Trudeau Blocks Harper Path to History as Liberals Revive
Stephen Harper is an election victory away from entering the pantheon of Canadas longest-serving prime ministers and cementing his Conservative agenda in a country dominated by Liberals for most of the past century.
Standing in his way is the heir to that Liberal legacy.
In just over a year as Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, 42, has emerged as the most serious challenger to Harpers nine-year reign, bringing back from the brink of political extinction the party his father Pierre led for 16 years.
Harper and Trudeau, along with leader Tom Mulcair of the New Democratic Party, are already gearing up for an election scheduled for no later than October 2015, as parliament returns today from a three-month recess.
Public opinion polls now suggest the Liberals are leading and poised to give Harper his toughest political fight since he became prime minister, as he seeks to overcome voter fatigue and scandals that have implicated his office.
To win, Harper has to slow down Trudeau, said Darrell Bricker, a pollster with Ipsos Reid in Toronto who worked for former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the last Conservative to win a majority before Harper. Justin Trudeau is for real.
According to polling aggregator threehundredeight.com, the Liberals hold a seven percentage point lead over the Conservatives and have led in almost every poll since Trudeau became Liberal leader in April 2013. This represents an abrupt turnaround from the May 2011 general election in which the Liberals fell to third place, a historic low that led some political observers to question the partys future viability.
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harpers success has been his ability to make his party more palatable to suburban voters in eastern Canada and to groups that had historically been more likely to favor the Liberals: immigrants, women and French-speakers. Close
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Trudeau Blocks Harper Path to History as Liberals Revive