A majority of Canadian voters are dissatisfied with the results of the Tuesday’s historic U.S. election and believe Donald Trump will be bad for Canada, a new poll suggests.

According to a Forum Research poll, 53 per cent of Canadian voters said they were not at all satisfied with the outcome of the election, while 17 per cent said they were not very satisfied. Fifty-five per cent of respondents agreed that Trump as president would be bad for Canada, and 73 per cent overall disapprove of him.

But Canadians didn’t overwhelmingly support for Hillary Clinton either, with 40 per cent of respondents saying they disapproved of the Democratic candidate.

“Even up here, Clinton has an image problem,” Forum president Lorne Bozinoff said Friday, adding that he was slightly surprised her disapproval ratings were so high. “Before the election, there was definitely a preference for Clinton over Trump, but people weren’t bowled over by her. She had some baggage.”

While most Canadians don’t approve of Trump, there does appear to be a faction of voters in Canada that do support the Republican president-elect. When it came to Conservative voters, 45 per cent approved of Trump (compared to 9 per cent of Liberal voters) and 52 per cent were satisfied with the election results (compared to 13 per cent of Liberals).

“It’s further proof that the Tories march to their own drum in this country,” Bozinoff said. “If we think, ‘this would never happen in Canada,’ just look at the Tories. There is support for Trumpism, or whatever you want to call this philosophy.”

Regionally, Trump received more support in Alberta, where 33 per cent said they approved of him, compared to 20 per cent in Ontario, 13 per cent in Quebec and 11 per cent in Atlantic Canada.

“Albertans not only lean Conservative, but they had a huge stake in the election as Trump has talked the Keystone XL pipeline,” Bozinoff said.

The poll also showed that 80 per cent of the women sampled said they disapproved of the Republican candidate, compared to 65 per cent of men.

Using interactive voice-response telephone calls, Forum surveyed 1,474 Canadian voters on Wednesday and Thursday. Results are considered accurate, plus or minus three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Despite rhetoric throughout the American election about the need to scrap international trade deals, a separate Forum poll with the same sample size found that Canadians still support Canada’s major free trade agreements.

In the random sampling of voters, 51 per cent approved of the recently ratified Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) that Canada signed with Europe while 34 per cent were unsure. Meanwhile, 65 per cent of respondents approve of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed with the U.S. and Mexico.

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Where appropriate, results of the survey have been statistically weighted by age, region, and other variables to ensure the sample reflects the actual population according to the latest census data.

Forum houses its complete results in the data library of the University of Toronto’s political science department.

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