The Trudeaus split. Now what?

OTTAWA, Ont. — Now that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau have officially split, the big question on the lips of the chattering class in Ottawa: Could this change his political future?

Canada’s most famous political couple made their bombshell announcement on Aug. 2 that they are splitting up after 18 years of marriage.

They offered no explanations but said it was the result of many difficult conversations.

Speculation about his status at the helm of the Liberal Party will only ramp up now.

Trudeau had vowed months ago he plans to lead his Liberal party into the next election, seeking an incredibly rare fourth mandate.

Fast-forward to today, his life looks different.

“He’s been off his game,” said pollster Greg Lyle, president of Innovative Research group. “The Liberal government has been struggling and been seen to struggle, and there's been questions about whether the prime minister is up to it.”

He’s down in the polls, and not by a little. He recently moved around much of his team in Cabinet, to little fanfare. Add to that, he’s getting legally separated and the kids are staying with him.

Lyle said there are a lot of unknowns, but the additional family responsibilities will add to the pressure on him not to run again — even though Trudeau won’t ever say so publicly.

“It's very unlikely we will get any indication that he's likely to go until he goes because the minute it looks like you're actively considering it, you lose a lot of your authority, particularly within your own party,” he said.

Trudeau has been prime minister since 2015 and led the party since 2013, but speculation has abounded about his tenure as leader eight years into governing.

Conventional political wisdom in Canada is that the typical shelf-life for a party leader is 10 years at best.

There are four Liberal Cabinet ministers widely rumored to be leadership aspirants, although one longtime party organizer tells POLITICO that none appears to have a well-organized ground operation ready to go.

Justin and Sophie will remain together as a family, according to a joint statement, and will even head out on a personal vacation together in the days ahead.

Then Trudeau is back to work with Cabinet and caucus retreats to huddle with colleagues before Parliament returns late September.

For older Canadians, a lot of this story is like a rerun.

Trudeau’s parents, former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret, separated in 1977. That was after three elections. The kids stayed with him.

And there was suddenly tremendous attention on who he was taking to dinner.

Pierre staged a rare fourth term as prime minister, but it was as a comeback in 1980 after losing to Joe Clark’s Progressive Conservatives. Pierre and Margaret divorced in 1984.

Patrick Gossage, who was the spokesperson for Pierre Elliott Trudeau when he was prime minister, remembers having to fend off questions from journalists about whether the separation was affecting Pierre Trudeau’s performance running the country.

His response was it was up to the press to prove it.

“We knew full well that he was very upset and he was difficult to get along with for a while, that's for sure. It's pretty hard to go through those things with no impact on your working life,” he said.

“The important thing is to just be normal from now on and show no evidence of being more prickly — just being normal and being charming. It’s not easy, though.”

But if the separation has been weighing on Justin Trudeau and causing his performance to struggle, putting it out there might give him an opportunity to bounce back and get his head back in the game.

Often described as elite and out of touch by his opponents, the separation may also give another point of entry to connect with disaffected voters.

The evangelical vote is already not very supportive of the prime minister, Lyle points out, although he has enjoyed support from a lot of Muslims and Sikhs, but the separation probably won’t hurt him politically with them.

“The reason why people voted for him in 2015 is because they thought he felt the struggle they were going through and he offered hope that the government would help in that struggle,” Lyle said. “And it might well be that as people see him go through his own difficulties that they start to feel he might have empathy with him again.”