Trump Approval and the Canadian Election
April 28, 2025
A Focaldata poll released over the weekend shows that most Canadians do not think of the US as a friend anymore: a quarter of Canadians think of the US as “unfriendly” and another quarter view the US as an “enemy or hostile.” Only 15% view the US as an ally. By comparison, over half of Canadians view the EU, the UK, Australia, and Nato as allies. China does worse than US at 6% who say ally. However, fewer people call China unfriendly or an enemy than they do the US.
Source: Politico
What is driving this bleak outlook on Canada’s neighbor to its south? Perhaps it has something to do with how America’s new president is behaving. The poll shows Trump is very unpopular among all Canadians. His favorable/unfavorable rating is 14/75. Even among Conservatives it’s 24/61!
Source: Politico
Trump is doing better at home, but he still has the worst approval ratings for a president at this point in his term. He has tied his own record from 2017 as the only president to post net negative ratings 100 days into his term.
Here are the latest US polls:
New York Times/Siena: 42% approve, 54% disapprove
Fox News: 44/55
AP/NORC: 39/59
Washington Post/ABC News: 39/55
It really is hard to process how people could have voted for him just a few months ago unless racism and misogyny played a large role in many voters’ decision-making process. There is also the theory that Trump voters wanted to see other people hurt and are now upset that they are being impacted by his policies. This time is worse for Trump than last time because he was unpopular after winning in 2016, but in 2025 he started out with net approval, even though it was tight. He has lost a lot of support in just a few months in office.
Instead of creating an economy that is more equitable - which is what a lot of his base wanted, even if they may have wanted it only for them - Trump is very clearly doing two things: (1) creating an oligarchic economy and government and (2) creating chaos and burning things down no matter who it hurts (until the oligarchs complain to him, that is). This should set up an opening for Democrats on the economy, but first they have to admit that neoliberalism was a mistake, that it privileged capital over labor to the extent that it wholesale destroyed communities in the capitalist pursuit of lower costs and increased control no matter what.
In 1992, Democrats could have heeded Jerry Brown and pursued a common market strategy for international trade, looking at the EU as an example. Raise labor, environmental, human rights, and consumer protection standards to acceptable floors before dropping trade barriers instead of the reverse. Then, allow capital and labor to move freely. We’ll see how Democrats proceed going forward. Will they yet again make the mistake of listening to Clinton apologists as Obama did in 2009 or will they embrace the arguments being put forward by Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Sherrod Brown?
Canada’s national election is today. The Liberals are threatening to break the year-long international streak of incumbent parties losing national elections. Even more impressive is that only a few months ago the Liberals were sure to lose – and perhaps lose in a landslide – to the Conservatives. Today, most expect the Liberals to finish first Here are some things to keep in mind as you watch the results come in later tonight.
Two parties have concentrated support, and one of them is the Conservatives. While Parti Quebecois competes only in Quebec and is the top party there, the Conservatives compete nationwide. Yet their support is concentrated in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. In British Columbia, they have support in rural areas, but the New Democratic Party has been successful in the Vancouver area. Late polls are showing Liberals winning BC overall. The biggest provinces are Ontario and Quebec, and Liberals are doing well in both.
Conservatives will run up the score in their big three western provinces, but since there is so little population there they will not win as many seats overall as the polling would suggest. So that is why the Liberals might run five points ahead of the Conservatives nationally and capture 50-75 more seats. BQ will likely finish with less support nationally than the share of seats they win because they only compete in Quebec and are the biggest party there. The NDP will likely win a higher share of the national vote than BQ, but have fewer seats in parliament because they compete nationally and their support is more spread out.
Source: 338Canada
Only a few months ago, the likelihood the Conservatives would win this election was almost 100%. Today, it is almost zero. They will not win a majority, but there is a slight chance they could surprise the Liberals and capture the most seats. It’s hard to see how the Conservatives could form a government unless they make major concessions to BQ regarding Quebecois autonomy. BQ is otherwise a social democratic party. However, if they can win concessions from the government they may agree to enter it with the Conservatives.
There are no other parties capable of providing the votes to the Conservatives to give them a majority coalition in parliament. PP is too small and neither NDP nor the Greens would help them. A Conservative-Liberal coalition government is only possible if no one can command a majority coalition, but even if they finish second the Liberals should be able to cobble together a coalition with NDP and the Greens, if not BQ (I think it is unlikely BQ joins any government).
What happened in the past couple of months to create what appears to be a historic collapse of support for the Conservatives? Like everything else in politics, there is no one simple answer. First, it is not clear that support for the Conservatives was ever that solid to begin with. Rather, it was more likely an anti-Trudeau response. The former Liberal PM had fallen out of favor, even among his own party. His unpopularity was at least partly driving Conservative support in the polls.
Second, the Liberals replaced Trudeau with Carney. This is, of course, related to the first point but it’s not clear that the Liberals would have enjoyed as big of a rebound as they did with another candidate. Carney was seen as a serious leader who could steer Canada through unexpected crisis.
The third reason for the Conservatives’ collapse is the architect of the unexpected crisis: Trump. Not only did he wage economic war against Canada from the outset, he insulted the country, claimed he would annex it, and even gave people concern he would do that with force. This led to a unifying reaction among many Canadians against the United States. But why did this help the Liberals? Probably because Poilievre, the Conservative leader, had previously tried to style himself as Canada’s Trump after the American election in November. Any Canadian thinking clearly would assume Carney was a better leader to stand up to Trump than Poilievre.1
Like with any other election, we’ll have to wait until the votes are counted to know for sure.
In fact, this morning Trump posted on social media again that Canada should join the US, and Poilievre responded by telling him to butt out of Canadian affairs. He understands Trump is unwittingly helping the Liberals.