A majority of Canadians support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to step down, yet his announcement this week has not changed the Liberal party’s fortunes, new polling suggests.
Eight in 10 (81 per cent) Canadians said they are in favour of Trudeau’s resignation, with more than half saying they “strongly approve” of it, according to an Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News and released on Wednesday.
When announcing his plans to step aside, Trudeau said that it has become clear to him that if he’s having to fight internal battles, he cannot be the best option in the upcoming election.
However, his decision to make way for a new leader has not moved the needle much for the Liberals’ prospects, with support for the party dropping by one point, down to 20 per cent, since similar polling was done in late December.
Among decided voters, support for the Liberals under Trudeau remains unchanged from Ipsos polling released on Dec. 20 that put the party at near-historic lows of 20 per cent.
Decided voter support for Conservatives was up two per cent this month to 46 per cent compared to 44 per cent in the Dec. 20 polling, while the NDP are now down to 17 per cent support among decided voters compared to being level with Liberals at 20 per cent last month.
When asked how likely respondents would be to consider voting Liberal in the next election now that Trudeau has resigned, 57 per cent of Canadians said they are not likely and 23 per cent said they are likely to consider a vote for the party.
The polling comes just two days after Trudeau announced that he plans to step down as the country’s prime minister and leader of the Liberal party.
Ahead of the announcement, Trudeau had been facing growing calls from within his own Liberal caucus and the opposition to resign.
The Ipsos poll showed overwhelming support for Trudeau’s decision, not just among all Canadians (81 per cent) but even among Liberal supporters (70 per cent).
Overall, 19 per cent Canadians said they disapprove of his resignation and 30 per cent of Liberal voters said the same.
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For more than a year, Trudeau’s personal popularity as leader as well as that of the Liberals has been slumping in polls.
Nearly four in 10 (38 per cent) Canadians gave the prime minister’s overall performance a failing grade.
Mary Anne Carter, a principal of government relations at Earnscliffe Strategies in Ottawa, said recent polls like the one Ipsos has done demonstrate that there is “Trudeau fatigue” and “Canadians are ready for a change of government.”
“I think it’s very clear that he’s become quite unpopular and there’s a lot of dissatisfaction among Canadians with his leadership and some of his decisions over the last year or so,” Carter told Global News in an interview on Wednesday.
She said whoever succeeds Trudeau is “going to face an uphill battle” in the next election, especially given the lead the Conservatives have over the Liberals.
“There could be very well a new interim leader who is able to build back support, but given the significant wedge that the Conservatives have ahead of the Liberal party and the NDP for that matter, it just seems very challenging in a short period of time for them to rebuild the party and win probably a sooner rather than later election.”
Stephen White, associate professor of political science at Carleton University in Ottawa, said Trudeau’s resignation “does at least open up the possibility of a relatively successful electoral campaign if the Liberals choose the right leader.”
“But the bad news for them is that party leaders, and especially prime ministers who have long tenures in office, really do shape public perceptions of their respective parties in important ways, White told Global News.
“So given Mr. Trudeau’s unpopularity, that means any new leader has to carry that baggage to some extent, and is going to face a lot of headwinds heading into an election campaign.”
What needs to change for the Liberals to stay in power?
Parliament has been prorogued until March 24 to allow the Liberal party to hold a leadership contest.
Liberal MPs who were meeting on Wednesday have quickly shifted their focus to pick a new leader, with some notable ministers, like Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson considering putting their names in the hat.
“There is a very limited amount of runway for this government and for the Liberal party to choose a new leader,” said Alex Byrne-Krzycki, a consultant with Crestview Strategy who previously worked for Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi.
With U.S. president-elect Donald Trump taking office in less than two weeks after making a series of controversial comments regarding Canada, including suggesting it become a 51st state and his threat to impose sweeping tariffs, the next leader will have their hands full.
“The Canadian public are going to be looking for a leader who they think is going to stand up to Trump,” Byrne-Krzycki said.
“If the Liberals are able to put forward a candidate that is a better answer to that question, I think that you can see them overperform in a way that they wouldn’t have if this had all come to a head two or three months ago,” he added.
To turn around their fortunes, the Liberals have a lot of work to do between now and the next election, experts say.
Carter said one of the things that the Liberals have struggled with over the past year is not connecting with Canadians on some of the significant economic issues they’re facing, including the housing crisis, affordability and increased reliance on food banks.
“I think they’re going to have to do some reflecting on how they’re connecting to Canadians on some of these issues because it clearly hasn’t been working or it’s just missing the mark,” she said.
Byrne-Krzycki said the Liberals will need to make progress on things that have traditionally moved their base, such as housing and Indigenous issues.
“They need to show that they are and have incrementally moved the needle and worked on these issues over the past nine years and at the same time, they need to acknowledge that they’re going to go forward, do more, do better.”
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between January 6 and 7, 2025, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.
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