Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will resume his reelection campaign Monday after taking the weekend off following the appearance of multiple images of the premier in blackface, leading to a precipitous drop in poll numbers.
The incumbent prime minister is now polling behind his Conservative challenger, Andrew Scheer. Trudeau would win 32.9 percent of the national vote to Scheer’s 35.5 percent if elections were held at this time, according to a Nanos Research poll released on Sunday.
Trudeau’s campaign ground to a halt last week after a photo surfaced in which the prime minister appears dressed in the costume of what he asserts was a character from Aladdin, which included darkening face paint. Shortly thereafter, a video from the early 1990s emerged in which Trudeau is wearing black makeup on his face and arms.
Trudeau also admitted that he appeared in blackface in a high school performance in which he imitated Harry Belafonte.
Support for Trudeau in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province and a key to any campaign victory, dropped 15 percentage points after the scandal, decimating Trudeau’s former lead.
Pollster Frank Graves of EKOS Research called the scandal a “body blow” to the Liberal campaign.
“Will the Liberals be able to recover? Who knows?” he said in an interview. “There’s no way of putting lipstick on a pig and making this go away.”