Juno News - Exclusive True North polling shows the Liberals have blown a spectacular lead

00:00:00.360 Exclusive True North polling shows that this election is too close to call.

00:00:03.980 Hamish Marshall joins us on the show to break down the numbers and help us understand

00:00:07.500 how the Liberals have blown a spectacular lead.

00:00:10.940 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:17.800 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today.

00:00:20.900 So today I am joined on the show by True North's Hamish Marshall, our in-house pollster.

00:00:25.700 Hamish, thank you for joining the show today.

00:00:27.280 Great to be here, Candice.

00:00:28.120 Now part of having an in-house pollster is to help us make sense of the various polls out there

00:00:32.920 to help us understand how accurate they are at predicting the mood in the country during this election.

00:00:38.400 But the other part of having an in-house pollster is for True North to conduct its own independent research

00:00:43.980 and its own independent polling.

00:00:46.000 So the first project that we teamed up with with Hamish Marshall was our Ridings to Watch guide.

00:00:51.000 This is 45 key ridings to watch in the selection.

00:00:53.940 It's an in-depth guide to helping us understand those key seats and what each party is trying to do

00:01:00.320 in order to increase their share of power in the House of Commons.

00:01:03.540 I really encourage you to check it out.

00:01:05.200 It's a great tool for understanding the selection and what the various campaigns are trying to do.

00:01:09.540 Go check that out at TNC.news.

00:01:11.860 There's a banner right at the top of the page called Ridings to Watch.

00:01:15.240 Click on that and check that out.

00:01:16.780 So that was our first major project with Hamish Marshall.

00:01:19.620 And now we're excited to announce our second major project, which is this independent poll.

00:01:24.500 So first, Hamish, give us an understanding of this poll, how it was conducted, and the methodology that you used.

00:01:30.640 Sure. So we conducted it September 2nd to 4th, which is last Thursday, Friday, Saturday, although most of it was done on Friday.

00:01:42.620 We interviewed 854 Canadians from right across the country in both official languages,

00:01:47.440 which gives us a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4%, 19 times out of 20.

00:01:53.080 It was done online using a nationally representative panel.

00:01:55.860 And it shows a very tight race.

00:01:59.940 A very tight race.

00:02:00.480 Okay, well, why don't you let us know, what did your poll find?

00:02:03.420 Who are Canadians voting for if there was an election that were to take place right now?

00:02:07.460 Sure. So if the election was to take place right now, just to emphasize, this is not a projection of what's going to happen in a couple of weeks.

00:02:12.760 It's a snapshot of when it was taken, because obviously things can change.

00:02:16.900 We were at, the Conservatives were at 32.7%, slightly ahead of the Liberals, 1.6% ahead of the Liberals,

00:02:25.400 the Liberals at 31.1%, NDP behind at 19.6%, the Bloc at 8% nationally, which works out to 34% in Quebec,

00:02:36.180 the PPC up to 4.2% across the country, and the Greens sitting at 3.6%.

00:02:42.960 So the PPC and the Greens basically tied, PPC a little bit ahead, Conservatives maintaining a lead of a couple of points,

00:02:50.560 but it's very, very close.

00:02:52.540 As you know, in the last election, the Conservatives led by about 1.2%,

00:02:57.260 and it was still, the Liberals still were able to win a significant minority.

00:03:02.900 So we're right in the thick of it.

00:03:05.580 Wow, that's incredibly close.

00:03:07.000 And, you know, this is a really different story than what we saw even a couple of weeks ago.

00:03:12.360 I mean, the whole idea of this election was that the Trudeau government projected that they were in sort of majority territory,

00:03:17.560 and that was what all the predictions were saying.

00:03:20.540 So they really have managed to really just blow a huge lead.

00:03:25.400 And so can you help us break down who has shifted their vote?

00:03:29.660 So what is the breakdown by region and by demographic here?

00:03:33.400 Sure, and, you know, I think if you think back to one of the first podcasts you and I did during this campaign,

00:03:39.480 Candice, we talked that the whole point of this election was a Trudeau majority.

00:03:42.120 It's the only reason it was happening.

00:03:43.780 And initial reports looked like Canadians were kind of okay with that.

00:03:47.920 That certainly isn't the case today.

00:03:50.020 There's, as far as I can tell, no scenario that the Liberals can get from here to a majority government.

00:03:55.140 They can still win a minority, but a majority, the whole purpose of the campaign seems to be gone.

00:04:03.400 And we're now in this situation where things have tightened up and the Conservatives are slightly ahead.

00:04:09.920 The big changes are in British Columbia.

