About 7 per cent of Village Media readers have shifted from a favourable to an unfavourable view of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau since the spring of 2021, a long-standing reader poll suggests.
Over 300,000 votes have been cast in the online poll since April of 2021.
Views of the Liberal leader have fluctuated, but have become steadily more negative over time ...
... but notably more negative since the beginning of this year:
A breakdown by month shows a spike in negative feelings in January and February of 2021, more or less the same period as the convoy occupation protest in Ottawa, Windsor and southern Alberta.
Looked at on a daily basis, it seems that Trudeau's unpopularity peaked at the beginning of February, the better part of two weeks before the Emergencies Act was invoked.
Were people responding to the fact of the occupation, its underlying grievances, or the use of emergency powers to remove it? Different groups of readers may have held all these views, making a clear narrative hard to pin down.
Somewhat in the spirit of the saying that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second-best time is now, we started a similar running reader poll this week about Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. A lot of people really dislike both men, but Poilievre has more enthusiastic fans than Trudeau does. Very few Canadians seem sort of meh about Poilievre, a more polarizing figure for both his supporters and opponents.
There are geographic differences across Ontario about liking and disliking Trudeau, but it's hard to see a clear-cut regional or small town/big city pattern.