After what just weeks ago seemed like a confident reelection strategy by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over his chief opponent, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, a sudden drop in Trudeau’s polling numbers after he called for a quick election later this month has turned the race into a crucially close and compelling one. Even though the Prime Minister‘s successful vaccination strategy endeared him to many Canadians, a recent vocal uprising of anti-vax protesters served as an unexpected illustration of the scope of opposition his policies may face, as well as his level of national support.
For his part, O’Toole has lashed out at Trudeau, questioning the integrity of the “snap election“ the Prime Minister has called for, as well as leveraging issues such as weapons bans and abortion rights in order to paint an ultra-liberal picture of his opponent with just over a week to go before voting—and in an increasingly divisive climate, the strategy may be working. Many opinion polls show O’Toole gaining ground of late, asserting that the election may be up in the air at this point—and has boosted the outlook for the contest’s outlying candidates.
Amid the political drama, Canadian media are not surprisingly giving the contest much more attention
The Media Insights Group at Agility PR Solutions has been watching the coverage closely with its state of the art media monitoring capabilities on a number of election-focused issues, including which candidate and party receives the most coverage, as well as the tone and sentiment of the reporting.
Agility‘s monitoring will continue right up until the election—and you can watch the updated results for these and other categories each day by visiting the firm’s tracking page here—but as of press time, here are some of the interesting results the firm’s monitoring has revealed:
