AAP has reported on Canada’s snap election which has been called for April 28 (their election was not due until October, but they will now vote before we do) and the story includes some interesting observations from one pollster:

Mark Carney, a former two-time central banker with no previous political or election campaign experience, captured the Liberal leadership two weeks ago by persuading party members he was the best person to tackle Trump.

Now he has five weeks to win over Canadians. On Sunday, Carney proposed cutting the lowest income tax bracket by one percentage point.

Polls suggest the Liberals, who have been in power since 2015 and badly trailed the official opposition Conservatives at the start of the year, are now slightly ahead of their rivals.

“We moved from an election where people wanted change to an election that’s really much more about leadership,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs.

“The ability of the Conservatives to attack the Liberals has been greatly diminished, because people are focused on the here and now and the near-term future, not on what happened over the last 10 years,” he said by phone.

It is interesting because we are starting to see the same theme emerge here – and populist nationalists, like Pauline Hanson and Peter Dutton are struggling to respond to it. Not that Labor has taken the line that the Canadian Liberals have under Carney, but it will be very interesting seeing how Australian politicians respond to the very real threat Trump presents to the world.