00:04:12.520 We'd seen polls showing the Conservatives behind in B.C.

00:04:15.900 They're now at 34%, which is about where they were in the last election.

00:04:19.820 But the Liberals have dropped from being first in B.C. or a very tight second, depending on which poll.

00:04:25.340 Liberals are now 10 points behind the Conservatives in B.C. at 34%.

00:04:28.400 Conservatives continue to lead on the Prairies, which is much of a shock.

00:04:32.740 In Ontario, where we'd seen polls showing the Conservatives below 30%, we've got them in this poll at 33%, only four points behind the Liberals.

00:04:41.340 I believe the Liberals won Ontario by nine points last time, so it's a much greater narrowing and means that the Conservatives are going to pick up some more seats based on these numbers.

00:04:49.340 Atlantic Canada and Quebec are more or less similar to what's happened in the last election.

00:04:53.640 But we should also point out the NDP.

00:04:55.700 Part of this is the Conservatives doing better than expected, but also the NDP is cut into that Liberal vote.

00:05:01.840 The NDP is definitely up in Atlantic Canada.

00:05:05.280 They're up in Ontario a bit, and they're certainly up in British Columbia, so the NDP are at 32% in B.C., and B.C. is going from what was effectively a Conservatives ahead in a bit of a three-way fight last time to really being an NDP conservative fight.

00:05:19.920 So we're seeing those gains everywhere.

00:05:21.640 And then, frankly, the rise of the PPC.

00:05:23.420 The PPC got 1.6% in the last election, up to 4.2% nationally.

00:05:28.000 We've got them at 6% in B.C., 6% in Ontario.

00:05:30.780 We're seeing growth with this party.

00:05:34.140 We've often seen in smaller parties that they pull reasonably well and then fall back down.

00:05:39.260 But we'll see where we end up.

00:05:42.220 But everything we're showing is the PPC is growing, and they're growing not just from the Conservatives, but from other parties as well.

00:05:47.120 Yeah, that's so interesting.

00:05:48.060 I'm just looking at the numbers here.

00:05:49.400 So it seems like the NDP is really cutting into the Liberal number.

00:05:53.400 Perhaps the Conservatives are cutting into it, too, with a moderate candidate like Erin O'Toole.

00:05:58.260 Well, could the PPC potentially play a spoiler?

00:06:01.800 I mean, like you said, 6% in Ontario, 6% in B.C.

00:06:05.620 Presumably that could turn into some actual seats.

00:06:10.600 Well, we'll see.

00:06:11.400 You know, as you know, in our system, it depends how it's distributed.

00:06:13.960 You can get 6% across the province and not win any seats.

00:06:17.180 Or if you get 1%, and if it's very concentrated, you can win one or two seats.

00:06:21.380 So it depends how it's distributed, and I'm not seeing any indications outside of, obviously, Maxine Bernier's own riding of particular strength of PPC.

00:06:31.760 They don't seem to have any other star candidates that could make it turn into seats.

00:06:35.280 But the big question with the PPC is where their vote's coming from.

00:06:38.020 You know, in the last election, I think everybody would agree, maybe two-thirds of PPC voters have been Conservative voters.

00:06:44.000 In this election, that does not seem to be the case.

00:06:47.080 It seems to be that they're coming from other parties.

00:06:50.700 And we see that when we look at some of the demographics, that the PPC is doing well with younger women, for instance.

00:06:56.380 With younger women, we found that the PPC is 9% of the vote, which is where there's some of the vaccine skepticism.

00:07:02.320 With middle-aged men, they're 8% of the vote.

00:07:06.820 So it's cutting into other parties in a way that I think is unexpected, which muddles the whole story.

00:07:15.500 It's not going to be a clear-cut story that every PPC voter came from the Conservatives.

00:07:20.000 Well, that's right, because we even saw over the weekend, sorry to interrupt you there, Hamish,

00:07:23.160 but Michaela Peterson, who's Jordan Peterson's daughter, and she's a high-profile podcaster

00:07:28.060 and sort of influencer in her age group, and she came out and endorsed the PPC.

00:07:32.980 So I imagine, you're right, that that sort of demographic of a young sort of urban woman going for PPC 0.99

00:07:39.380 would really sort of surprise or befuddle the sort of conventional wisdom,

00:07:44.000 which is that, yeah, the PPC is a bunch of angry old white guys.

00:07:48.160 Right, and I don't think that's the case anymore, and the party is changing.

00:07:52.680 And where it will end up and what it will have changed into in 10 days, I think, remains to be seen.

00:07:57.780 But it's going to be a very different story than what their story was in 2019.

