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Ali's avatar

Really interesting how recency bias is so prevelant. If I am not mistaken, US surveys have Obama as the winner among Democrats for greatest post WWII president, and Trump and Regan splitting the vote among Republicans.

I'm too am surprised that Laurier, King, and Pearson got such low scores. I wonder how much has to do with our high school history curriculums.

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Rod's avatar

I wonder, if we polled for "worst prime minister" if we'd also end up with Trudeau, Harper and Mulroney at the top of the list.

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Markus Meyer's avatar

This might be my favorite thing you’ve done in this space. This is really fascinating! And I think you’re bang on for Harper -- he’s almost a default option for Cons and I’m interested how that will hold up over the decades

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Éric Grenier's avatar

The opposition leader results on Monday are interesting, too!

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Andrew Steele's avatar

Eric, I wonder if some of the results are due to question design. An open ended question standing alone in a longer survey is going to prompt a top of mind response. A battery naming Canada’s Prime Ministers and asking them to approve/disapprove would probably track more closely to the historians views.

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Éric Grenier's avatar

I believe Research Co. did a poll with approve/disapprove ratings of some past PMs a little while back. If I did it again, maybe I would have had people choose a Top 3 or something.

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Samuel's avatar

I bet Harper's popularity is much more pronounced due to the hatred project at Trudeau jr.

While I liked him and thought he was a good PM, I don't think he was consequential like Macdonald or Mulroney.

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