Canadians’ opinion of the United States

Tracking 40 years of ups and downs… and then more downs

Our relationship with the United States is entering a period of uncertainty and stress. I’ll leave it to the economists to estimate the damage any new tariffs will cause, and to the pundits to suggest a response. My role is to remind us of how Canadians’ perceptions of their neighbour have shifted over time.

Since 1982, the Focus Canada survey has asked:

In general, what is your opinion of the United States? Is it very favourable, somewhat favourable, somewhat unfavourable or very unfavourable?

For 20 years, up until the early 2000s, roughly three in four Canadians held a very or somewhat favourable opinion of the United States (the proportion expressing this opinion ranged from a low of 71% to a high of 83%). Notably, opinions were equally positive, regardless of whether the U.S. presidency was held by a Republican (Reagan or Bush Sr.) or a Democrat (Clinton).

It may surprise some to see that, whatever many Canadians may have thought about Ronald Reagan, it didn’t much affect their view of America as a whole.

It may also be a surprise to recall that the overwhelmingly favourable view of the United States was first eroded, not by the election of Donald Trump, but long before that, during the presidency of George W. Bush. Between October 2001 and June 2006, the proportion of Canadians holding a favourable opinion of the United States fell by 30 points, from 79 percent to 49 percent. This was at the time of the “global war on terror,” specifically in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.

The election of Barack Obama reset things to normal – in terms of how Canadians viewed the United States. But opinions were upended again once Donald Trump arrived on the scene. By the end of Trump’s (first!) presidency, in September 2020, the proportion of Canadians holding a favourable opinion of the United States reached a previously unimaginable low of 29 percent.

This time, the return of a Democratic Party president to the White House (Joe Biden) didn’t lead to as big of a rebound – perhaps because Trump’s MAGA movement never really faded from view. Over the past four years, Canadians have been more or less evenly split between those with a favourable, and those with an unfavourable, opinion of the U.S. And – while pollsters should generally refrain from projections – it’s not hard to guess what things will look like should we have occasion to ask the question again in 2025.

Gordie Howe International Bridge under construction. Credit: Steven_Kriemadis.

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You can read more about the evolution of Canadian public opinion about the United States in our recently published book chapter: Michael Adams and Andrew Parkin, “An Unexpected Shift: Canadians’ Views of the United States in the Era of Free Trade,” in Donald E. Abelson and Stephen Brooks, History Has Made us Friends: Reassessing the Special Relationship between Canada and the United States (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024).

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So much for the overall trend. The remaining question is: how divided are Canadians – for instance, by gender, age, region or political leaning – on this question? Have our perceptions of the United States emerged as a potential fault line in our politics?

I’m going to simplify the charts somewhat by selecting results from fewer years – a selection which includes the key peaks and troughs.

Gender

As overall opinions on about the United States become less favourable, a gender gap opens up (women’s opinions shift more than men’s). This was the case, to a modest extent, in the mid-2000s. It’s become more noticeable since the 2016 presidential election. Men are now 16 percentage points more likely than women to express a favourable opinion of the U.S. (56% to 40%).

Age

Differences in opinion between older and younger Canadians emerged in the 2000s, particularly in the middle of that decade following the invasion of Iraq. At that point in time, younger Canadians were much less likely to view the U.S. favourably. Interestingly, younger Canadians also seemed a little less enthusiastic during the Obama period.

But differences among age groups have narrowed again since then – at least on this question about opinions about the U.S. overall (but click here to see the age difference in terms of opinions specifically about Donald Trump).

Region

There are many issues that divide Canadians along regional lines, but views about the United States are not among them. Quebecers and British Columbians were a little cooler toward the U.S. than other Canadians in the Bush Jr. years. Residents of the Prairies sometimes seem a little warmer toward Trump’s America (in 2017, in particular). But in general, the chart suggests more similarities than differences.

Federal vote intention

Supporters of the federal NDP tend view the United States a little less favourably than do Liberal or Conservative party supporters. The more striking difference though is that, when favourable opinions drop overall, the change is much sharper for both Liberal and NDP supporters than it is for supporters of the Conservative Party. The negligeable five-point gap between Liberal and Conservative party supporters when Reagan was president grew to 26 points in the mid-2000s, and now sits at 22 points.

Does any of this really matter? In narrow terms, the data suggest that the Conservative Party needs to tread carefully on the issue of Canada-U.S. relations to avoid getting offside with the wider public, women in particular. If this is the angle that interests you, you can read more here about the gender and age differences within the Conservative coalition when it comes to perceptions of Donald Trump.

But there’s a broader point. In the 1980s and 1990s, despite a divisive debate on the policy of free trade, Canadians’ goodwill toward the United States could more or less be taken for granted. It was a comfortable backdrop against which trickier issues such as trade, the environment and defence could be addressed. The situation is more complicated today.

Here’s how Michael Adams and I tried to summarize this in the closing of the book chapter I mentioned previously:

“For decades, the existential question facing Canadians in the context of Canada-U.S. relations was this: what if the countries end up with too much in common? Today, the question has become: what if they end up sharing too little?”

The data in this post are from the Environics Institute’s Focus Canada surveys. This portion of the 2024 survey was conducted in partnership with the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University. This survey is based on telephone interviews conducted (via landline and cellphones) with 2,016 Canadians between September 9 and 23, 2024.

What is the Environics Institute for Survey Research? Find out by clicking here.

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