00:08:02.440 And where the PPC goes after the election is going to be very interesting.

00:08:07.520 If we see protests against vaccine mandates continue, we'll see how they can capture that or not.

00:08:15.880 But it's an unexpected and fascinating turn, and I don't think we're going to see the end

00:08:21.100 of this kind of activism, this issue set here in Canada.

00:08:24.820 In terms of other things that are going on the ballot, in terms of the ballot question,

00:08:28.720 I think it's interesting that the Conservatives are clearly winning men.

00:08:32.120 In the past, Conservatives have had difficulty with younger men, but right now,

00:08:35.280 men under 34, or under 35, rather, are a two-way fight between the Conservatives and the NDP,

00:08:40.800 with the Liberals in third with that group.

00:08:42.400 It's another group that the Conservatives have done better with.

00:08:44.260 The one group that's really keeping the Liberals in the game is older women. 1.00

00:08:49.560 Women over 55, who back in the Harper years were fairly reliable Conservative voters.

00:08:53.580 Trudeau captured them in 2015 and hasn't let go.

00:08:56.560 And right now, they are his most reliable supporters.

00:08:59.820 So, you know, how different age groups support parties doesn't change quickly.

00:09:05.560 But it's been evolving over time, and we're now in a different sort of environment.

00:09:09.140 And what's interesting, though, is that while Conservatives continue to do very poorly with young women,

00:09:14.140 with middle-aged women, it's basically an even split, 33 Conservative, 32 Liberal.

00:09:21.540 So that's very interesting, and that's a key demographic.

00:09:24.940 If the Conservatives can win, obviously, by more than one point, women between 35 and 54, 0.99

00:09:31.080 that's key to winning a government.

00:09:33.280 Interesting. Just one other question to compare with 2019,

00:09:37.480 because you sort of did a great side-by-side of where the vote landed two years ago

00:09:42.160 compared to where the polls are showing today.

00:09:43.820 And interestingly, it shows that the Conservatives had a greater percentage of the vote in 2019,

00:09:49.420 34.3%, whereas right now, gauging on your poll, we're at around 32.7%,

00:09:56.620 and yet it shows the Conservatives perhaps even being able to eke out a minority.

00:10:01.400 So why is it that more people were voting Conservative two years ago,

00:10:06.400 and that didn't translate to a minority industry or government?

00:10:10.020 Well, it was primarily because the Conservatives ran up large, large votes in Alberta and Saskatchewan

00:10:17.100 and other parts of the rural West, and winning seats with well over 80% of the vote,

00:10:22.720 while losing much closer seats in Ontario.

00:10:26.140 And the biggest difference right now, if you look at the polls across the regionally,

00:10:31.600 is the Conservatives are doing not as well in the prairies as they did in the last election.

00:10:37.320 That might not make a difference.

00:10:38.920 That might not cost them any seats, although there are, as we've seen,

00:10:41.580 there are some seats in Alberta that could change hands regardless of that.

00:10:45.380 But the gap in Ontario is much closer.

00:10:50.060 You know, with Liberals only four points ahead of the Conservatives in Ontario,

00:10:53.960 the Conservatives have a chance to win a bunch more seats than they did in 2019,

00:10:59.540 where, as I said, I believe the Conservatives were nine points behind,

00:11:03.600 which means that seats like Richmond Hill or King Vaughn,

00:11:07.940 or some of these seats, the Conservatives lost by only a couple of points.

00:11:11.360 Even if the Conservatives only get the exact same number of votes as they did last time,

00:11:15.200 if the Liberals are a few points lower, they'll be able to win.

00:11:19.180 That raises the big question is whether the Liberals can scare some NDPers

00:11:22.600 back into voting for them between now and election day.

00:11:25.360 Right. Kind of fall back on their tried and true strategy

00:11:28.460 of scaremongering about a Conservative government.

00:11:31.920 One of the other interesting questions that you asked Canadians in this poll

00:11:35.560 was whether or not they were ready for a change.

00:11:38.440 Maybe this does reflect why the Liberals have had, like we said,

00:11:43.140 such a spectacular fall from grace in this campaign so far.

00:11:45.880 So let's unpack those numbers a little bit.

00:11:48.200 What did Canadians say about whether or not they wanted a change?

00:11:51.480 So overall, 61% of Canadians said they want a change of government.

00:11:55.860 That's made up by 43%, the largest chunk,

00:11:58.480 who say that the Liberal government has done a bad job and it's time for a new party.

00:12:02.700 But there's another 18% who say that the true government's done a good job,

00:12:07.080 but still want a new party in government.

