LILLEY: Polls say Trudeau should go now, so why not?

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Canadians try to tell Justin Trudeau to leave and not let the door hit him on the way out – but the prime minister just won’t take the hint.

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Trudeau’s poll numbers have been in the basement for months. After Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives fought in a stalemate for the longest time, Polievre has risen and Trudeau has fallen since the spring.

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This is now shown by a survey by the Angus Reid Institute 57% think Trudeau should resign and hand the Liberal leadership to someone else.

It’s not shocking that 82% of former Conservative voters think Trudeau should resign, but 47% of those who voted for the NDP in the last election and 41% of those who voted for the Liberals think so just as. Even worse for Trudeau, he is resigning as the most popular choice among men and women of all ages.

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The top choices to replace Trudeau are Chrystia Freeland, Melanie Joly and Mark Carney.

It’s questionable whether Freeland, currently Trudeau’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, or Joly, currently Trudeau’s foreign minister, could turn things around based on polling trends – they’re simply too close to Trudeau.

As for Mark Carney, the man is a dream candidate for the Liberal leadership – if you’re running the Conservative campaign. Carney is undoubtedly a smart man who is a good communicator and even worked well with Stephen Harper during the 2008-09 economic crisis.

All in all, if the Liberals go into the next election and want to tell ordinary Canadians that they’re a bunch of out-of-touch elitists, Carney is their man. Fair or not, that’s how Carney is portrayed given his past as a banker at Goldman Sachs and as a former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.

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The Liberals are currently 11 points behind Poilievre’s Conservatives, and that’s the good estimate. It’s hard to believe that they will easily manage to get out of the deficit without tragedy befalling the Conservatives.

The same Angus Reid poll that says 57% think Justin Trudeau should take a walk in the snow or go on a permanent surfing trip also shows that 39% would vote Conservative in an election today, compared to 28% for the Liberals and 21% for the NDP.

The gap to other pollsters is greater Leger is 12 points behind, Abacus 13, Main Street 14 And Nanos 15.

It wasn’t that long ago that desperate Liberal supporters were pointing to Nanos as their savior, with a poll showing the parties close. When it comes to polls, the main thing you hear from Liberal supporters online is that they can’t be trusted.

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The TruAnon liberals sound like Trump supporters in more ways than one, as they question polls and attack the media for being mean to their dear leader.

The latest seating forecasts from the poll aggregator 338Canada.com puts the Conservatives at 194 seats, the Liberals at 90, the Bloc Quebecois at 32, the NDP at 20 and the Greens at 2. That would be fewer seats than the 103 the Liberals won in Stéphane Dion’s disastrous 2008 election campaign, but more than the 77 they took part in Michael Ignatieff’s terrible campaign in 2011.

Is this really the legacy Trudeau wants to write in the history books, that he was just a little bit better than Michael Ignatieff in his last election campaign?

Trudeau has won three elections, including a majority, and has been prime minister for eight years. He should really think about leaving, but he most likely won’t. He believes he is the man who can beat Pierre Poilievre, but the truth is he is only beating himself at the moment.

Governments defeat themselves and often it is because of the man at the top – at the moment that is Justin Trudeau.

blilley@postmedia.com

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