Before the Justin Trudeau blackface scandal broke last week, polls basically showed a dead heat between Trudeau’s Liberal Party and the Conservatives led by Andrew Scheer. While the polls were even nationally, the distribution of support meant the Liberal Party had a slightly better chance of holding onto power. However, polls taken after the scandal broke suggest that advantage is waning:

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer had a 4.8 percentage-point lead against Trudeau, according to a Nanos Research poll published on Saturday for CTV and the Globe and Mail newspaper. Scheer had a 3.2 percentage-point lead in the previous survey published on Friday.

Conservatives would win 36.8% of the vote and the Liberals 32%, the poll said. The Oct. 21 election day is less than five weeks away.

The Nanos poll was conducted over three nights until Sept. 20. The first image of Trudeau in blackface at a 2001 “Arabian Nights” party when he was a 29-year-old teacher emerged on the evening of Sept. 18…

The Liberals were leading in a Mainstreet poll published by iPolitics on Saturday, but had lost 0.4 percentage point from the previous survey compared with a 0.2 percentage-point slide by the Conservatives.

The Mainstreet poll showed only a slight decline but that poll concluded on the 19th, meaning the blackface story was only in play for the last 24-hours of that three-day poll. However, the story notes that bad news for the Liberal Party doesn’t necessarily help the Conservatives directly. People who abandon the party over the scandal are most likely to shift their support to the social-democratic New Democrats or the Green Party.

But Trudeau has not been idle. In addition to announcing new gun control plans, the leader of the Liberal Party announced plans to cut taxes and reduce cell-phone costs for Canadians:

With the Liberal Party of Canada still dealing with the fallout over revelations that Justin Trudeau wore racist blackface makeup as recently as 2001, the leader announced two major new policies on Sunday: a plan to tackle Canadians’ cellphone bills and one to cut families’ tax bills by $1,500 a year.

“Canadians shouldn’t have to choose between having a cellphone and heating their homes,” Trudeau said, speaking at a news conference in the crucial 905-region battleground.

The centrepiece of the announcement was a pledge to reduce Canadians’ cellphone bills by 25 per cent within four years.

I think it could work but only because I have so little faith in Canadians. They elected this boy-band Prime Minister and now, between SNC-Lavalin and the blackface scandal, he has been revealed to be a raging hypocrite. But dumping him now would be an admission they were wrong about him so I think they’re likely to stay the course. But with the election a month away, who knows if there will be additional surprises in store. Perhaps another blackface photo will turn up. After all, even Trudeau says he isn’t sure how many more might be out there.

Here’s a report on Trudeau’s efforts to get past this. Below that is a report on the new poll numbers.