How TV Predicted Politics in the 2010s - POLITICO

Politics

How TV Predicted Politics in the 2010s – POLITICO

Published

4 years ago

December 28, 2019

Harry Miller

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If you think today’s Washington is dysfunctional, venal, cutthroat, uncaring and winner-take-all, take heart: It’s not nearly as bad as the Washington you’ve seen this decade on fictional TV.

Remember Toby, CJ and Josh on “The West Wing,” walking and talking and righteously fighting for ethanol subsidies or nuclear talks with North Korea in the Bartlet administration? In today’s fictional Washington, they’d get chewed up and spat out. If they stumbled into the world of HBO’s “Veep,” they’d have to manage their boss’ perpetual gaffes, devote themselves to undermining enemies and brush up on their creative swearing.

If they worked in the White House in “Scandal,” they’d keep running into the president’s mistress, who had rigged an election to get him into office. (Oh, and the president murdered a Supreme Court justice. These things happen.) As much as people bemoan the churning Trump-era scandals, the allegations about porn stars and payoffs and cascading shady deals, it’s all kindergarten stuff compared with what aired every week, for seven seasons, on ABC.

And if “The West Wing” trio worked in Congressman Frank Underwood’s Washington, they might just get shoved in front of a moving Metro train. When Netflix premiered “House of Cards” in 2013, it seemed natural to juxtapose it with the brighter era of political TV that preceded it. If only we knew at the time that the show was preparing us for a decade of dark political TV to come—and reflecting an overall perception of Washington that would soon have an impact on the real Washington.

Of course, “Scandal” and “House of Cards” were just TV—few people on the government payroll, after all, could afford those wardrobes. But these shows’ portrayal of the creeping rot of Washington didn’t show up in a vacuum. Television can both set and reflect the mood of the nation, creating expectations about human behavior. After Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, many mused, in seriousness, about whether Dennis Haysbert’s acting turn as President David Palmer on “24” helped get voters used to the image of a black president. Something similar might be at work now. Today’s real-life sweeping nihilism about politicians’ motives, the widespread hatred of the “swamp,” the notion that the process is flawed and the rules of engagement themselves might not be worth following, was, if not created by television, then at least predicted by it.

To realize how dark TV’s take on Washington has been these past eight or 10 years, it’s worth thinking about how relatively sunny the view was just a decade earlier. The aughts were full of political shows whose central politicians were virtuous and well-meaning, engaged in public service for the right reasons. This wasn’t a just a liberal Hollywood thing; in ABC’s short-lived “Commander in Chief” (2005-06), Geena Davis, a vice president who ascended to the Oval Office when her boss died, was a political independent. Fox’s “24” (2001-10) didn’t take a progressive view of issues like torture—but when Kiefer Sutherland and his fellow counterterrorism agents played fast and loose with the Geneva Accords, they did so for the sake of virtuous presidents and the safety of the American people.

And nothing screamed “higher calling” more than “The West Wing,” which aired on NBC from 1999 to 2006, tracking the righteous souls who worked for President Jed Bartlet. The soundtrack was stirring and majestic; the opening sequence was gauzy and triumphant; in most episodes, someone gave a speech about doing the right thing. When the actors showed up on the Democratic campaign trail—as they did en masse for Hillary Clinton in 2016—you sometimes got the sense that they actually believed they had been part of the government.

“The West Wing,” created by Aaron Sorkin, was a liberal wish-fulfillment fantasy, but it also mostly imbued Team Bartlet’s conservative antagonists with a certain kind of honor: They wanted power, but in service to their causes, and with ultimate respect for the system. (That point was underscored in a 2002 documentary-style “Special Episode” that featured gauzy interviews about the work of White House staffers, and included such Republicans as Marlin Fitzwater, Peggy Noonan and Karl Rove.) Even though the show premiered seven months after President Bill Clinton’s highly partisan impeachment trial, it was forever optimistic about the system—confident that a few good friends and well-placed Sorkin-penned speeches could fix whatever ailed democracy. If there was political analysis embedded in “The West Wing,” it was the notion that the system fell short when the players didn’t fight hard enough for what they believed in; when they were too willing to play the safe bet instead of taking a risk for the greater good.

Then came the end of Obama’s first term—a moment when, if you were a liberal with Sorkinesque optimism about “Yes We Can” slogans and transformative change, you might be coming to terms with the notion that politicians are imperfect, gridlock is pervasive and Mitch McConnell isn’t just going to step aside to make way for your higher cause, whether it’s universal health care or closing Guantanamo.

