The Conservative Party may have captured more seats in Monday night’s election than in the previous election, but its leader hasn’t totally captured voter confidence, according to a new poll.
The poll, conducted exclusively for Global News, was held on Oct. 21 — election day.
It asked 9,437 voters what they thought the party leaders should do if they did not win the most seats — resign or stay on as leader.
Voters were asked the same question about four of the five federal party leaders: Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.
It was Scheer who voters were most likely to want out.
Scheer’s Conservatives fell to the Liberals on Monday night but will take on Opposition status. They won 122 of 338 seats but placed first in the popular vote nationwide by a slight margin.
The poll showed 63 per cent of voters believe Scheer, sans majority, should resign.
About 37 per cent believed he should carry on as Conservative leader.
It’s an example of how polarizing Scheer is to voters, according to Sean Simpson, vice-president of Ipsos.
“Many Conservative voters were happy with him as leader and excited. Some weren’t. But the vast majority of Canadians outside of Conservative Party voters would like to see him gone.”
The results are similarly grim for Scheer when voters’ answers are analyzed by party preference, Simpson said.
Nearly four in 10 Conservative voters believe he should resign.
“A majority say he can stay, but it’s not an overwhelming majority, while four in 10 are getting the knives out,” he said.
The possibility of Scheer’s resignation has been on the minds of Conservative voters during and in the lead-up to the election. Simpson pointed to pre-election speculation that Peter MacKay, former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, would become the next Conservative leader as an example of that.
Scheer confirmed he was not resigning when he spoke to the media on Tuesday, one day after the election.
The Trudeau Liberals did, in fact, win the most seats Monday night, at 157. The party was 13 short of the 170 needed for a majority in the House of Commons.
Had he not won the most seats, the poll found that 56 per cent of voters would have liked Trudeau to resign as Liberal Party leader. Forty-four per cent believed he should carry on.
The result shows Trudeau has a long way to go to earn back the trust of Canadians, Simpson said.
“On most of the leadership attributes tested in election day polls, Justin Trudeau lagged many of the other leaders,” Simpson said. “He’s in a tough spot and he’s got an incredibly fractured country to deal with.”
As for Singh, whose NDP took far fewer seats than it had when Parliament was dissolved, he was the most favoured to stay on as party leader despite not winning the most seats, with 66 per cent.
About 34 per cent said the opposite — that he should resign.
Simpson said that’s reflective of pre-election polling, which saw Singh trending ahead of his own party in terms of popularity.
“They like him even if they’re not prepared to vote for him. I think many Canadians said: ‘I hope other people vote for him, even if I can’t,’” Simpson said on Tuesday.
“He has this vote of confidence from Canadians to continue in the role, despite the very disappointing performance from the NDP last night.”
The poll found a split response for Blanchet.
His party won more seats on Monday night than it has in many years, at 32, but it did not win the majority of the seats in Quebec. Half of those polled believe he should resign, while the other half want him to stay.
“If you listened to the speeches last night, they all claimed victory in some way, although I’m not sure they were. Mr. Blanchet was the only clear winner in my mind,” Simpson said.
“The Bloc Québécois really had a remarkable showing so when he claims victory, it is on solid ground.”
Exclusive Global News Ipsos polls are protected by copyright. The information and/or data may only be rebroadcast or republished with full and proper credit and attribution to “Global News Ipsos.” This poll was conducted on Election Day. For this survey, in total a sample of n = 9,437 Canadians aged 18+ were interviewed. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 1.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians been polled.
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