FIRST READING: Survey finds it's mostly Trump voters that want Canadians to be Americans

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TOP STORY

Although it’s mostly Democrats who muse about “moving to Canada” whenever a U.S. election doesn’t go their way, a new YouGov poll finds that it’s mostly Republican voters who want to turn Canada into a U.S. state.

The survey, published Friday, finds that 50 per cent of respondents who voted for Donald Trump in the last presidential election supported the annexation of Canada. This is against just 27 per cent of those who voted for Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris.

The results are somewhat ironic given that if Canada was ever successfully integrated as a state, the Republican Party as it currently stands would effectively cease to exist.

The addition of 40 million Canadian voters into the U.S. would essentially mean a second California, with similar weight to influence congressional and presidential elections.

Canadian politics are currently going through one of its most intense rightward shifts in a generation. Nevertheless, the shift is still out of sync with the kind of conservative politics favoured in the United States. In every single U.S. presidential election of the last 30 years, polls have shown that Canadians overwhelmingly supported the Democratic candidate, even if they had right-wing sympathies at home.

Which might be why the YouGov poll found that even if Americans favoured Canadian annexation, they weren’t under the impression that it would be easy. Among annexation supporters, 58 per cent said it would be “difficult” to absorb Canada (among annexation opponents, that sentiment stood at 90 per cent).

Overall, just 36 per cent of all Americans endorsed absorbing Canada as a piece of the United States.

And this is generally in line with how annexation sentiments have always been. As far back as 2002, a Leger poll similarly asked U.S. citizens if they should seek the annexation of Canada, and 38 per cent said “yes.”

Friday’s YouGov survey dropped only hours before U.S. President Donald Trump announced a plan to impose punitive tariffs on Canadian imports and issued a social media statement saying Canada wasn’t a real country.

“Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State,” wrote Trump in a Saturday post to Truth Social. Only on Monday did he rescind the threats.

The YouGov survey found that Americans mostly had no quarrel with their northern neighbour. In fact, Americans liked Canada about as much as Canadians do.

Of respondents, 76 per cent of Americans had a “favourable” view of Canada, against 81 per cent of Canadians who said the same about themselves.

This tracks with plenty of other surveys in which Canada consistently ranks as a nation with which Americans have no strong feelings.

A March 2023 Gallup poll found that Canada was American’s single favourite country, with 88 per cent expressing a favourable view. Their least favourite was North Korea and Russia, who were both tied for last place at nine per cent.

A 2020 YouGov poll similarly found high marks for Canada among Americans, although in that particular case, Canada was narrowly edged out by its Southern Hemisphere cousin of Australia. Americans ranked Australia as their favourite foreign country with a 76 per cent approval rating, against 75 per cent for the second-place Canada.

Friday’s YouGov poll also found that Canadian support for U.S. annexation was rock bottom. A mere 15 per cent of Canadians thought it was a good idea, against 77 per cent who didn’t.

The survey also found that Canadians and Americans were in almost perfect agreement as to what should be done with Greenland.

Although Trump has made overtures to purchase the Danish-controlled Arctic island as a U.S. territory, a slim majority of both country’s citizens (50 per cent U.S., 52 per cent Canadian) said it should just be allowed independence.

The poll was an online survey of 1,091 U.S. citizens conducted between Jan. 16 and 22. The margin of error for the overall sample was estimated at four per cent.

IN OTHER NEWS

Just before this newsletter was sent out, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he wouldn’t be slapping Canada with punitive tariffs on Tuesday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he’d successfully obtained a 30-day reprieve, and it appears that all he had to do was a bunch of stuff that Canada has already promised to do anyway.

Among the concessions cited in obtaining the 11th hour reprieve, Trudeau mentioned $1.3 billion in additional spending on border security and a “Canada-U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering.”

All of these were already part of the initial border security package that Canada first presented to the incoming Trump White House before Christmas. The only real difference is that there’s now going to be a “Fentanyl Czar” and drug cartels are going to be listed as terror groups.

Trudeau also made certain to say in a social media post that 10,000 Canadians “are and will be working” on border security — an apparent reference to the terms under which Mexico also obtained a 30-day tariff reprieve. On Monday, Trump boasted that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had agreed to send 10,000 Mexican national guard troops to U.S./Mexico border. “These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our country,” Trump said in an announcement.

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