And a new era of political TV shows took that disillusionment one step further. Shows like “Veep” and “House of Cards” offered a new, darker theory: The system can never work if everybody in politics is terrible and venal and self-serving—and the very nature of Washington makes people terrible and venal and self-serving.

“Veep,” a kind of inverse of “The West Wing” that premiered in 2012, was a farce about ambitious politician Selina Meyer and her marginally competent, politically hungry staff. Here, majestic “West Wing”-style music is played in little jabs, like punchlines, between scenes where Meyer does her best to squeeze political capital from every situation. And her disdain for the actual public is glaringly obvious. (“I’ve met some people, some real people, and I’ve got to tell you, a lot of them are f—ing idiots,” she says in the first season.) Where the staffers in “The West Wing” were fast and loyal friends, Meyer’s staffers mock and undermine one another other without mercy. The closest thing Meyer has to a friend is the devoted body guy who brings her snacks on demand and whispers useful facts in her ear in public settings. In the series finale, she sets him up to take the fall for a political scandal—and watches FBI agents haul him away, out of the corner of her eye, as she delivers a nomination acceptance speech at the party convention.

“Veep” was created by a Scotsman, Armando Iannucci, a veteran of scathing British black comedies about the moral compromises of government. He held no special reverence for American institutions, and he was keenly aware of the comedic possibilities when teeming ambition crashed into powerlessness. Around the time of the series premiere, Iannucci told the Los Angeles Times that he was partly inspired by Lyndon B. Johnson, who spent his vice presidency “sort of sitting in his office waiting for a phone call.” (The running joke in the first season is that Selina keeps asking if the president called, and the answer is always “no.”) Like the best satire, the show has an undercurrent of sadness; Meyer is acutely aware of how much toil and personal sacrifice it has taken to obtain whatever capital she has, and how much the struggle has changed her as a person. The finale offers a brief, melancholy image of her sitting alone in the Oval Office, having sacrificed every relationship to reach her goal.

“House of Cards,” too, had roots across the pond; it was loosely based on a British political-thriller series from the 1990s. But where “Veep” spun nihilism into farce, “House of Cards” turned it into high melodrama. The credit sequence shows the monuments of Washington in ominous time-lapse photography, with dark clouds sweeping overhead and shadows climbing up the buildings. The central characters, politician Frank Underwood and his wife, Claire, are so deeply committed to Washington power that they’d do anything to get it—not just the garden-variety TV fare of murders, affairs and bribery, but some truly sinister bureaucratic moves. In the second season, in order to blackmail a pregnant former employee, Claire forges health insurance paperwork to deny her a drug that would aid blood flow to her placenta. “I’m willing to let your child wither and die inside you if that’s what’s required, but neither of us wants that,” she says, matter-of-factly.

The ruthlessness of politics was a running theme throughout the decade. Even soap-opera fantasies picked up on the idea of Washington as a force for ambition, evil and, really, not much else. “The Oval Office, in our show, was a place that corrupted anybody who came near it,” “Scandal” creator Shonda Rhimes told reporters before the series finale. “And the closer you came, the more corrupt it made you and the more damaged it made you.” This year, Netflix’s “The Politician,” a Ryan Murphy political allegory set at a California high school, mocked the poll-driven, values-free drive of a budding politician and his handlers.

The most powerful way that TV predicted politics in the 2010s, though, was in its prescription for a fix: the suggestion that what Washington really needs is an outsider to swoop in and shake things up (or drain the swamp, if you prefer). Mainstream networks in particular offered another archetype alongside these power-hungry nihilists: the accidental politician who reluctantly takes high office, then comes face-to-face with that broken system. These shows might have been more optimistic about human nature than “Scandal” or “Veep,” but in their own way, they were just as cynical about Washington.

In 2016, ABC launched “Designated Survivor,” a political thriller starring Kiefer Sutherland, best known as fearless agent Jack Bauer in “24.” Here, Sutherland plays Tom Kirkman, a mild-mannered career academic who serves as secretary of Housing and Urban Development—but is so bad at navigating Washington politics that one morning, he learns that president plans to fire him. He has one final duty: to be the Cabinet member taken to a secure location during the State of the Union address, just in case. As it so happens, that night, somebody blows up the Capitol.

