'Trudeau Effect’: With Justin as leader Liberals would win majority government, poll finds

With Justin Trudeau at the helm, the Liberals could instantly bounce from political ignominy to a majority government if an election were held tomorrow, according to new Forum Research poll commissioned by the National Post.

“The ‘Trudeau Effect’ has proven itself as a real phenomenon, and it appears to be growing, not going away,” said Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff.

In an election tomorrow, the Liberal party would capture a slim majority of 160 seats, pushing the Conservatives into Official Opposition with 104 seats and leaving the NDP in a distant third place with 42.

By contrast, if the Liberals entered an election with current leader Bob Rae in charge, they would remain in third place with only 76 seats.

“Interestingly, the Bloc Québécois take more seats if Justin Trudeau is NOT leader [eight seats] than they do if he is [one seat],” noted Forum research.

The poll, conducted on Oct. 27, surveyed 1,735 randomly selected residents of Canada aged 18 or older. The results are considered accurate plus or minus 2%, 19 times out of 20.

Although Mr. Trudeau has been touted as the man who could mend Liberal relations with the West — due to his brief stint as a Vancouver secondary schoolteacher — the Prairies and British Columbia would remain the domain of the Tories and the NDP, according to the Forum poll, with the Liberals consolidating their historical base in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

Even before Mr. Trudeau had officially announced his candidacy in the April leadership vote, he had been buoyed by stunningly optimistic electoral forecasts.

On Sept. 28, four days before Mr. Trudeau kicked off his campaign, another National Post-commissioned Forum research poll predicted that the Papineau, Que., MP could lead the Liberals to power and take “the wind out of the NDP’s sails,” Mr. Bozinoff said at the time.

Later that week, the 40-year-old politician even received a semi-endorsement from his father’s former rival, Conservative ex-prime minister Brian Mulroney.

“I don’t approve of, and I don’t agree with, those who dismiss Justin Trudeau lightly,” he told the National Post editorial board.

Last week, a CROP poll for La Press showed a Trudeau-Liberal party regaining a dominance of Quebec not seen since the days of Justin’s father, prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

The Trudeau Liberals would pull ahead of the NDP to capture 36% of the vote and leave the Bloc languishing in near-irrelevance. CROP vice president Youri Rivest called it a “resurrection.”

Under current conditions, it would be difficult to imagine a Trudeau-led Liberal party not making some improvement upon the party’s history-making defeat in the 2011 election.

With Michael Ignatieff in command, the party captured an embarrassing 34 seats, marking the first time in Canadian history that a Liberal leader would not occupy either Stornoway or 24 Sussex.

On April 14, 2013, Liberals will gather in Ottawa to elect their next leader. Among the other declared contenders are Deborah Coyne, a former PMO staffer and mother of Mr. Trudeau’s half-sister, Vancouver lawyer Alex Burton and Toronto economist Jonathan Mousley.

Although senior Liberals have suggested Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty as potential competitors, both men have made official that they are not running.

Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Tristin Hopper