Say the Canadian army invades America during the NFL Draft. America, all “whatever, we’re busy,” surrenders. For America’s own good, the benevolent occupiers abolish Americans’ right to vote and let Canadians choose the presidential nominees.

What happens?

Canadians laugh, very hard. And then they do the same thing Americans are doing.

A new Forum Research poll suggests a Canada-only U.S. election would also produce a tight Republican race between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, a Hillary Clinton lead over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race, and a massive Clinton advantage over Trump in the general election.

So we’re not totally different. But we are different. Most notably, our conservatives are much more liberal than their conservatives. While supporters of Canada’s Conservative Party narrowly prefer Trump to Cruz, more of them support Clinton, a villain to most Republicans, than any Republican candidate.

Twenty-six per cent of Canadian Conservatives said Trump would be the best Republican nominee. Twenty-five per cent said Cruz. Ohio Gov. John Kasich got the same 21 per cent support from Conservatives as he has from Republicans, but Trump, who has 40 per cent support from Republicans, and Cruz, who has 33 per cent from Republicans, both did much worse with Canada’s version of right-wingers. Twenty-eight per cent of Conservatives said they didn’t know who was the best Republican candidate.

If Liberal voters got to settle the Democratic primary, Clinton would be beating Sanders 52 per cent to 38 per cent, the poll found. But the race would be tighter if supporters of the New Democratic Party were included. Among NDP voters, the “democratic socialist” from Vermont led the former secretary of state 51 per cent to 33 per cent.

A general election conducted in Canada would be over before it started: Just 20 per cent picked any Republican.

Clinton was the preferred choice even of a plurality of Conservative voters. Twenty-six per cent picked her, 23 per cent Trump. And even Sanders did better with Conservative voters (14 per cent) than Cruz (11 per cent), a hard-right Texas senator.

The pronounced age gap in Clinton support and Sanders support exists in Canada too. With Canadians age 18 to 34, Sanders led Clinton 51 per cent to 31 per cent. Among Canadians 45 to 54, Clinton led 53 per cent to 32 per cent.

The poll was based on an interactive voice response telephone survey of 1,455 randomly selected Canadians 18 years of age or older. It was conducted on April 4 and 5, 2016. Results based on the total sample are considered accurate to within three percentage points, 19 times in 20. Forum houses its poll results in the data library of the department of political science at the University of Toronto.

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