Kirkman takes the Oath of Office with no trust, no mandate and no idea how to do the job, though viewers surely trust that his inner Kiefer Sutherland will come through. It does, in a mild-mannered way, as he fires subordinate generals, stumbles through international crises and finds it within himself, eventually, to deliver a stirring speech. (In the third season, he delivers his own State of the Union address, but goes off-script and caterwauls at Congress: “The system is broken and you people broke it!”) Through it all, Kirkman is fighting against a greater conspiracy: a network of corruption that wrongly believes he’d be an easy mark. As other characters handle the action-adventure work, Kirkman stands his ground; it’s his rare integrity, his un-Washingtonian Kiefer-ness, that holds the nation together.

CBS’ “Madam Secretary,” which premiered two years earlier, has a similar premise: Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA analyst-turned-college professor, is tapped to become secretary of State after the current one dies in a plane crash. The president, a former CIA director, tells McCord he trusts her to think more expansively than most Washington lifers, and within reason, she complies, battling a White House chief of staff who would prefer she follow protocol more often. “This is me not being a politician,” she declares in one early episode, explaining an unconventional decision.

“Madam Secretary” is more like “The West Wing” in the sense that multiple characters have virtue. The president is a basically a good guy; the McCords’ marriage is a mutually supportive dream; the State Department staff is behind her. (So are some real-world political operatives: In one 2018 episode, former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell appear together, as themselves, to offer bland advice about pushing for national unity after a crisis.) Still, the show’s backdrop is a Washington that’s compromised and divided, full of conspiracies and unworthy opponents, from secretive bureaucrats to government moles and ambitious two-dimensional senators. At the end of the first season, one such senator discovers that McCord shared classified information with her husband Henry. Issued a subpoena to appear before the Senate committee, Henry declares his intention to obstruct justice. “This whole thing lacks integrity,” he tells Elizabeth. “I feel no ethical obligation to play by their rules.”

Ultimately, Elizabeth barges into the hearing, takes Henry’s place at the witness table and delivers an impassioned speech, saying she only broke the law because she cared about the country and didn’t know who else she could trust. (“Man, I have never heard a more eloquent defense for violating the Espionage Act,” another character says, in admiration.) She storms out of the hearing without being dismissed. Soon afterward, the president informs her that the Justice Department has decided to let it pass.

Of all of the political shenanigans on television this decade, that 2015 scene might have been the most telling, and the most predictive of the real-life politics that were to come, not long after the episode aired. “The West Wing” never argued that the rules of political engagement can and should be broken. But today, real-life Washington is full of disagreements, not just about facts and outcomes, but about the basic codes of conduct, the processes that everyone needs to follow, the obligation anyone has to play by anyone’s rules.

Again, it’s just TV. But academic treatises have been written about how TV crime shows can create a warped impression of the criminal justice system, giving jurors outsized expectations, for example, of the power of forensic evidence. A decade ago, on political TV, we had an openhearted baseline expectation about how the system works, why it fails and what kinds of behavior gets rewarded.

But in these 2010s shows, the characters learn that breaking the codes of conduct and propriety will wind up taking you far. Selina Meyer of “Veep” and both Underwoods of “House of Cards” all get to be president in the end. Elizabeth McCord, of “Madam Secretary,” eventually becomes president, too. But, you know, a good one. So long as you’re on her side.

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Politics

Politics Briefing: Labour leader targets Poilievre, calls him 'anti-worker politician' – The Globe and Mail

Published

16 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Harry Miller

Hello,

Pierre Poilievre is a fraud when it comes to empowering workers, says the president of Canada’s largest labour organization.

Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, targeted the federal Conservative Leader in a speech in Ottawa today as members of the labour movement met to develop a strategic approach to the next federal election, scheduled for October, 2025.

“Whatever he claims today, Mr. Poilievre has a consistent 20-year record as an anti-worker politician,” said Bruske, whose congress represents more than three million workers.

She rhetorically asked whether the former federal cabinet minister has ever walked a picket line, or supported laws to strengthen workers’ voices.

“Mr. Poilievre sure is fighting hard to get himself power, but he’s never fought for worker power,” she said.

“We must do everything in our power to expose Pierre Poilievre as the fraud that he is.”

The Conservative Leader, whose party is running ahead of its rivals in public-opinion polls, has declared himself a champion of “the common people,” and been courting the working class as he works to build support.

Mr. Poilievre’s office today pushed back on the arguments against him.

