



A significant majority of Conservative party members supporting Kellie Leitch’s leadership campaign want a Canadian version of President Donald Trump’s embattled executive order banning the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

From February 9 to 11, an exclusive Mainstreet Research poll for iPolitics asked 572 Conservative party members the following question: “Recently, Donald Trump signed an executive order limiting entry to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. Would you support or oppose implementing a similar measure in Canada?”

Overall, with a margin or error of +/- 4.26 per cent, 19 times out of 20, a slim majority of members (51.7 per cent) were opposed, while 48.8 per cent supported a Canadian version.

Kellie Leitch’s supporters, however, were a different story: 67.8 per cent were in favour.

Despite the vocal criticism of her campaign-defining policy proposal — to screen any non-Canadian entering the country for ‘Canadian values’ — Leitch has stuck to her guns.

In Monday night’s leadership debate, she defended that policy repeatedly.

“She must know that that’s her base, because she keeps sticking to that message regardless of how much she’s attacked,” said Mainstreet Research president Quito Maggi.

“The surprising number out of the whole bunch was Kevin O’Leary — a majority of his supporters would support a similar measure.”

Mainstreet found 56.4 per cent of O’Leary’s supporters favour the ban.

Mainstreet limited the travel ban question to supporters of the leading five campaigns, according to their most recent overall polling: O’Leary, Maxime Bernier, Kellie Leitch, Chris Alexander and Lisa Raitt.

A majority of the people supporting Bernier, Raitt and Alexander oppose the ban.

Maggi said there’s a significant amount of cross-support between the Leitch and O’Leary campaigns — an odd finding given O’Leary’s liberal position on immigration.

O’Leary likes to point out that he’s the son of Irish and Lebanese immigrants and has said he “wouldn’t exist if Canada had walls”.

In Monday night’s debate, he added that he was resolutely pro-choice, pro-marijuana legalization and completely supportive of the LGBTQI communities.

“Knowing that a majority of his supporters have some of those views, his coming out as strongly as he has in the first couple debates on these progressive policies — LGTBQ, marijuana legalization, immigration — will that hurt him?” Maggi asked.

The answer to that question, he said, depends on why a majority of Conservative members are supporting O’Leary.

“Is that the ballot question? When people go to vote, is it going to be the ballot question? Seeing how Kellie Leitch is based entirely on that ideological, policy-driven question, it probably is for her. I would bet among Kevin O’Leary’s supporters that the ballot question is something else — more around who could beat Justin Trudeau in 2019,” he said.

It remains to be seen, though, how far O’Leary can push the party in a different direction, as opposed to moderating his views to conform with those of the base.

“The base — the strongest supporters — they’re ideologically driven,” Maggi said. “If a candidate expresses a value that is so completely foreign to Conservative principles, maybe that will hurt. Too early to tell now.”

The iPolitics CPC Leadership Tracker, powered by Mainstreet, will be tracking the Conservative leadership race until members pick the next leader on May 27. For information on subscribing to in-depth updates, click here.