Republicans split on Canada as Trump’s trade war escalates: polls

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Ipsos also asked about the contentious Lake Ontario-Lake America issue, garnering results similar to Leger’s.

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More Republicans oppose (43 per cent) than support (33 per cent) the change, but 24 per cent remain unsure. Across the board, 63 per cent of Americans are against Trump’s executive order.

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Donald Trump’s Truth Social post about renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America. Photo by Donald Trump/Truth Social

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A third poll, conducted by Abacus Data, explored “the political consequences of the trade war in the five states most likely to determine Senate control” following the upcoming U.S. midterm elections — Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Maine and South Carolina, where 500 people were polled, respectively.

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It found that those “voters have not turned on Canada.”

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Positive impressions of Canada are highest in Maine (81 per cent), “where cross-border ties are part of daily life,” but even the low water mark was still high at 66 per cent in Ohio.

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Their “feelings toward the Canadian people are warmer still,” landing between a low of 74 per cent in South Carolina to 87 per cent in Michigan and 88 per cent in Maine.

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“Americans are drawing a line between a government dispute and a neighbouring people they continue to like,” Abacus wrote. “For Canadian readers, the audience on the other side of the border is not hostile, it is more conflicted about its own government’s policy.”

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Data also indicated that Trump’s own approval rating in every state is higher than approval of how he’s handled trade with Canada — even in the red state of South Carolina, where his approval reaches 46 per cent.

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“When one of the president’s signature economic initiatives polls behind the president himself in his strongest state, the initiative is not building his coalition. It is borrowing from it,” the pollster wrote.

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Most respondents also predicted the tariffs will be “mostly bad” and hurt the American economy, workers, farmers, their own states and their own households.

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“Across 25 combinations of measure and state, ‘mostly bad’ beats ‘mostly good’ every single time, usually by wide margins,” Abacus said.

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And given the chance to have the Canada-U.S. relationship return to what it was before Trump, three times as many respondents said they would prefer that to the present fracturing.

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“The current state of relations with Canada is not an equilibrium Americans in these states have accepted,” they wrote. “It is a condition most of them want reversed.”

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South Carolinans were the only ones on side with the current White House strategy, and only by two points (33 to 35 per cent), “a policy defended likely out of loyalty and a weaker bond with Canada.”

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The overall sample of YouGov’s poll, conducted among 1,592 U.S. citizens between Aug. 28-31, has a margin of error of roughly 3.5 per cent, as did Ipsos’ poll of 1,023 people, conducted Aug. 28-30.

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Abacus’s survey of 2,500 voters was conducted Aug. 26-28. The overall sample carries a margin of error of 4.4 per cent, while the margin for a probability sample of 500 is two per cent.

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