Juno News - Can the polls be trusted？

00:00:00.000 It's election day, but how accurate are the polls? I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Welcome Show.

00:00:09.520 Everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. It's election day. We're really excited. Over here at True North, we're going to have a live election show broadcast to you this entire evening, starting at 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time.

00:00:20.420 We will be live on Facebook and on YouTube, so you can tune in, see everything as it's rolling in. We'll be announcing the writings. We'll be letting you know who's ahead. We'll be giving analysis and opinion and just chock full of really, really entertaining content, so please tune in tonight.

00:00:38.020 As for today, I want to get a little bit deeper into the polls, what they're showing, what the predictions are, and how it's going to play out tonight.

00:00:46.820 So to get a little bit deeper into that, I am joined by True North's Hamish Marshall. Hi, Hamish. How are you?

00:00:52.540 Hi, Candice. How are you?

00:00:54.100 Good, good. Excited. I think it's going to be an interesting night, although I will say that some people are calling this the most boring election in Canadian history.

00:01:02.340 Now, there have been a lot of boring elections in the past, but nothing has really stood out. Even today on Election Day, I don't really know what the ballot box question will be.

00:01:10.800 So I think that the prediction is that that's going to impact voter turnout. What are you seeing in terms of voter turnout, and what do you think it's going to look like today?

00:01:20.780 Yeah, you know, it's difficult to predict voter turnout at the best of times. Generally speaking, the polls seem to indicate a lower enthusiasm to vote, which usually turns into lower turnout.

00:01:32.740 But we saw a big increase in the advanced polls. 5.6 million people voted in the advanced polls. Probably, when it's all said and done, close to a million will have voted by mail.

00:01:40.640 So those are huge, huge increases. Now, partly that's due to the pandemic. It's also, over the last 20 years, advanced polls have seen a general increase in turnout as it's become easier and easier to vote, and people just want to get it out of the way over that four-day advanced poll period.

00:01:56.120 So it's all balanced. It's hard to say how it all balances out, but I think turnout, generally looking at it, it's probably going to be a bit down from last time.

00:02:04.360 But, you know, some people are predicting quite low turnout, millions less people voting. I think that's reasonably unlikely as well.

00:02:12.040 And so what will a lower voter turnout, or at least a moderately lower voter turnout, mean for the parties? Is it good news for the Tories, good news for the Liberals? What do you think?

00:02:21.300 Well, it actually really, really depends who isn't motivated to turn out, because a lower turnout doesn't sink all boats evenly to destroy a metaphor.

00:02:31.880 It's really, if certain parties are less or more motivated, that could have a big impact.

00:02:39.480 And traditionally speaking, though, parties that are taking power do better in larger turnout, that people who are mad come out and vote, who typically don't vote.

00:02:52.940 So usually what you see is, you know, when the Conservatives come into power, the turnout goes up.

00:02:58.780 But when also when Justin Trudeau won in 2015, turnout went up, because there's people who are non-regular voters who are fired up and say, I'm going to vote this time.

00:03:09.620 So generally speaking, a lower turnout is probably not great for the opposition parties.

00:03:15.700 But on the other hand, as we've seen, you know, the Liberals, while they might have a slight lead in the polls, it's not enough to make them feel particularly comfortable either.

00:03:23.020 Interesting. And also, given what we know about COVID and the sort of people who are really spooked by it, they tend to be Liberal voters or at least more on the left side, progressive side of the political spectrum.

00:03:33.120 So if people aren't voting because they're worried about COVID, I think that would probably also be better news for the Tories.

00:03:40.120 But I don't know as much as this more speculation.

00:03:45.300 I wanted to point your attention to this McLean's seat projection that was released over the weekend that, according to this, it shows that the Liberals are set to win a very narrow victory, losing seats from their count last time.

00:04:01.060 So this has the Liberals poised to win 148 seats down from 157 in 2019, the Conservatives winning approximately 112 seats down from 121 in 2019.

00:04:13.420 And so that's all because it shows the NDP really surging, nearly doubling their seats from 24 up to 42, and the Bloc winning about 35.

00:04:22.600 Is this sort of in line with the numbers that you're crunching, or what do you think of this production here?

