NATIONAL PULSE – In week two, Erin O’Toole is voters’ intellectual favourite
(Image: Erin O’Toole, Facebook)
By ANGUS REID INSTITUTE
August 26, 2021 – In an election that may be decided by small segments of moveable voters migrating between parties, leadership matters.
A new study from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds that, while the Liberals continue to hang on to a small advantage in vote intent, party chief Justin Trudeau is neither the most attractive leader when voters consider their choice with their head, nor with their heart.
When asked who they would be most amenable to if they rely on their gut in this campaign, 23 per cent of Canadians choose Trudeau, compared to the one-in-three (33%) who pick NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, or the three-in-ten (31%) who opt for the CPC’s Erin O’Toole.
Further, 60 per cent of Liberal supporters say Trudeau is the most attractive leader for them if they rely on their gut, while nearly one-third of this same base opt for Singh.
By contrast, among their own respective voters, O’Toole (86%) and Singh (88%) both generate far higher levels of support on this question.
And what if potential voters relied on their reasoning and intellect? In this case, O’Toole garners the highest preference, chosen by 36 per cent of Canadians. Trudeau (29%) and Singh (25%) both receive significant support on this measure as well.
This is not unfamiliar territory for Trudeau. In 2019, he trailed Conservative opponent Andrew Scheer as the choice for both voters’ hearts and minds but still ended up with a minority government despite narrowly losing the popular vote.
More Key Findings:
- Nearly all (95%) of those who say O’Toole is the choice of their heart also say he is their choice using reasoning and intellect. That’s only true for three-in-five (59%) of those who choose Singh.
- Trudeau is not the top emotional choice in any region in the country and only the top intellectual choice in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
No surprise….Canada’s history….we are and always have been a society of minorities, which is our wealth. And the urging to have a majority government is wrong. The Ndp and the Liberals are kin, while the pC is alien, at least until they divorce themselves from billionaires, and they Learn to adopt the working man as their primary interest. Unlikely.