Obama may be slapped by U.S. electorate, but Canada still claps: poll
Posted November 4, 2010 7:53 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA, Ont. – If U.S. President Barack Obama is looking for a little love after this week’s stinging rebuke by the American electorate, he need only go see his neighbours.
A new survey by The Canadian Press-Harris Decima suggests six in 10 Canadians believe Obama is doing a good or even excellent job with the presidency.
Sixty-five per cent of those surveyed last week said they thought he’s keeping his election promises.
While Obama’s support in Canada is down three percentage points since last year, his approval ratings in the U.S. have dropped eight points over the same period.
Canadians just aren’t as bothered by some of the issues that have driven down Obama’s support in the U.S, said Harris Decima’s Allan Gregg.
For example, while Obama’s health-care program was villified in the U.S. as being a socialist or even fascist policy, expanding health-care coverage would never be an issue for Canadians, suggested Gregg.
“There is a substantive difference in the prism through which Americans evaluate their political leaders and we evaluate their political leaders,” said Gregg.
The most recent Gallup poll in the U.S. placed the president’s approval rating at 45 per cent heading into this week’s midterm elections, where the Republican party steamrolled Obama’s Democrats to wrest control of the House of Representatives.
The Canadian Press-Harris Decima survey was conducted during the last week of October and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.
The fact that Canadians are still on side with Obama despite so much negative coverage in the U.S. is remarkable, Gregg said.
But he said Canadians have always tended toward supporting Democrats _ even those who vote for the Conservatives in Canada.
“Our Conservatives are further left than many of their Democracts in the States,” said Gregg.
Canadians are still responding to Obama on a personal level and there’s also the matter of the celebrity status afforded any U.S. president.
“They haven’t done anything that would make Canadians not like them,” said Gregg.
“Although (George W.) Bush certainly had no fans in Canada.”
The most recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Research project found that Obama’s support worldwide has slipped slightly in the last year, but the rest of the world still has more confidence in him than his countrymen.
