TORONTO – POLITICS – Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has emerged with the highest approval rating of any Provincial Premier in the DART Insight regular quarterly survey of constituent provincial voters across Canada. Moe, who assumed the Premiership from former Saskatchewan Party Leader Brad Wall in January 2018 has a 56% approval rating, up four percentage points since the last sounding was taken in March 2018.
Moe is followed by British Columbia Premier John Horgan at 50% (down 2 percentage points), newly Elected Ontario Premier Doug Ford at 40% (his initial measurement taken in the days following his majority government victory), Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister (37%, no change), Alberta Premier Rachel Notley (35%, +2), New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant (33%, +4), Newfoundland and Labrador Dwight Ball (32%, -10 points), Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil (30%, no change) and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard (30%, no change).
Notes and Pointed Perspectives…
- Because of extremely small sample sizes, approval ratings cannot be provided for Prince Edward Island and the Canadian Territories.
- Premiers east of the Quebec border have the lowest approval ratings in the country.
- The four Premiers with the lowest approval ratings are all leaders of their provincial Liberal Party
- Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has the highest approval rating of all of the premiers in the country at 56%, up 4 points since winning the leadership race in January 2018 and succeeding former Premier Brad Wall. A steady and compassionate voice during the Humboldt Hockey bus tragedy, the premier kept it simple during his first legislative session by sticking close to the main elements he proposed during his leadership campaign. While the next provincial election is not compulsory until 2020, some are suggesting it may come sooner.
- Before she was ousted in Ontario, Premier Kathleen Wynne’s approval rating was at 19%, exactly where she ended up with voters. This, plus the other four lowest ranked Liberal leaders, make up five provinces, from Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean, that Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs in the 2019 election to maintain his majority government.
- In March 2018, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne had an approval rating of 19% and when she was defeated on June 7, 2018, she received 19.59% of the votes cast. When Conservative Leader Doug Ford won his majority government on June 7, 2018, he did so with 40.50% of the votes cast and the first sounding of his approval rating for this quarterly report in the days that followed mark him at 40%.
- Newly elected Premier Doug Ford enters the approval ratings tracking at 40%. The Ontario portion of the national data collection took place from June 8 to 13 following the June 7, 2018 election. As noted above, his initial approval rating matches his popular vote count in the election.
- Over exactly a year, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has improved her approval rating from 28% to 35% (+7 points)—up six points since her war of words over a pipeline to the Pacific began with newly elected BC Premier John Horgan. During that same time, Premier Horgan’s approval rating has risen from 48% to 50% (up 2 points). In short, both Premiers have benefited from the showdown.
- The approval rating for Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Dwight Ball has tumbled from 42% in March 2018 to 32% in June 2018 (down 10 points) amidst his handling of allegations against Eddie Joyce and Dale Kirby, who were both removed from caucus and cabinet, after allegations of bullying and harassment were levelled against them by MHAs. With the next provincial election set for Oct. 8, 2019, he’ll be looking to improve his approval rating and his party’s prospects as the latest polls put the rival Conservative’s on top. On June 16, 2018, Ball’s own Liberal party voted 79 per cent vote against a leadership review, not far from the just over 90 per cent that endorsed his leadership in 2016.
- New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant is on the rebound from his lowest approval rating delivered in December 2017 (24%, on par with the same rating of September 2016) to 33% today (up 9 points). Despite a tumultuous past three months where the Premier had Liberal Speaker Chris Collins suspended from the caucus immediately following allegations of harassment, the Premier is up 4 points (29% to 33%) in his approval rating since the subsequent fallout.
- With the next Quebec election tentatively scheduled for October 1, 2018 the approval rating for Liberal premier Philippe Couillard has been mired at 30% since the beginning of the year. When first elected in 2014 the approval rating of the new Premier was at 59% and has witnessed a drop of 29 points since then.
- Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister has held steady for the past 2 quarters at 37%, some 12 points back of the 46% approval he had when elected in 2016 and 16 points off of his highest rating in September 2016 (53%).
- Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil has held at a 30% approval rating since the beginning of 2018 which is actually an improvement (up 5 points) since the final quarter of 2017 when his approval sat at its lowest ebb since December of 2013 at 25%. But as witnessed previously, Premier McNeil can’t be underestimated—in March 2017 his approval rating was at its lowest level (27%) but in the general election of May 30, 2017 he won a re-elected Majority government with 39.47% of the vote.
Methodology…
These are some of the topline findings of a DART Insight poll conducted June 8-13, 2018 as part of a regular quarterly sounding of Canadians on various issues and matters that affect their lives as citizens, consumers, and voters. The research is created and analyzed under the direction of veteran pollster John Wright, CEO of DART Insight which is a division of DART Insight and Communications Limited in partnership with Canada’s national survey sample research provider Maru/Blue that curates a vast Online Panel and provides data collection services.
The survey was conducted among 5,357 randomly selected Canadian adults who are members of Maru/Blue Online panel between June 8 and 13, 2018. The results have been weighted by education, age, gender, and region (and in Quebec, language) to match the population, according to Census data. This is to ensure the sample is representative of the entire adult population of Canada. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding. The precision of this DART Insight Online poll is measured using a Bayesian Credibility Interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within +/ – 3.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadian adults been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. Minor discrepancies in the data may occur due to rounding.