M. Grégoire
"Forty-two percent of Americans have a favourable opinion of their president, while just 36% of Canadians approve of Trudeau. And while nearly 53% of Americans disapprove of Trump, a staggering 63% of Canadians have given up on the Liberal leader."
That is, PM Trudeau has a worse net approval rating among Canadians than President Trump has among Americans. Hard to believe.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-will-trudeau-even-make-it-to-the-election
Adam
@mpjgregoire I wonder how much of this is a result of our multi-party system vs. the US two-party system. Despite the insistence of a few people like David Frum, the so-called "Never Trump Republican" mostly doesn't exist.
In Canada, conservatives will generally not approve of Trudeau, but neither will many NDP supporters.
Adam
@mpjgregoire That certainly doesn't explain it all. And I think Trudeau is genuinely reviled by a lot of Canadians (even many soft liberals I know find him unbearably smug and weren't especially fond of him even at the start of his time as Liberal leader). But I do wonder if his low numbers are at least partly explained by the fact that we've got multiple parties (even though his personal numbers are lower than the party numbers).
M. Grégoire
@ink_slinger A quick search indicates that PM Trudeau had a net approval rating of +34% around the time of the election in 2015. So the multi-party system didn't hurt him too badly at the time.
But I think your point is broadly correct: the increasingly polarised two-party system in the US, with its roughly even support levels, sets high floors and low ceilings on support for political leaders.
In Canada, I think party affiliation is a less salient part of voters' identities.
M. Grégoire
(And for what it's worth, Never-Trump Republicans are real, but have always been a mostly elite phenomenon. Furthermore, while there are Republicans who hated the idea of Mr. Trump as their nominee, they've mostly accepted the reality that he is currently president, leader of their party, and that his presidency has not been as terrible as his character.)
Adam
@mpjgregoire They're real but, yes, it's mostly an elite thing that seems limited to the requisite "sensible conservatives" that are giving column space in ostensibly liberal newspapers like the NYT. And, often, I suspect these people don't fundamentally disagree with Trump on policy; they merely wish he was less vulgar and showed more respect for norms.
M. Grégoire
@ink_slinger The high-point of #NeverTrump sentiment among US conservatives was probably the "Against Trump" issue of *National Review*. https://mastodon.club/media/AS4FPodMVlvYDrlutqo
As you can see from the write-up here https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/national-review-against-trump-it-probably-doesnt-matter/ , there were many concerns, not just his vulgarity.
M. Grégoire
@ink_slinger In fact, a major concern in *NR* was that Mr. Trump would damage the public perception of conservatism overall, while failing to implement conservative policies.
But in fact the Trump Administration, in policy terms, has been much more like a conventional Republican administration than anyone anticipated. (The style has been very different of course.)
Adam
@mpjgregoire I'm specifically talking about people who claim to still be Never Trumpers, not those who identified that way during the campaign or immediately after his election.
That said, the National Review was basically written by the same dozen folks who still claim to despise Trump (despite supporting most of what he's actually done in practice). And it definitely fits the "elite" phenomenon we've talked about. How influential is NR among average voters? It's got a circulation of 90,000.
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