00:04:27.860 Yeah, I think this production is not bad. I think it's pretty good. And there's a couple of caveats.

00:04:33.000 Number one, we've seen the NDP numbers in the polls soften a little bit over the weekend.

00:04:39.460 So while a lot of polls late last week were showing them at 20, 21, even some, I think one of them had them at 22%.

00:04:44.580 We're now seeing, I think somebody had them at 17 and a half yesterday.

00:04:48.040 So now seeing them waft down into the teens a little bit, they're still going to pick up seats.

00:04:51.940 They got 16% last time. So even if they only got 18 or 19%, they're going to pick up seats.

00:04:56.780 But maybe not quite as many as if they were, you know, at 21.

00:05:00.960 The other thing is that the Bloc at 35, Bloc 132 seats last time, there's a lot of seats they could that are close.

00:05:09.780 But it is worth noting that no pollsters had the Bloc getting more votes than they did last time in a week.

00:05:15.180 So they're certainly not on track to lose a lot of seats.

00:05:21.280 But I could see the Bloc, frankly, netting out about the same, ending up at 32 seats.

00:05:25.280 So I think 35 is about as good as it gets for the Bloc. 0.80

00:05:28.260 And if they ended up at 33 or 31, I wouldn't be surprised about that either.

00:05:33.120 And the likely beneficiary, certainly of the Bloc not quite getting 35, is probably two or three more Liberal seats.

00:05:41.860 The NDP doesn't do quite as well.

00:05:43.940 It's both Liberals and Conservatives who can profit from that.

00:05:47.260 There's a bunch of seats that the NDP can take off the Conservatives, but they're also taking a bunch of seats off the Liberals.

00:05:53.100 And so with this projection, I mean, I've seen it sort of go both ways.

00:05:56.760 It could be a very narrow Liberal victory or a very narrow Conservative victory.

00:06:01.360 So let's hone in on that Conservative vote.

00:06:04.200 I've read, again, just really a mixed bag.

00:06:06.740 But some polls show that the Conservatives are doing really strong in British Columbia,

00:06:12.480 that because of the NDP surge, that there's a lot of three-way races where the Conservatives could be the beneficiaries.

00:06:17.760 And that Erin O'Toole is polling nearly twice as well in Ontario as Scheer was in 2019.

00:06:25.340 So how are the Conservatives looking?

00:06:27.760 What is the likelihood of Erin O'Toole winning the popular vote and winning the most number of seats tonight? 1.00

00:06:33.860 I think the likelihood of both those things is relatively small.

00:06:38.580 He's got a better chance of winning the popular vote.

00:06:42.760 The general consensus in the polls in Ontario is that the Conservatives are maybe doing a little bit better than last time,

00:06:52.140 but not enough to make a huge difference in terms of seat count.

00:06:57.220 And also the polls seem to have them doing a little bit better in Quebec in terms of votes.

00:07:02.340 Probably won't make any difference at all to the Conservatives' seat count in Quebec.

00:07:05.580 But on the flip side, doing considerably worse in Alberta and Saskatchewan,

00:07:10.060 that means that winning the popular vote is going to be tricky, although it is mathematically possible.

00:07:14.600 The other big thing that's going to happen, as we've discussed before,

00:07:18.940 is that the Greens are only running candidates in three quarters of the ridings.

00:07:22.960 So if you look across the country and you look at what the polls are saying for the Greens,

00:07:27.020 it varies, but let's say on average they're around 4%.

00:07:29.780 If they're pulling 4%, they're probably going to get 3%,

00:07:33.900 and the Liberals are going to be a big beneficiary for that.

00:07:36.000 So I expect the Liberals are going to outperform their polling average by maybe half a point,

00:07:40.860 three quarters of a point, which could make a difference in a whole bunch of races.

00:07:45.520 So that's something that has to be considered as well.

00:07:48.720 And then the big X factor is the PPC.

00:07:52.500 Well, okay, let's jump right into the PPC,

00:07:54.640 because we saw a sort of last-minute appeal by a lot of people on Team Tory

00:08:00.180 that a vote for Maxime Bernier is basically a vote for Justin Trudeau.

