Majority of Canadians think relations between Canada and U.S. will worsen if Trump is elected president: survey

Three in four Canadians believe Canada-U.S. relations will worsen if Donald Trump is elected to replace Joe Biden as president in the next U.S. election, a new poll from Nanos Research shows.

“The reality is that Donald Trump can win the presidential election,” said Nanos Research founder Nik Nanos in the latest episode of CTV News Trend Line.

“The (last) election that he lost, he barely lost. It was just literally almost a handful of votes out of the millions of votes cast that put Joe Biden into the White House. And so, I think we have to deal with this as something that could potentially happen.”

The survey, conducted between Jan. 29 and 31, also found that Canadians aged 55 and older are most likely to think relations between the two countries will sour (62 per cent) or somewhat sour (20 per cent).

By comparison, half of Canadians aged 18 to 34 expect relations to be worse and 18 per cent of people in that age range expect relations to be somewhat worse.

Women (66 per cent) are more likely than men (50 per cent) to believe relations will be worse.

(Nanos Research)

People in the Prairies were more likely than those in any other region to think relations between Canada and the U.S. will be better or somewhat better (15.4 per cent) if Trump is elected president, while those in Atlantic Canada were most likely to think relations would be worse or somewhat worse (83.7 per cent).

Roughly two per cent of Canadians surveyed said they’re unsure about how relations between the two countries will change if Trump, the former U.S. president, is elected to replace Biden as president in the upcoming election.

The U.S. federal election is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. Voters will elect a president and vice president for the next four years.

Trump is the front-runner to be the Republican presidential nominee, while Biden faces little opposition in the Democratic Party in his campaign for a second term, Reuters is reporting.

As has been the case in the past, Nanos said U.S. presidents — both Democratic and Republican — tend to focus on the state of affairs of their own country and “usually Canada doesn’t benefit from that because they make decisions based on the domestic political situation.” 

The survey was commissioned by CTV News and the research was conducted by Nanos Research.

Nanos conducted a hybrid telephone and online random survey of 1,114 Canadian adults between Jan. 29 and 31, 2024.

Participants were randomly recruited by telephone using live agents and administered a survey online.

The results were statistically checked and weighted by age and gender using the latest census information. The sample was also geographically stratified to be representative of Canada.

The margin of error for this survey is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. 

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, Feb. 20.