Sebastian Skamski, media-operations director, said Mr. Poilievre, unlike other federal leaders, is connecting with workers.

In a statement, Skamski said NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has sold out working Canadians by co-operating with the federal Liberal government, whose policies have created challenges for Canadian workers with punishing taxes and inflation.

“Pierre Poilievre is the one listening and speaking to workers on shop floors and in union halls from coast to coast to coast,” said Mr. Skamski.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mr. Singh are scheduled to speak to the gathering today. Mr. Poilievre was not invited to speak.

Asked during a post-speech news conference about the Conservative Leader’s absence, Bruske said the gathering is focused on worker issues, and Poilievre’s record as an MP and in government shows he has voted against rights, benefits and wage increases for workers.

“We want to make inroads with politicians that will consistently stand up for workers, and consistently engage with us,” she said.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Ian Bailey. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

TODAY’S HEADLINES

Pierre Poilievre’s top adviser not yet contacted in Lobbying Commissioner probe: The federal Lobbying Commissioner has yet to be in touch with Jenni Byrne as the watchdog probes allegations of inappropriate lobbying by staff working both in Byrne’s firm and a second one operating out of her office.

Métis groups will trudge on toward self-government as bill faces another setback: Métis organizations in Ontario and Alberta say they’ll stay on the path toward self-government, despite the uncertain future of a contentious bill meant to do just that.

Liberals buck global trend in ‘doubling down’ on foreign aid, as sector urges G7 push: The federal government pledged in its budget this week to increase humanitarian aid by $150-million in the current fiscal year and $200-million the following year.

Former B.C. finance minister running for the federal Conservatives: Mike de Jong says he will look to represent the Conservatives in Abbotsford-South Langley, which is being created out of part of the Abbotsford riding now held by departing Tory MP Ed Fast.

Ottawa’s new EV tax credit raises hope of big new Honda investment: The proposed measure would provide companies with a 10-per-cent rebate on the costs of constructing new buildings to be used in the electric-vehicle supply chain. Story here.

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau embraces uncertainty in new memoir, Closer Together: “I’m a continuous, curious, emotional adventurer and explorer of life and relationships,” Grégoire Trudeau told The Globe and Mail during a recent interview. “I’ve always been curious and interested and fascinated by human contact.”

TODAY’S POLITICAL QUOTES

“Sometimes you’re in a situation. You just can’t win. You say one thing. You get one community upset. You say another. You get another community upset.” – Ontario Premier Doug Ford, at a news conference in Oakville today, commenting on the Ontario legislature Speaker banning the wearing in the House of the traditional keffiyeh scarf. Ford opposes the ban, but it was upheld after the news conference in the provincial legislature.

“No, I plan to be a candidate in the next election under Prime Minister Trudeau’s leadership. I’m very happy. I’m excited about that. I’m focused on the responsibilities he gave me. It’s a big job. I’m enjoying it and I’m optimistic that our team and the Prime Minister will make the case to Canadians as to why we should be re-elected.” – Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, before Question Period today, on whether he is interested in the federal Liberal leadership, and succeeding Justin Trudeau as prime minister.

THIS AND THAT

Today in the Commons: Projected Order of Business at the House of Commons, April. 18, accessible here.

Deputy Prime Minister’s Day: Private meetings in Burlington, Ont., then Chrystia Freeland toured a manufacturing facility, discussed the federal budget and took media questions. Freeland then travelled to Washington, D.C., for spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group. Freeland also attended a meeting of the Five Eyes Finance Ministers hosted by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and held a Canada-Ukraine working dinner on mobilizing Russian assets in support of Ukraine.

Ministers on the Road: Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is on the Italian island of Capri for the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting. Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, in the Quebec town of Farnham, made an economic announcement, then held a brief discussion with agricultural workers and took media questions. Privy Council President Harjit Sajjan made a federal budget announcement in the Ontario city of Welland. Families Minister Jenna Sudds made an economic announcement in the Ontario city of Belleville.

Commons Committee Highlights: Treasury Board President Anita Anand appeared before the public-accounts committee on the auditor-general’s report on the ArriveCan app, and Karen Hogan, Auditor-General of Canada, later appeared on government spending. Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree appears before the status-of-women committee on the Red Dress Alert. Competition Bureau Commissioner Matthew Boswell and Yves Giroux, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, appeared before the finance committee on Bill C-59. Former Prince Edward Island premier Robert Ghiz, now the president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Telecommunications Association, is among the witnesses appearing before the human-resources committee on Bill C-58, An act to amend the Canada Labour Code. Caroline Maynard, Canada’s Information Commissioner, appears before the access-to-information committee on government spending. Michel Patenaude, chief inspector at the Sûreté du Québec, appeared before the public-safety committee on car thefts in Canada.

