New poll: Liberals lag, Conservatives surge

The new poll’s telling numbers show that 31 percent of respondents polled after the federal budget release said they would vote for current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if an election were held today. This number is a decrease of about three percent from the previous poll conducted in February.

The drop has been attributed to a number of factors, with the main focus being the SNC-Lavalin affair, which has caused a media circus across Canada for the last couple of months. This has put Trudeau in a negative light in a way that he had mostly avoided for the majority of his time in office thus far.

37 percent of those polled said that they would support the Scheer-led Conservative Party of Canada. This is a slight increase from the previous poll, that had Scheer at 36 percent of the vote. The NDP trail behind by a considerable margin, at 12 percent. 8 percent said they would back the Greens.

The poll had a general increase in favorability to Scheer, as he jumped ahead of Trudeau on the question of “Who would make a better prime minister?” as Scheer got the backing of 25 percent of respondents, compared to 24 percent by Trudeau.

12 percent of respondents said that the newly announced federal budget was good, with 19 percent saying it was bad. The majority of the votes went to people who said they didn’t really know about the budget, who topped out at 39 percent.

Where do we stand right now?

It seems as though those who still stand with Trudeau will most likely stick with him in the long haul, as he appears to have a solid base of supporters whose vote will not flounder or go astray.

One can only speculate as to whether these people are more apolitical in general, or have never voted for anything other than the Liberal Party.

Scheer, at this point, must be feeling fairly confident, though his work is far from over. After applying decent pressure on Trudeau during the SNC blunder, Scheer has seemingly walked out on top, at least for the time being.

Scheer is probably also praying that Maxime Bernier, PPC leader, torpedoes his own campaign somehow. It is still unknown just how much impact Bernier’s PPC will toll the CPC in October.

In the Burnaby South byelection, Laura Lynn Tyler Thompson who ran against Jagmeet Singh for the Vancouver-area seat, polled out at just over 10%. A number that may have surprised many, and surely has the Conservative Party a bit worried.

Scheer needs to remain collected, look composed, needs to tap into the concerns of his target voter demographic, appear genuine and sincere, and not have any blunders of his own.

If Scheer can do all of those things while also finding his own unique voice that doesn’t ring too meek, Mr. Scheer appears to have a very real opportunity to cause some major headaches to the Liberals this coming October, granted that Maxime Bernier doesn’t Ross Perot the entire thing.

Jagmeet Singh has remained relatively quiet on the outskirts during the Trudeau scandal. There isn’t a whole lot to say at this point about Mr. Singh, and that could be either a good thing or a bad thing.

He does not have the likability of a Jack Layton, and he does not have the type of sensibility that Tom Mulcair presented, so what does he really have to appeal to voters?

For one, he is an option for Canadians that is neither Conservative nor Liberal. He will probably fair well within colleges, as students may be questioning their allegiance to Trudeau at this point, and will be looking for a left of centre alternative.

It will be interesting to see how the coming months play out. What do you think? Let us know.