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Something has always felt off about that.
I'll grant it's true now. I don't know that it always was. There was a time where he seemed like the most popular Conservative leader in living memory. He was genuinely getting people out to rallies, and not even during election season. His campaign doubled party membership in under a year.
And even then, the media was running the story "Pierre is unlikeable and unpopular". I was like "are we watching the same movie?". Doubted it was true at the time. Suspected they memed it into existence, but it stuck.
He's been saying (with energy!) the things young people have been grumbling about for years, especially re: housing, economy, etc. A coworker was ranting about politics to me basically complaining about the fact that she'll never buy a home, and practically repeating lines from Pierre's youtube playbook. I asked her what she thought of Poilievre. "don't like him". "oh? why?". "dunno. just don't"
I think it's because he's a nerd. The general public hates a nerd. Even though he ditched the glasses, hit the gym, and changed his messaging to 3-word populism, people can tell he's still a nerd. He has debate club energy, and the fact that he is right and "wins" the debate doesn't help him.
He gives off a really smug vibe and I find him generally offputting, but I found Trudeau to be more offputting. I did plan on voting CPC in the last election but the CPC platform was not published before I voted, and when I read their governance document (forget the proper title) I found it vague and full of contradictory sentiments as they tried to appeal to reactionary voters (medical decisions are your right, the government can't mandate vaccinations, but also, you can't be making medical decisions about your children with the participation of those children and their medical team -- vaguely worded of course). I also listened to interviews with Carney from years prior and found him to be a reasonable, pragmatic, neoliberal technocrat. I hopped on /r/candianconservative and asked for people to give me links to PP discussing trump and other issues of the moment. The videos all turned me off because of his tendency to blame others (the Liberals in this case), and not come out with concrete plans. He never felt like a serious man with serious plans who wants to build stuff. He came across as a reactionary politician trying to create soundbites and boo his outgroup.
Now, I'm open to changing my mind. I do not think he's an evil man, or Canadian Trump or any of that BS. However, he really needs to focus on ignoring the Liberals and laying out a clear plan (emphasizing CLEAR) on lots of issues. When he gets interviewed and asked tough questions he needs to answer them instead of trying to pivot to talk about how bad the Liberals are. It's insufferable. I know the Liberals suck, I don't need you to tell me that. Tell me how you are going to lead the country instead.
Yeah. I had a similar evaluation. Expected Carney to be a more competent leader, which counts for a lot, though I still could not vote Liberal that election. After breaking the country so badly with the immigration & housing mess across a decade, just couldn't endorse another term for their government.
I will say that Poilievre used to do more messaging about economics, inflation, housing, etc. trying to show his work. At a certain point, he stopped doing that and pivoted to more attack ads and three word slogans. Worse in my opinion, but it probably polled better.
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