A plurality of Village Media readers picked Justin Trudeau as the worst prime minister of the last half-century in an online poll this week, though breaking the results out by age and sex shows some revealing differences.
Two separate polls asked you to pick the best and worst prime minister of the last 50 years. About 6,000 of you participated in each.
Justin Trudeau is clearly disliked by a large number of people, though on the positive side a surprising number picked Pierre Trudeau, making him the second-place favourite overall, behind Stephen Harper.
We broke the results out by sex, showing some revealing differences. Men are much more likely to view Justin Trudeau harshly, and women take a more critical view of Stephen Harper.
Given that, the next graph is not in some ways surprising. What may be more surprising, though, is Pierre Trudeau's staying power: he's the #1 pick among women, and a respectable second among men, despite having left power in 1984. Harper has lots of fans on the male side.
Our polls differ from a cross-section of the general public in a couple of ways. Nearly all of our respondents are from Ontario; within the province, they skew rural-to-medium-sized-city and northern; and they are older than average, as this graph shows:
So it's revealing to break the poll down by age:
Two things stand out here: the younger the voter, the more critical their view of Stephen Harper; and, not surprisingly, the older the voter, the more likely they are to have opinions about the political leaders of a generation ago, like Brian Mulroney.
(Also, older respondents' hostility to Kim Campbell is a bit startling - she was in office for such a short time that she never had a chance to sit in the Commons as prime minister.)
The pattern is repeated in the positive graph: those who are old enough to remember Pierre Trudeau are more likely to have an opinion.
(And our apologies to those of you who had strong feelings one way or another about Joe Clark - we're not sure how he was missed when the poll was created, but unfortunately he was.)
