ANALYSIS: Would replacing Trudeau help the Liberals? It’s probably unlikely

New polling shows the Liberal Party's biggest liability is its leader Justin Trudeau. Would a new leader help? And how will the party win support despite Trudeau's unpopularity?

When Brian Mulroney announced his retirement from office in February 1993, his personal approval ratings were in the teens and his majority Progressive Conservative government had the support of less than 20 per cent of voters.

Mulroney would insist those numbers had nothing to do with this decision to leave but when he did, in the early summer of that year, the party’s fortunes under his successor Kim Campbell immediately began to improve and as the 1993 federal election got underway late that summer, the PCs started in a statistical tie with Jean’s Chrétien’s Liberals.

The popularity would not last long for the PCs.

During the ensuing campaign, the coalition Muloney had built collapsed. Lucien Bouchard and the Bloc Québécois were on the rise in Quebec and Preston Manning and Reform were stealing PC votes elsewhere. The PCs would win just two seats on election day.

That history lesson is important today for a few reasons.

An unpopular prime minister passed the baton to a younger, fresh new and — in a historic first — female leader and while that seemed a good idea at the time, it would not much matter in the ensuing election.

Now, in the wake of fresh polling by Ipsos, provided exclusively to Global News, some are suggesting an unpopular prime minister — Justin Trudeau — could best help his party by passing the torch, a torch that Ipsos polling says might most likely be received by a younger, fresher, newer — and potentially — female leader: Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly or Treasury Board President Anita Anand.

There might be others who would seek the leader’s job should it come open — Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne or, from outside politics, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.