Trudeau, Poilievre neck-and-neck in preferred prime minister polling: Nanos

It's virtually neck-and-neck between Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre as the preferred prime minister in the minds of Canadians.

New polling from Nanos Research has found that the Conservative Party leader is the preferred prime minister for 30 per cent of Canadians. But Trudeau isn't far behind, sitting at 29.8 per cent.

"Giddy up. It's a horse race. You know, we asked Canadians every week who they would prefer as prime minister. And check out the numbers. You can see basically a statistical tie between Pierre Poilievre and Justin Trudeau," Nik Nanos said on CTV News' Trend Line podcast.

• Capital Dispatch: Sign up for in-depth political coverage of Parliament Hill

In the last four weeks, the percentage of Canadians favouring the Conservative leader as prime minister has shot up 11.6 percentage points, while support for Trudeau as the preferred prime minister went up 2.4 percentage points. Nanos notes that Candice Bergen was still interim Conservative leader when the poll was conducted four weeks ago.

"So basically, this is the improvement for Pierre Poilievre here in the wake of the leadership and his real numbers," said Nanos. "We basically have a coin toss between Pierre Poilievre and Justin Trudeau as to who Canadians would prefer as prime minister today in the weekly Nanos tracking."

Meanwhile, 14.9 per cent of respondents said they preferred Jagmeet Singh as prime minister, down 6.0 percentage points compared to four weeks ago. In addition, 14 per cent said they preferred none of the leaders.

The preferred prime minister poll involved 1,067 respondents surveyed over the phone for the week ending on Oct. 14. The poll is considered accurate within 3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

• Watch the latest episode of Trend Line at the top of this article, or on YouTube

TWO IN FIVE SAY THERE'S NOTHING POSITIVE ABOUT POILIEVRE

In a survey for The Globe and Mail, Nanos also asked Canadians, in an open-ended survey, what they thought were positive and negative qualities of Trudeau and Poilievre.

While Poilievre's numbers have improved in the preferred prime minister polling, 41 per cent said there was nothing positive about the Conservative leader. In addition, 31 per cent said they couldn't name a single positive thing about Trudeau.

"It speaks to both of these officials being polarizing figures that, you know, a significant proportion of the population doesn't like anything about either one of these, and they're just not happy with a lot of the choices," Nanos said.

However, 12.4 per cent said they thought the current prime minister did a good job handling COVID-19, while 11.9 per cent said they liked his policies on social matters including health care, Indigenous issues, and cannabis legalization. For Poilievre, 5.7 per cent said he cares about Canadians and 5.6 per cent called him a good speaker.

When asked to name negative things about Trudeau, 16.4 per cent believed his government was spending too much money. Other respondents thought he was too out of touch or untrustworthy, and pointed to previous scandals involving blackface, WE Charity, and SNC Lavalin.

As for negative things about Poilievre, 21.8 per cent said he's too right-wing or is pandering too much to the right. Others pointed to his support for the convoy protest and called him divisive and polarizing.

"People use words like polarizing, brash, Trump-like to describe what they dislike about Pierre Poilievre," Nanos said.

"Canadians do not object to government spending, but it's just too much spending. In the same way, there's probably many Canadians that like many of the policies of Poilievre, but it just might be seen as a little bit too right-wing," Nanos explained.