Early in the 2015 federal election campaign, when expectations for the third-place Liberals remained decidedly modest, Justin Trudeau told the Star “Canadians respond well to someone who’s actually, genuinely enjoying what it is that they’re doing.”

Six months later, now head of a majority Liberal government, Trudeau looks to be enjoying the heck out of his new job. And Canadians are responding by delivering an unprecedented run of enthusiastic support for the new prime minister.

A new poll by Forum Research Inc. shows 51 per cent of Canadian voters would vote Liberal if an election were held today — producing a super-majority of about 256 seats — or 75 per cent — in the 338-seat Commons.

The poll found the Conservatives at 28 per cent — good for about 74 seats — and the NDP at about 12 per cent, which would produce no more than five seats.

Two-thirds of Canadian voters reported being satisfied with the outcome of the 2015 election, and more than a third — 36 per cent — said they are very satisfied.

Liberal popularity covers all age groups, both genders, and most regions of the country. The Liberals are within two points of the Conservatives in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and trail only in Alberta.

“It appears as though the Trudeau honeymoon is back on again, after some minor slippage last month,” said Forum president Lorne Bozinoff.

In Ontario, where the Liberals are backed by 56 per cent of voters, the nearest thing to the kind of honeymoon Trudeau has enjoyed probably tracks back to the taking of office in 1985 of Liberal premier David Peterson after 42 years of unbroken Progressive Conservative rule in the province.

In both cases, the incoming first minister was young, modern, charismatic and pursued an activist agenda.

“I suffered a bout of nostalgia when Justin marched up the walk to Rideau Hall for the swearing-in of his first, somewhat revolutionary, cabinet,” George Hutchison, Peterson’s former communications adviser, told the Star.

“I couldn’t help but be reminded of that warm and sunny day in June 1985 when we staged the cabinet swearing-in outside the Legislature. Sunny ways, indeed.”

Hershell Ezrin, Peterson’s chief of staff in the 1980s, told the Star that both Trudeau and Peterson were replacing relatively long-term incumbents — 10 years in the fast-paced modern world being equivalent to several decades back then.

He sees several reasons why Trudeau’s popularity has been so sustained.

In 2014, Ezrin and colleague Chris MacDonald at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management oversaw a study on the ethics of political leadership. The low regard in which politicians were held was stark, he said.

So achieving popularity doesn’t demand perfection. Voters “like the idea that he’s kept his election promises, more or less; they like the idea that he has been more or less open and accessible.

“Mr. Trudeau has been successful so far because he’s exceeding people’s expectations and the expectation may be somewhat low for politicians in general.”

Then there’s the tone and message.

“We always used to say there are two ways people get elected,” Ezrin said. “You either get elected on hope or you get elected on fear. With Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Peterson, Mr. Obama, the hope factor was really quite compelling.

“When Mr. Trudeau explains gender parity in cabinet by saying, ‘Because it’s 2015,’ that feeds the sense of hope that there’s a change underway. Those are reasons why the poll numbers stay high.”

Almost since the Liberal government was sworn in Nov. 4, Canada’s pundit class has made like a collective of marriage therapists, regularly predicting an imminent end of the giddy Trudeau honeymoon.

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It was the wise Carol Goar, who retired this past week as a Star columnist, who forecast a run of Liberal popularity well into this year, and shrewdly explained why.

“Logic is not always the key to human psychology,” Goar wrote Jan. 6. “For the first time in a decade Canadians feel good about themselves and their country. They like welcoming refugees; tackling climate change; being seen as a consensus-builder on the world stage and a friend in Washington. They like working together to accomplish shared goals.”

There is more to Justin Trudeau’s popularity than his relative youth, fetching appearance, globe-trotting energy and openness.

As ever, circumstances have also helped. Both major opposition parties in Canada have been distracted by leadership questions. Revulsion at the super-rich having arisen from the Panama Papers leaks. And the U.S. presidential campaigns have produced a distaste for most of the other major contenders.

“The major contenders for the U.S. presidency are not anywhere near as attractive as Justin is,” McMaster University political science Prof. Henry Jacek told the Star.

Since taking office, Trudeau’s excursions abroad have won almost universal applause, especially during the State Dinner with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington last month.

A rare discouraging word arose this week when a prominent Brazilian magazine ran a screed denouncing Trudeau as narcissistic and — aside from his looks — “exceedingly ordinary.”

No one knows better than veterans of the Peterson government how quickly popularity can evaporate.

“Numbers are very fragile and polls are very fragile,” Ezrin cautioned.

Along with early popularity came high expectations, Hutchison agreed.

“Delivery can be tough. We’ll see.”

The Forum Research Inc. poll was based on an interactive voice response telephone survey of 1,455 randomly selected Canadians 18 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.

Where appropriate, the data has been statistically weighted by age, region, and other variables to ensure that the sample reflects the actual population according to the latest Census data. Forum houses its poll results in the Data Library of the University of Toronto political science department.

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