The Ipsos poll, conducted exclusively for Global News just days after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, found that support for a referendum on the future of the monarchy has increased since last year, from 53 percent in 2021 to 58 percent today. “(Canadians) want to have their say,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs. Whether support for a vote on the issue continues to grow will likely depend on “the performance of King Charles III and how people feel about him after we come out of this period of mourning” for the Queen, he added Bricker. Story continues below ad
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Ipsos interviewed more than 1,000 Canadians online earlier this week for the survey. The results show that King Charles has a lot to prove with the Canadian public. While 82 percent of those polled said they approved of Queen Elizabeth’s performance as monarch, just 56 percent agreed that Charles would do a good job in her place. Worse, only 44 percent said they view Charles favorably, with that support falling to just 27 percent for his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort. “There was never a lot of excitement about King Charles,” said Bricker, who pointed to the bruised reputation that came after his divorce from Princess Diana. “The people are not hostile to the new King, but they are certainly not as enamored with him as they are with his mother. … That 82 percent (support) is not just a sympathy number for Queen Elizabeth. He’s consistently gotten numbers like this for as long as we’ve been polling. “It’s a very, very difficult act to follow.” 2:32 ‘We will all miss her very much’: Canadian MPs pay tribute to Queen in special session of Parliament ‘We will all miss her very much’: Canadian MPs pay tribute to Queen in special session of Parliament In particular, the Canadians appear willing to bypass the right of King Charles altogether and enter the era of William, Charles’s son and new heir. Trending Stories
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Story continues below ad Compared to 47 per cent of respondents who believe King Charles and Camilla will help keep the monarchy relevant in Canada, 60 per cent feel the same way about Prince William and Princess Catherine — although that number it is down seven points from 2016. Both William and his brother Harry, as well as their respective wives Kate and Meghan, won the majority of support from respondents compared to their father. William scored the highest approval rating of them all, with 66 percent saying they view him favorably.
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Overall, only a small majority (54 per cent) said Canada should cut ties with the monarchy now that Queen Elizabeth has died. This figure is broadly in line with other polls taken both before and after the Queen’s death. That majority came largely from respondents in Quebec, where 79 percent of respondents agreed that Canada should break away from the monarchy. In English Canada, support for such a move averaged only 46 percent, with only Saskatchewan and Manitoba holding slight majorities. Younger Canadians under 55 also led hostility toward the monarchy, with 57 percent saying the tie should be broken compared to 49 percent of older Canadians. Story continues below ad These relative differences of opinion were also observed when survey participants were asked whether they agreed with arguments both for and against retaining the monarchy in Canada. 2:03 Poll: Majority of Canadians feel unaffected by Queen’s death Poll: Majority of Canadians feel unaffected by Queen’s death A small majority (between 55 and 61 percent) agreed that the constitutional monarchy helps define Canadian identity and should continue as the current form of government, that maintaining the monarchy helps separate Canada from the United States, and that it is important to Canadian Heritage. However, roughly the same range of respondents also agreed that the royal family should have no official role in Canadian society and should not be seen as anything more than celebrities. that Canada is not a truly independent nation if it remains attached to the monarchy. and that the monarchy is too tied to the history of colonialism and slavery to have a place in contemporary Canadian society. Story continues below ad “All of this suggests that Canadians are not particularly bullish on this issue one way or the other, although they are somewhat concerned about it,” Bricker said. “There is certainly more room for the anti-monarchy side to grow … as one generation replaces another. But right now… these token feelings are not yet enough to spark anything decisive.” These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between September 13 and 14, 2022, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,001 Canadians aged 18+ were surveyed. Quotas and weighting were used to ensure that the composition of the sample reflected the composition of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The accuracy of Ipsos online polls is measured using a confidence interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, if all Canadians aged 18+ had participated. The confidence interval will be wider between subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including but not limited to coverage error and measurement error. © 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
