Environmental issues taking a backseat this election, Vote Compass data shows

CBC News

· Posted: Apr 12, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

Environmental issues person slid mode down the database of Canadians' concerns successful this national predetermination compared to the past campaign, according to information from Vote Compass.

When asked "What contented is the astir important to you successful this election?" survey respondents astir often said Canada-U.S. relations were their apical concern.

Environmental issues didn't ace the apical five.

"The contented scenery is precise antithetic from the 2021 election, erstwhile the situation was the starring interest for the largest stock of Canadians," according to the Vote Compass analysis.

The findings are based connected much than 161,000 radical who participated successful the Vote Compass survey from March 25 to April 3.

In 2021, 24 per cent named the situation arsenic their astir important issue. But successful this campaign, the situation is eighth connected the list, astatine astir 5 per cent.

President Donald Trump's tariffs connected Canadian goods and threats of annexation person alternatively dominated overmuch of the 2025 predetermination campaign, with 29 per cent of respondents identifying the Canada-U.S. contented arsenic their superior concern. 

Liberal voters are particularly acrophobic astir relations with the U.S., with 46 per cent choosing it arsenic their astir important issue.

For Conservative voters, the system is the apical concern, with 36 per cent choosing it arsenic their key issue.

Economic issues were adjacent connected the list, identified arsenic a apical interest by 24 per cent of the wide population. The outgo of living, societal justness and wellness attraction circular retired the apical five. 

The proportionality of Canadians citing migration arsenic their apical interest is up to 4 per cent successful 2025 from 1 per cent successful 2021, according to Vote Compass.

Fewer radical said wellness attraction was their astir important contented (down to six per cent from 12 per cent).

Vote Compass is an inaugural of Vox Pop Labs, an independent, non-partisan societal endeavor founded and operated by academics. The exertion surveys users astir their governmental views and past calculates their alignment with the parties and candidates moving for election.

On Friday, 128 municipal politicians wrote an unfastened missive to the 5 main national enactment leaders calling for enactment connected clime alteration "because aboriginal is excessively late."

The radical wants the adjacent national authorities to physique a nationalist electrical grid that includes the North, determination up with a high-speed obstruction network, marque homes and buildings much vigor efficient, build 2 cardinal non-market "green homes," and money a "national resilience, effect and betterment strategy."

Unlike online sentiment polls, respondents to Vote Compass are not pre-selected. Similar to galore nationalist sentiment polls, however, the information is an online non-probability illustration that's been weighted to approximate a demographically typical sample. Vote Compass information has been weighted by gender, age, education, region, connection spoken successful the home, and partisanship (past national vote) to guarantee the illustration creation reflects that of the voting-eligible colonisation of Canada according to census information and electoral data. All results are taxable to uncertainty (or error). Because Vote Compass information is derived from a non-probability sample, Vox Pop Labs does not person a accepted borderline of error. Instead, it reports a modeled mistake estimation that is intended to approximate a borderline of sampling error, successful this lawsuit of +/- 0.5%.