Manitoba’s premier is once again top-of-the-heap in leaders’ year-end approval ratings, according to a new poll, but this time it’s by a very narrow margin.
Wab Kinew scored the highest rating — with 58 per cent of those polled saying they ‘strongly’ or ‘moderately’ approve of his performance as premier — but it’s a significant drop of 10 points compared to the Angus Reid Institute’s previous poll in June.
December’s rankings find Kinew only two per cent ahead of the second-most popular premier, New Brunswick’s Susan Holt, at 56 per cent.
Rounding out the top three is Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe, with 53 per cent. At the tail end of the list are British Columbia’s David Eby (40 per cent), Ontario’s Doug Ford (34 per cent), and Francois Legault of Quebec, with only 25 per cent.
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Since he became premier in 2023, Kinew’s rankings in the poll have been consistently high, hitting a peak of 68 per cent approval this past summer. It’s a marked difference from his immediate predecessors, Progressive Conservatives Heather Stefanson and Brian Pallister, who remained near or at the bottom of the rankings throughout their tenures as premier.
In this most recent poll, Manitoba’s Opposition PCs, led by Obby Khan, only received a ‘very favourable’ review from five per cent of respondents, but those polled seemed to have mixed feelings about their performance, with the ‘favourable;’ ‘unfavourable;’ ‘very unfavourable’ and the ‘don’t know’ options each receiving around 24 per cent.
The poll, which runs four times a year, is conducted among a randomized sample of more than 4,000 adults, weighted according to region, age, income, education, and gender, based on the most recent census.
The respondents are all members of the Angus Reid Forum. For Manitoba, the pollster said the margin of error is plus or minus five per cent.
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