00:08:04.100 And we've seen this line of thinking so much in Canadian politics.

00:08:08.680 So what's happening with the PPC?

00:08:11.100 Where are they in the polls last time you checked?

00:08:13.640 And what do you suspect will happen?

00:08:16.320 Will they win any seats?

00:08:17.140 Will they be the big spoiler?

00:08:18.620 What's going to happen there?

00:08:20.000 I think they're more likely to be the big spoiler than win any seats.

00:08:23.060 They're doing, you know, 1.6% of the vote last time.

00:08:27.260 They're going to do considerably better than that.

00:08:28.620 I think they can certainly will top 4% nationwide, probably 5%.

00:08:33.620 And in English Canada, that number is going to be higher.

00:08:36.460 And there are certain parts of rural, southwestern, central Ontario,

00:08:41.720 where I think we can see the PPC do very significant results.

00:08:46.160 And in Alberta, as well, you know, a lot of the anger about Jason Kenney's handling of the pandemic,

00:08:55.660 I think, for people who don't want more lockdowns or vaccine mandates or vaccine passports,

00:09:02.220 is going to appear as a PPC vote today.

00:09:06.380 The other thing that's interesting is that the PPC, there seems to be this attitude that I keep running into,

00:09:15.220 people saying, well, the PPC voters, they're all going to go back to the Tories at the last minute,

00:09:18.840 or they're all going to, they're not going to bother voting.

00:09:21.500 They're sort of people who don't vote that much,

00:09:23.280 which I think is wishful thinking on behalf of conservative activists.

00:09:27.780 It's not strong, and advanced poll data is not a particularly strong way of predicting what's going on,

00:09:35.920 but there are some indications in the advanced poll data that the PPC has gotten a good chunk of vote

00:09:41.300 in the advanced polls, that we've seen surges in advanced polls in areas that we expect the PPC to do well.

00:09:48.460 So I think the PPC is going to do reasonably well,

00:09:51.460 and I think they're going to cost the conservatives a bunch of seats.

00:09:53.520 To put it in context, when the PPC was at 1.6% last time,

00:09:58.220 it cost the conservatives, depending how you added it up,

00:10:01.680 five, probably six seats in the last election.

00:10:04.560 So if they're at three times that, if they're at five point something percent,

00:10:08.460 I don't know if it'll cost conservatives three times as many seats,

00:10:11.560 but if 1.6 costs them six seats, 5% is going to cost them more than that.

00:10:16.560 Interesting.

00:10:18.260 Well, one of the things that I wonder about is, you know,

00:10:22.020 if the support is strongest, say, in parts of Southern Alberta or Alberta,

00:10:26.480 will that translate into a seat?

00:10:28.000 Will they pull out a seat in Alberta?

00:10:30.620 And otherwise, I mean, I hate to say it,

00:10:32.860 but there's not really an opportunity for vote splitting in some of those writings

00:10:36.240 because they're so staunchly conservative that the conservatives could go from getting 80% of the vote,

00:10:41.680 or I don't know if they got 80, get 70% of the vote down to 40% of the vote,

00:10:45.860 and it wouldn't make a difference.

00:10:46.780 You'd still elect a Tory MP.

00:10:49.640 So would it really make a difference?

00:10:53.160 What parts of the country might a PPC voter play spoiler?

00:10:58.720 And then also another question, Hamish,

00:11:00.820 is some of the criticism of the PPC is that they lack the sort of machine,

00:11:06.520 political machine that many of the big parties have.

00:11:09.320 And part of that political machine is just the get out the vote,

00:11:12.380 the go TV strategy on election day, having volunteers,

00:11:15.880 driving people to polling stations,

00:11:17.620 making sure that everyone knows that today's election day

00:11:20.960 and that they have to get to the poll.

00:11:23.480 The idea or the thought out there is that the PPC just doesn't have that kind of infrastructure.

00:11:28.880 They don't have that kind of political organization,

00:11:31.560 and that could hurt them today.

00:11:32.780 So is that the case?

00:11:33.760 Well, I think your first point, you're right.

