As you know, we at HESA have a national panel of students with whom we frequently commune to check the pulse of the student body. Usually, we use this to look at students’ educational experiences. Occasionally, though, we also use it to look at broader social and political issues. And today, we’d like to show you what Canadian students really think of Justin Trudeau.
Why Trudeau? Well, part of the man’s narrative is that he connects with the young. His campaign has had a few very well-attended events on campuses, such as at the University of Guelph. On the basis of this, pundits from across the country have suggested that he has a unique ability to make youth more interested in politics and – more important for him – more interested in the Liberal brand.
Our CanEd panel results, however, show a slightly different picture. Only 11% of Canadian students surveyed say they are paying more attention to Canadian politics as a result of Trudeau’s entry into the race.
Q. Has Justin Trudeau’s entry into the federal Liberal leadership race had an effect on your interest in Canadian politics?
Now, that doesn’t mean Trudeau’s unpopular: on the contrary, his favourable/unfavourable ratings are +13, which isn’t bad. But by far the biggest group of students – 51% – simply don’t have an opinion of him, one way or another.
Q: What is your opinion of Justin Trudeau as a potential prime minister?
The question for the party, however, is whether or not he’s actually making them any gains. Among those students who say they’ve become more attentive to politics, and for whom we have a prior party vote intention record (a question we ask every few months), 51% were NDP and 33% were Liberal. Of those who say they have a favourable opinion of him as a potential PM, 37% were Liberal, 49% were NDP, and 7% were Conservative. For comparison, our previous voter affiliations are 47% NDP, 21% Liberal, and 21% Conservative.
In sum, the “Justin Effect” is indeed making Liberal students more excited about their own party, and eating into NDP support. But the idea that Trudeau has some generalized, galvanizing effect on youth needs to be viewed with some skepticism.
This is the part where a responsible polling company tells you about details of its sample and methodology. There isn’t room here for that, but details of our panel and methodology can be found in the introduction to any of our insight briefs, available here.
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It is obvious to me that Justin Trudeau is not that good – although one could be aware of Harper assholery legislations that were going in. In this election all of them sucked, Harper wanted more prohibiting, strict yet controlling policies and to even control the publics travel interests as well as to stricten alcohol and tobacco and drug laws to ridiculous level. Trudeau plans to lessen the rules on this which is why some people were attracted to him even though he mentioned on many other occasions that he was an abstainer, even though he has actually smoked pot. So he is a dishonest hypocrite here. Mulcair was the most reasonable leader although Canadians could not get the idea that an NDP government could have worked at a federal level more than they believed was possible. Canadas most industrious and intelligent leader did not get in due to the fact however that he became so environmentally concerned that he went against one or two potentially lucrative projects in the country. Also he was too pro mass immigration from muslim and 3rd world countries. The green party are what they are – just plain nuts and often hypocrites. Now the elected leader Trudeau is still to bring in 25 000 refugees and grant them citizenship immediately. “They walk through our door as citizens” he said. Many people who worked hard to get a citizenship and actual citizens who are not getting benefits they deserve to be looked after might have a thing or two to tell him, that it is nice to help refugees although to give so many citizenship and benefits for nothing over others here is not a promised way to please Canadians