RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO . SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 2024. Very early yesterday morning the almost always interesting Polling Canada posted on X : “CPC lead is as wide as it ever has been?”

At the same time, one of my colleagues here at the office has suggested (like a few others) that the idle chatter in Canadian federal politics is starting to look up for the Trudeau Liberals (and Singh New Democrats) — a little. And in the latest poll currently consulted by 338Canada (Nanos Research late March 2024) the Conservative lead is somewhat smaller than it has been since the start of the year.

On TV the day before yesterday I was once again myself impressed by federal housing minister Sean Fraser. And this reminded me that whatever you might think of PM Justin Trudeau as an individual, he still has some strong Liberal cabinet ministers.

(And on the rare occasions when I can stand watching the Canadian House of Commons on TV I’m rarely impressed by any of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative MPs as potential cabinet ministers. And then of course M. Poilievre himself has been described by the convicted US liar Alex Jones, who still owes Sandy Hook families untold millions, as “the real deal! Canada desperately needs a lot more leaders like him and so does the rest of the world.”)

Strong emotional dislike for PM Trudeau … and close November 5 election in USA

All this having been said, I remain cautious about the Trudeau Liberals’ ultimate election prospects, in or about (I continue to think myself) the fall of 2025. (Which is the date of the next legislated “fixed date” federal election in Canada. And the current Liberal-NDP Supply and Confidence Agreement seems to envision a next election around this time.)

I continue to be impressed by even people I know myself who have developed a strong emotional dislike for Justin Trudeau — as an example of so much that is wrong with even Canada in this strange new era of global turmoil. I also continue to wonder how much this emotional dislike may count in some ultimate “choice not change” contest in 2025, that finally pits Trudeau against Poilievre (in a federal political arena less friendly to Alex Jones).

Meanwhile, the much more weighty and globally significant 2024 electoral contest next door, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, is now a mere seven months away. Donald Trump’s so-called “conservative” polling lead over the “progressive” Joe Biden here ranges from non-existent to nothing remotely like the Poilievre conservative lead over the progressive Trudeau.

Still the current conventional wisdom on US TV (even if you never watch FOX News) is that the November 5, 2024 presidential (and congressional) election in the USA today is (as one observer on TV put it the night before last) “going to be close.” And this means there is a serious chance that Donald Trump may once again become President of the United States of America (in the electoral college where it counts : even in 2016 Hillary Clinton won more of the popular vote!). And I finally agree with Nicky Haley that “America Is Committing ‘Suicide’ by Voting for Trump.”

Canadians almost always “vote Democratic in American elections”

Some Democrats on US TV (Howard Dean and Lawrence O’Donnell eg) profess not to be worried. In the end Biden will win. The American people are not finally crazy enough to elect Donald Trump for a second time. (At least the majority agree with Nicky Haley too!)

Yet the 2020 presidential election was in fact far closer than it should have been, on the same kind of optimistic assumptions about the sanity of the American people in troubled times. More than 74 million people voted for Trump, in one of the highest voter-participation US elections in many years. Only some six or seven million more Americans voted for Joe Biden.

And so in the early spring of 2024 I continue to worry up here in the further north. (Where as the historian Frank Underhill urged long ago, Canadians almost always “vote Democratic in American elections”).

For the time being, I’ll just end here with two further related observations from the same almost always interesting Polling Canada that appears in my first sentence above.

Both concern a recent (April 1!) online survey of Canadian views on current US politics. First, to the question “Who do you want to see win in November?”, 61% of respondents answered Biden, 18% Trump, and 21% Don’t Care. In the second case rather similar numbers are reported for “Would Trump winning in November be good or bad for Canada?” (Bad: 62%, Good: 13%, Neutral: 16%).

The depths of my own worrying about November 5, 2024 in the USA next door are underlined by the conclusion of this Pollara poll that, EVEN IN CANADA IN THE FAR NORTH, from 30% to 40% of Canadians either like or don’t care about Donald Trump as US president, and think a Trump victory in November would be either good or at least not bad for Canada!

And then, I suppose, when you add the confusions of the long hot summer in the US South to this kind of further northern picture, you can see why the smart money on US TV is still saying it’s going to be a close election on November 5, 2024.

And at this point I cast Bill Maher aside … and just start to pray … in the spirit of that old-time religion, that’s good enough for me. I don’t want to see the USA commit suicide next door.