In Ottawa: Governor-General Mary Simon presented the Governor-General’s Literary Awards during a ceremony at Rideau Hall, and, in the evening, was scheduled to speak at the 2024 Indspire Awards to honour Indigenous professionals and youth.

PRIME MINISTER’S DAY

Justin Trudeau met with Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe at city hall. Sutcliffe later said it was the first time a sitting prime minister has visited city hall for a meeting with the mayor. Later, Trudeau delivered remarks to a Canada council meeting of the Canadian Labour Congress.

LEADERS

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet held a media scrum at the House of Commons ahead of Question Period.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre attends a party fundraising event at a private residence in Mississauga.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May attended the House of Commons.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, in Ottawa, met with Saskatchewan’s NDP Leader, Carla Beck, and, later, Ken Price, the chief of the K’ómoks First Nation,. In the afternoon, he delivered a speech to a Canadian Labour Congress Canadian council meeting.

THE DECIBEL

On today’s edition of The Globe and Mail podcast, Sanjay Ruparelia, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and Jarislowsky Democracy Chair, explains why India’s elections matter for democracy – and the balance of power for the rest of the world. The Decibel is here.

PUBLIC OPINION

Declining trust in federal and provincial governments: A new survey finds a growing proportion of Canadians do not trust the federal or provincial governments to make decisions on health care, climate change, the economy and immigration.

OPINION

On Haida Gwaii, an island of change for Indigenous land talks

“For more than a century, the Haida Nation has disputed the Crown’s dominion over the land, air and waters of Haida Gwaii, a lush archipelago roughly 150 kilometres off the coast of British Columbia. More than 20 years ago, the First Nation went to the Supreme Court of Canada with a lawsuit that says the islands belong to the Haida, part of a wider legal and political effort to resolve scores of land claims in the province. That case has been grinding toward a conclusion that the B.C. government was increasingly convinced would end in a Haida victory.” – The Globe and Mail Editorial Board.

The RCMP raid the home of ArriveCan contractor as Parliament scolds

“The last time someone was called before the bar of the House of Commons to answer MPs’ inquiries, it was to demand that a man named R.C. Miller explain how his company got government contracts to supply lights, burners and bristle brushes for lighthouses. That was 1913. On Wednesday, Kristian Firth, the managing partner of GCStrategies, one of the key contractors on the federal government’s ArriveCan app, was called to answer MPs’ queries. Inside the Commons, it felt like something from another century.” – Campbell Clark

First Nations peoples have lost confidence in Thunder Bay’s police force

“Thunder Bay has become ground zero for human-rights violations against Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Too many sudden and suspicious deaths of Indigenous Peoples have not been investigated properly. There have been too many reports on what is wrong with policing in the city – including ones by former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Murray Sinclair and former Toronto Police board chair Alok Mukherjee, and another one called “Broken Trust,” in which the Office of the Independent Police Review Director said the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS) was guilty of “systemic racism” in 2018. – Tanya Talaga.

The failure of Canada’s health care system is a disgrace – and a deadly one

“What can be said about Canada’s health care system that hasn’t been said countless times over, as we watch more and more people suffer and die as they wait for baseline standards of care? Despite our delusions, we don’t have “world-class” health care, as our Prime Minister has said; we don’t even have universal health care. What we have is health care if you’re lucky, or well connected, or if you happen to have a heart attack on a day when your closest ER is merely overcapacity as usual, and not stuffed to the point of incapacitation.” – Robyn Urback.

Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com. Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop.

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GOP strategist reacts to Trump’s ‘unconventional’ request – CNN

Published

19 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Harry Miller

GOP strategist reacts to Trump’s ‘unconventional’ request

Donald Trump’s campaign is asking Republican candidates and committees using the former president’s name and likeness to fundraise to give at least 5% of what they raise to the campaign, according to a letter obtained by CNN. CNN’s Steve Contorno and Republican strategist Rina Shah weigh in.

03:00

– Source:
CNN

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Anger toward federal government at 6-year high: Nanos survey – CTV News

Published

20 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Harry Miller

Most Canadians in March reported feeling angry or pessimistic towards the federal government than at any point in the last six years, according to a survey by Nanos Research.

