Support for Trump increases in Canada - wait, what?

Canadians regularly poo-poo Americans and their creepy love affair with Donald Trump. We often smugly assure ourselves that it could never happen here. I do it regularly in these very posts.

But then Trump-Lite, in the form of Pierre Poilievre, turns up, and all bets are off. And now, an Environics poll has looked at Canadians' attitudes to Trump, and it is shocking to see just how those attitudes have changed in the four years since 2020.

Canadians are still MUCH more likely to prefer Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to Donald Trump, by a landslide margin of 60% to 21%. So, things haven't got THAT bad. But that 21% was 15% back in 2020, and the support for the Democrats was 67% not 60% (with Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee). So, there has been a significant shift.

Perhaps even more worrying is the breakdown of that Canadian support for Trump. It's no surprise that Conservatives are much more likely to prefer Trump than Liberals, NDP or Bloc Québécois (44%, compared to 8%, 6% and 7% respectively), and support for Kamala Harris is, unexpectedly, centred on progressive Canadians (Bloc 89%, Liberals 85%, NDP 82%, compared to a measly 36% among Conservatives).

But it is notable that support for Trump is much higher among younger Canadians: 28% for 18-34 year olds and 27% among 35-54 years olds, compared to just 13% among those over 55 (the cohort in which I am proud to number myself). I don't know any of these people, and neither does my 29-year old university-educated daughter, but clearly they exist.

Even more stark is the gender split, with 36% of Canadian men between 18-34 years old preferring Trump to Harris. That 36% was just 24% among the same demographic (young men) in 2020. Combine that with Canadian party affiliation, and we see that 48% of young male Conservatives would support Donald Trump, a truly scary statistic.

Call it the Poilievre Effect, put it down to discontent with prices and the housing situation. Explain it however you like, but it is a real thing. If Donald Trump were running in Canada today, he would still lose embarrassingly, but his star would appear to be in the ascendancy.