00:11:36.400 I don't think the PPC is going to win any seats in rural Alberta,

00:11:39.520 and I don't think there's any seats in rural Alberta or rural Saskatchewan

00:11:42.380 where the other parties are close enough to the Conservatives

00:11:45.320 and the PPC can cost on those seats.

00:11:47.500 I would say, though, is that if the PPC are doing well in rural Alberta,

00:11:51.320 that doesn't mean they're not going to get any votes in Calgary and Edmonton.

00:11:54.880 And there are seats like Calgary Skyview or Edmonton Centre

00:11:58.160 or Edmonton-Griesbach where, you know, shaving off 3%, 4%, 5% of the Conservatives.

00:12:05.060 You know, the PPC might get 10% or 12% in rural Alberta,

00:12:08.220 but they get 5% or 6% in Edmonton.

00:12:10.240 That could cost the Conservatives some seats in that city, for instance,

00:12:14.020 or maybe a Calgary Centre or a Calgary Skyview as well.

00:12:18.240 And in Ontario, I just don't think we can rule out the PPC's strength,

00:12:24.080 particularly in rural Ontario, southwestern Ontario.

00:12:26.700 So there's a seat like Essex.

00:12:29.160 You know, Essex is a tight Conservative NDP switching seat.

00:12:33.380 Conservatives won it off the NDP last time.

00:12:35.440 The NDP is obviously doing better and coming hard.

00:12:38.860 PPC take 3%, 4% of the Conservative vote there.

00:12:42.920 We can expect the NDP to win that seat.

00:12:45.600 You know, there's seats like Derek Sloan's old seat

00:12:49.300 where, you know, Derek's only won it over the Liberals

00:12:53.360 by 3%, 3.5% last time.

00:12:55.560 PPC is getting a good number of votes there.

00:13:00.520 It means the Liberals will almost certainly win that seat on the split.

00:13:03.400 It also means it's harder for the Conservatives to pick up some seats

00:13:06.480 that they're trying to do in rural and ex-urban Ontario.

00:13:10.320 So I think it puts a cap on the ability of the Conservatives

00:13:14.480 to grow in Ontario as well.

00:13:16.060 In terms of the PPC's organization, it's true.

00:13:19.940 They certainly don't have the organization that the traditional large parties have.

00:13:25.540 And that organization certainly makes a difference in very close elections.

00:13:28.860 You know, if you're down to 500 or 600 votes between your parties,

00:13:31.840 having a great organization makes a huge difference.

00:13:34.760 If you're winning by 5,000 votes or losing by 5,000 votes,

00:13:39.360 having a huge volunteer get-out-of-the-vote team is helpful,

00:13:42.760 but it's not going to make the difference.

00:13:44.740 So I don't think the PPC, you know, look,

00:13:47.460 if the PPC end up losing a seat by a couple hundred votes,

00:13:50.500 it absolutely can be taken down to lack of organization.

00:13:54.680 But I don't see anything with a possible exception of Bernier's seat

00:13:59.020 where the PPC's actually got a chance to win a seat.

00:14:03.880 Everything I'm seeing is that they are,

00:14:06.880 their vote is, they don't have, with one or two exceptions,

00:14:10.300 they don't really have star candidates.

00:14:11.820 They don't have, you know, it would be different if it was,

00:14:14.380 you know, in some community that got,

00:14:16.040 the person who had been warden of the county for 10 years

00:14:18.600 was deciding to run for the PPC and have good name recognition

00:14:21.220 and there were some local motivating issues

00:14:23.060 that they could build on top of the PPC's other issues set.

00:14:27.500 Nobody I know can point,

00:14:28.820 can name a single PPC candidate besides Maxime Bernier.

00:14:32.540 And they really don't have any sort of local heroes like that.

00:14:35.840 In fact, in the last election,

00:14:37.000 they were in better position

00:14:37.960 because they had some former conservative MPs

00:14:40.580 and former conservative candidates who were running for them.

00:14:43.500 They don't seem to have that this time.

00:14:45.020 And I think that makes it harder for them

00:14:48.280 to outperform in certain areas

00:14:50.240 where a good organization could make the difference.

00:14:53.660 Interesting.

00:14:54.380 Yeah.

