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Canada’s ‘Trump Candidate’ Is Most Likely To Beat Trudeau

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Phillip Stucky Political Reporter
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American businessman Kevin O’Leary is the most likely candidate to replace Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, according to a Monday poll released by Mainsteet Research.

O’Leary is known for his fiscally conservative views, and actually toyed with the idea of running as early as last January, when he discussed how he would run. O’Leary has only been in the race for a little under a month. He has dominated early polling that shows him as the most likely candidate to successfully unseat Trudeau.

The Conservative party in Canada doesn’t have a primary like the ones in the U.S. Instead, there is an intra-party preferential vote, but not every vote is weighted the same, according to Ipolitics. O’Leary leads in the overall voter percentage, earning 24.7 percent in the poll — an incredible feat given the 14 other candidates running for the party nomination. Also of note is the nearly 11 percent of conservative voters who remain undecided in the poll, indicating that there is room for growth for the well-known business leader.

O’Leary’s numbers fall slightly when the potential point system is taken into account. Essentially, 24.52 percent of the available points support O’Leary currently, with Maxime Bernier a close second at 20.22 percent.

Perhaps the most revealing question was which one of the Conservative candidates was most likely to beat Trudeau, and O’Leary quickly emerged as the party favorite. Thirty-six percent of voters in the poll indicated they felt that O’Leary stood the best chance, compared to only 20.32 percent who felt that Bernier could win.

O’Leary is a Canadian national with business ties to the U.S. He primarily lives in Boston, Mass., but maintains a home in Canada, clearing the way for him to run for office there. O’Leary currently owns several businesses in the U.S., including a mutual fund that carries his name. He supports reduced corporate tax rates, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and opposes deficit spending.

The published margin of error of the poll is 1.3 percentage points in either direction. There are 91,000 members of the Conservative Party, and the pollster obtained answers from “thousands” of respondents during the poll. The polling for the recent data concluded Feb. 9.

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