The new poll was conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research (EISR), surveying over 2,000 Canadians with a 2.2 percent margin of error. It found that 44 percent of Canadians hold a favorable view of their neighbors to the south, while 53 percent hold unfavorable views.
Nineteen percent of respondents also said that the political climate had caused them to cancel travel plans to the United States, and another 8 percent said they were considering doing the same.
"There's been a dramatic change," EISR Executive Director Keith Neuman said. He cited the "unexpected election of Donald Trump" for the "dramatic impact" on public approval of the US. The same poll was conducted in 2012 and found that 68 percent of Canadians had a positive view of Americans, a 24-percent difference.
This is the lowest level of Canadian approval of Americans on EISR record, since they started tracking it in 1982. Approval levels hit an all-time high of about 75 percent in 1983, before beginning a downward trend that would continue until 2005, which saw a then-all-time-low of 49 percent. Approval bounced back up after that, before drastically declining again in 2017.
The study also found sharp differences between American approval over age and gender barriers. Thirty-nine percent of Canadians aged 18-29 approved of the US, compared to 48 percent of Canadians 45-59. Fifty-one percent of men felt positively about the US, compared to 38 percent of women.
The same study charted Canadian opinions of immigration. Sixty-two percent found the level of immigrants coming into Canada favorable, a position shared by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Only 35 percent of Canadians agreed with the statement that "there is too much immigration to Canada."
Americans' opinion of Canada, on the other hand, remains high. In February 2017, a Gallup poll found that 92 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of "America's Hat." Canada has topped out America's list of most well-liked nations for decades, beating out other allies like Great Britain (82 percent), Japan (80 percent) and Israel (70 percent.)
The US and Canada share the world's longest unguarded border (and in fact the world's longest border, period), memberships in trade agreement NAFTA, airspace via NORAD and military resources via NATO. The United States is Canada's top import and export partner by extremely wide margins, while Canada is the US" top exporter and second-biggest importer after China.
