberals find themselves in the same downward trend as their ballot numbers. Historically, long-term trends show that the prime minister has a “baked” advantage of four or five points simply because he is the head of government.

“But when you check the trend right now, you can see almost perfect statistical dead heat Between Justin Trudeau in Pierre Poilevre,” said Nanos.

Nanos’ preferred PM numbers as of March 15, 2023.

“Trudeau’s down four or five points in the last four weeks. Pierre Polievre is both. Jagmeet Singh is 16, which is not a bad number for the New Democrats,” Nanos said, adding that “when you’re the sitting prime minister and you don’t have an advantage over your opponent, that’s bad news.”

HIGH ROOTS FOR LIBERALS IN UPCOMING BUDGET

The upcoming federal budget on March 28 could be an opportunity for the Liberals to turn things around, and Nanos said the “stakes are pretty high” for Trudeau’s minority Liberals.

“Every budget is important to whoever is in government for the day because it’s usually a platform to dominate the news and get your message across,” Nanos said. But a complicating factor for the Liberals is their agreement with the NDP to support the minority Liberal government on key votes in the House of Commons to avoid an election.

“The big question is what will happen in the federal budget that the Liberals will have to appease or improve the New Democrats? And what will happen? [NDP Leader] Jagmeet Singh asks? I think the reality is that the NDP is probably going to support the budget regardless because I’m not sure they want an election right now. But depending on how well the Liberals do or don’t placate the New Democrats, that will probably be the first signal of how long this particular parliament can last.”

Watch the full episode of Trend Line in our video player at the top of this article. You can also listen in our audio player below or wherever you get your podcasts. The next episode will be published on Wednesday March 29, the day after the federal budget is released.