Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau emerged unscathed from his first real test with voters
on Monday as the incumbent party held onto power in five by-elections across
the country, leaving Trudeau's Liberals with an undiminished majority in
parliament.
As expected,
none of the regional votes to elect members of parliament produced an upset,
with Trudeau's Liberals retaining three seats in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa
and the opposition Conservatives holding onto two seats in Calgary, according
to preliminary results from Elections Canada.
With the
majority of votes counted in each race, all of the incumbent parties were
leading by more than 10 percentage points and all had been projected as winner
by the Canada Broadcasting Corp.
Still, the
votes could be the last easy victory for the Liberals, who have enjoyed a long
honeymoon with voters in part because both opposition parties are in the
process of replacing their leaders ahead of a 2019 general election, when both
Trudeau and members of the House of Commons face the electorate.
"I don't
think it means anything at this stage because it was very predictable,"
said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of
Toronto.
"I think
once the Conservatives select their new leader, you're going to see a boost in
Conservative support - it happens after every leadership convention, and that
goes on for a while ... so the more important by-elections will be those closer
to 2019," Wiseman added.
A December
poll showed Trudeau's approval rating remained high but was dropping amid
rising dissatisfaction with the economy, and voter anger over a broken promise
to reform the electoral process could eat into the government's popularity.
In addition,
nearly half of Canadians want to deport people who are illegally crossing into
Canada from the United States, and a similar number disapprove of how Trudeau
is handling the influx, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released in
March.
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