Nanos has been measuring Canadians’ feelings of optimism, satisfaction, disinterest, anger, pessimism and uncertainty toward the federal government since November 2018.

The latest survey found that optimism had crept up slightly to 10 per cent since hitting an all-time low of eight per cent in September 2023.

However, 62 per cent of Canadians said they feel either pessimistic or angry, with respondents equally split between the two sentiments.

(Nanos Research)

“What we’ve seen is the anger quotient has hit a new record,” Nik Nanos, CTV’s official pollster and Nanos Research founder, said in an interview with CTV News’ Trend Line on Wednesday.

Only 11 per cent of Canadians felt satisfied, while another 11 per cent said they were disinterested.

Past survey results show anger toward the federal government has increased or held steady across the country since March 2023, while satisfaction has gradually declined.

Will the budget move the needle?

Since the survey was conducted before the federal government released its 2024 budget, there’s a chance the anger and pessimism of March could subside a little by the time Nanos takes the public’s temperature again. They could also stick.

The five most important issues to Canadians right now that would influence votes, according to another recent Nanos survey conducted for Bloomberg, include inflation and the cost of living, health care, climate change and the environment, housing affordability and taxes.

(Nanos Research)

With this year’s budget, the federal government pledged $52.9 billion in new spending while promising to maintain the 2023-24 federal deficit at $40.1 billion. The federal deficit is projected to be $39.8 billion in 2024-25.

The budget includes plans to boost new housing stock, roll out a national disability benefit, introduce carbon rebates for small businesses and increase taxes on Canada’s top-earners.

However, advocacy groups have complained it doesn’t do enough to address climate change, or support First Nations communities and Canadians with disabilities.

“Canada is poised for another disastrous wildfire season, but this budget fails to give the climate crisis the attention it urgently deserves,” Keith Brooks, program director for Environmental Defence, wrote in a statement on the organization’s website.

Meanwhile, when it comes to a promise to close what the Assembly of First Nations says is a sprawling Indigenous infrastructure gap, the budget falls short by more than $420 billion. And while advocacy groups have praised the impending roll-out of the Canada Disability Benefit, organizations like March of Dimes Canada and Daily Bread Food Bank say the estimated maximum benefit of $200 per month per recipient won’t be enough to lift Canadians with disabilities out of poverty.

According to Nanos, if Wednesday’s budget announcement isn’t enough to restore the federal government’s favour, no amount of spending will do the trick.

“If the Liberal numbers don’t move up after this, perhaps the listening lesson for the Liberals will be (that) spending is not the political solution for them to break this trend line,” Nanos said. “It’ll have to be something else.”

Conservatives in ‘majority territory’

While the Liberal party waits to see what kind of effect its budget will have on voters, the Conservatives are enjoying a clear lead when it comes to ballot tracking.

(Nanos Research)

“Any way you cut it right now, the Conservatives are in the driver’s seat,” Nanos said. “They’re in majority territory.”

According to Nanos Research ballot tracking from the week ending April 12, the Conservatives are the top choice for 40 per cent of respondents, the Liberals for 23.7 per cent and the NDP for 20.6 per cent.

Whether the Liberals or the Conservatives form the next government will come down, partly, to whether voters believe more government spending is, or isn’t, the key to helping working Canadians, Nanos said.

“Both of the parties are fighting for working Canadians … and we have two competing visions for that. For the Liberals, it’s about putting government support into their hands and creating social programs to support Canadians,” he said.

“For the Conservatives, it’s very different. It’s about reducing the size of government (and) reducing taxes.”

Watch the full episode of Trend Line in our video player at the top of this article. You can also listen in our audio player below, or wherever you get your podcasts. The next episode comes out Wednesday, May 1.

Methodology

Nanos conducted an RDD dual frame (land- and cell-lines) hybrid telephone and online random survey of 1,069 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, between March 31 and April 1, 2024, as part of an omnibus survey. Participants were randomly recruited by telephone using live agents and administered a survey online. The sample included both land- and cell-lines across Canada. The results were statistically checked and weighted by age and gender using the latest census information and the sample is geographically stratified to be representative of Canada. The margin of error for this survey is ±3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

With files from The Canadian Press, CTV News Senior Digital Parliamentary Reporter Rachel Aiello and CTV News Parliamentary Bureau Writer, Producer Spencer Van Dyke

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