Another Liberal byelection loss shows once again that Justin Trudeau is the problem

“It’s the economy, stupid” was how James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategist, famously summed up what he thought would be the central issue in the 1992 American presidential election.

Following two devastating byelection losses in previously rock-solid Liberal ridings in Montréal this week and Toronto earlier this summer, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his team seemingly still want to believe, like Carville did, that the economy will be the central issue in the next federal election rather than something much deeper.

They argue their unpopularity — trailing 15-20 points in opinion polls behind the Conservatives for a year now — has much to do with the cost-of-living challenges Canadians face and public perceptions that the economy is a mess.

Economic bright spots

This analysis is not without merit. Some polls indicate as many as 80 per cent of Canadians think the Canadian economy is in recession even though it isn’t. The price of everything from housing to milk to gasoline seems to have Canadians craving change.

To be sure, unemployment is at 6.6 per cent and rising. But it’s low compared to the jobless rate during the pandemic or in the 1990s. Inflation also fell to two per cent in August, and interest rates are gradually coming down.

Trudeau’s Liberals therefore think they have a reasonably good economic story to tell. They also believe they receive insufficient credit for policies aimed at alleviating the affordability crisis — chief among them the Liberal care package of child care, pharmacare and dental care.

Liberals apparently believe talking up these programs, and claiming a Conservative government would kill them, will boost the government’s popularity.

People, personalities, policy

But the economy, and how the government is dealing with it, isn’t likely to be the central issue in the next federal election.

During my years in federal politics, it became clear that elections in Canada boiled down to the three Ps — people, personalities and policy, in that order. The party leaders and their personalities are usually the chief motivator for voters. Public policy typically comes a distant third.

To say that Trudeau is unpopular among Canadians is an understatement. His government hovers in the mid-20s in opinion polls and enjoys less support than any since Brian Mulroney’s Tories in the early 1990s. Fully two-thirds of Canadians disapprove of Trudeau’s leadership. This summer’s byelection losses merely punctuate these dismal numbers.

Put simply, Canadians are fed up with Trudeau. Québec Liberal MP Alexandra Mendes summed up Trudeau’s dilemma with voters — “It’s a very generalized … ‘we’re tired of his face’ kind of thing” — and says her constituents have overwhelmingly told her “he needs to go.”

What was once the Liberals’ biggest political asset — Trudeau’s physical appeal and style, his social media dominance, his enthusiasm, his élan — is now their chief liability.

To paraphrase Carville, the line that might best sum up the focus of the next federal election is: “It’s the personality, stupid.”

The face of the federal government

Governments are generally defined by the leader. But Canada has arguably not had a government since Mulroney’s that is as much identified with the prime minister than this one.

Trudeau’s team decided early on that he would personify the government. He was portrayed as the saviour, leading the Liberal party from nine years in opposition and third-party status to a majority government in 2015. The government and Trudeau’s brand were therefore to be one and the same.

This is a fair-weather political strategy. When the sun is shining, the leader basks in it. But when the political weather turns bad, the leader gets drenched. Overexposure of the prime minister becomes inevitable, resulting in voter fatigue, if not hostility. Familiarity breeds contempt.

But don’t all long-in-the-tooth governments struggle with popularity? Not necessarily.

When Jean Chrétien resigned as prime minister after a decade, his government’s standing in the polls was in the mid-40s. Chrétien wore reasonably well on Canadians over time partly because his governments were not personified. He seemingly knew being in everyone’s face every day would grate on Canadians.

New strategy

The new Liberal strategy is apparently to “unleash” Trudeau.

His people want him out more talking to Canadians. They want him telling the story about the real economy as revealed in the statistics, championing Liberal programs that help Canadians manage the cost of living, and branding Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as someone who will tear asunder all that Team Trudeau has built.

The way to right the Trudeau ship, according to this plan, is to increase the prime minister’s exposure, thrusting the most unpopular and overexposed politician in the country right in the face of Canadians.

Good luck with that.

Eugene Lang, Assistant Professor (Continuing Adjunct), School of Policy Studies, Queen's University, Ontario

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.