00:14:55.000 Well, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

00:14:57.080 I know a couple of the candidates,

00:14:58.360 but that's mostly just from our own TNC coverage.

00:15:01.760 And yeah, it should be interesting.

00:15:04.140 Well, Hamish, you're going to be joining us

00:15:05.980 for a live show tonight.

00:15:07.700 I just one final question.

00:15:09.420 What are you going to be looking out for?

00:15:10.880 What are the big indicators?

00:15:11.880 I know you did the 45 ridings to watch for True North

00:15:14.880 and you've done sort of in-depth analysis,

00:15:17.000 but are there any sort of major trends

00:15:19.640 or are there any specific ridings

00:15:21.160 that you're looking at that when the polls close

00:15:23.420 and those votes come in,

00:15:25.360 that that will be the sort of like turning point

00:15:27.360 in terms of who's going to win this thing?

00:15:29.740 Yes, I think there's two different stages.

00:15:32.000 You know, Atlantic Canada closes much earlier in the night

00:15:35.640 and then everywhere from Quebec to Alberta closes

00:15:39.600 at the same time at 9.30 Eastern.

00:15:43.060 So those Atlantic Canada results,

00:15:44.700 we're going to have them for an hour or something

00:15:47.220 before the rest of the country comes in,

00:15:51.640 exception to BC.

00:15:53.440 And so in Atlantic Canada,

00:15:55.720 you know, tool people have some great hopes

00:15:58.440 in Nova Scotia in particular.

00:16:03.700 I expect the Conservatives to do reasonably well

00:16:05.820 in New Brunswick,

00:16:06.580 but Nova Scotia is going to be very, very interesting.

00:16:08.540 If the Conservatives do well in Nova Scotia,

00:16:11.880 pick up two or three seats,

00:16:13.340 I think we can expect that they're going

00:16:14.500 to overperform nationally.

00:16:17.060 So that's the first sort of thing I'm going to look at.

00:16:19.600 And then following that,

00:16:20.960 once we get into, you know,

00:16:23.800 the chunk of Canada stretches from the Rockies

00:16:26.820 to the Baie de Chaleur,

00:16:30.080 I think I'm looking at a couple of seats

00:16:33.840 where there are block Liberal switcher seats

00:16:35.320 to see if the block is going to go up,

00:16:36.960 if that 35% in the projection is right for the block,

00:16:39.920 or if they're likely to end up around

00:16:42.540 where they were last time,

00:16:43.740 or you maybe even lose a seat to Liberals.

00:16:45.600 If the Liberals are winning some of the seats there,

00:16:47.160 it could really pad them for losses elsewhere.

00:16:49.760 In Ontario, I'm looking at a seat like a Whitby 1.00

00:16:53.340 to see if the Conservatives can break through

00:16:55.300 in those sort of pure play suburbia 905 seats,

00:16:58.520 and then looking for the PPC in the Southwest

00:17:01.300 and in the Western parts of the country as well.

00:17:04.940 Great.

00:17:05.280 Well, it's going to be a really exciting night.

00:17:07.220 Regardless, we're excited to have you part of the team.

00:17:09.160 You're going to be breaking down the results

00:17:10.820 as they come in and manning the decision desk.

00:17:13.660 So you'll be doing the big calls for us.

00:17:15.640 We're really excited.

00:17:16.200 We're going to be live in a few hours,

00:17:17.240 starting at 8.30 p.m. Eastern.

00:17:18.900 So make sure you come back to YouTube

00:17:20.920 or Facebook and watch that.

00:17:23.260 And if you're watching on YouTube,

00:17:24.560 don't forget to hit the subscribe button,

00:17:26.440 hit the like button,

00:17:27.140 and continue finding our content here at Trenorth.

00:17:30.760 Hamish, thank you so much for joining us

00:17:31.920 and we'll see you again shortly.

00:17:33.560 My pleasure.

00:17:34.100 It's going to be a great night.

00:17:35.480 All right.

00:17:36.200 Thank you so much.

00:17:37.020 I'm Candice Malcolm

00:17:37.500 and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.

00:17:38.800 Thank you.

00:17:38.840 Thank you.

Juno News - September 20, 2021

Can the polls be trusted？

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