00:12:09.020 So they don't really object to his agenda per se,

00:12:11.040 but they're just tired of him.

00:12:12.140 They're looking for something different.

00:12:13.580 Those people are more likely to be New Democrats.

00:12:16.640 And that, as I was saying, is frankly a big opportunity for the Liberals.

00:12:20.360 Because if the Liberals could say, well, you think we did a good job,

00:12:22.960 you might be tired of us, but you think we did a good job,

00:12:25.360 it's easier to persuade one of some of those.

00:12:27.000 If you already think the Liberals have done a decent job,

00:12:29.280 it's easier to persuade them to come back.

00:12:30.900 So that's where the Liberal campaign's going to be focusing a great deal

00:12:34.180 over the last 10 days that the campaign is in that group.

00:12:37.800 Then there's 30% of folks who think that Liberals have done a good job

00:12:42.400 and should be re-elected,

00:12:43.400 which more or less aligns up with those who are voting Liberal.

00:12:46.340 And then there's another group, 9%, who say the Liberals have done a bad job

00:12:51.460 but should be re-elected.

00:12:52.760 So these are people who sort of say, well, we don't really like what's going on,

00:12:55.500 but we don't really like the alternatives.

00:12:56.800 And they're obviously going to be skewing Liberal in a significant way.

00:13:03.500 The overall support, you know, views on these questions

00:13:07.920 more or less follows the same as we saw with ballots.

00:13:10.540 So, you know, people on the prairies are more interested in change.

00:13:14.380 Ontario is more evenly split.

00:13:16.800 You know, older women are less likely to want change. 1.00

00:13:22.160 Men are more likely to want change.

00:13:23.580 It more or less follows how it's going.

00:13:25.620 But what's significant about this question is,

00:13:28.020 while it seems like 61% of Canadians wanting change is enough,

00:13:32.040 it's a bit of a note of caution here,

00:13:33.860 is that typically, if you look historically,

00:13:36.780 that number has got to be about 65% in order to change the government.

00:13:40.560 And so we're a little bit lower.

00:13:42.000 And if we look at where that number was in the 2019 election,

00:13:44.860 it was somewhere around the same 60%, 62%, 63%, 59% buried around,

00:13:49.920 but it's somewhere in there.

00:13:50.700 So what this is showing is another Liberal minority or some sort of minority.

00:13:55.340 It's showing it's going to be a very, very, very close election.

00:13:57.860 And it's not the sort of overwhelming desire for change.

00:14:00.800 While 61% seems like a big number,

00:14:03.300 typically it's got to be even higher than that

00:14:05.100 in order to make sure that the change really happens.

00:14:08.700 Interesting.

00:14:09.080 Well, this sort of goes hand in hand with the next question I want to talk about,

00:14:11.600 which is you pull Canadians about their various impressions of the leaders.

00:14:15.880 So why don't you tell us what you found Canadians' view?

00:14:19.160 Let's start with Justin Trudeau.

00:14:20.900 Sure.

00:14:21.240 So Justin Trudeau is not as popular as he was even a few weeks ago.

00:14:24.740 His numbers aren't disastrously bad,

00:14:26.320 but 32% of Canadians have a strongly negative view of him,

00:14:31.600 which is the largest of any leader.

00:14:33.380 And only 12% are strongly positive.

00:14:36.620 But he does a bit better in the moderately positive number,

00:14:40.020 34% say they have a moderately positive view of him,

00:14:42.980 and 21% have a moderately negative view,

00:14:44.980 which means overall more people have a negative view of him

00:14:47.960 than a positive one, but not a lot.

00:14:49.740 It's only 7% more.

00:14:51.060 So we give what we call a net impression score of minus 7.

00:14:55.460 But when you consider that he was probably pulling around even,

00:14:59.060 his net impression was probably about even negative and positive

00:15:02.260 at the beginning of the campaign,

00:15:03.360 minus 7 is certainly a step in the wrong direction.

00:15:06.160 On the flip side, Aaron O'Toole's number isn't really much better.

00:15:09.920 In fact, it's slightly worse.

00:15:11.040 It's minus 10.

00:15:11.880 Although with a margin of error,

00:15:14.740 it's really not that significant a difference.

00:15:16.480 The significant thing is that before the election,

00:15:18.220 he was probably, depending on the poll,

00:15:19.980 was pulling somewhere minus 20, minus 22.

00:15:22.280 So he's seen a significant improvement.

00:15:25.800 It's not that there's O'Toole mania out there,

00:15:28.220 and people love him,

00:15:28.880 but they've certainly gone from having a fairly dim view

00:15:31.200 to having a generally not a terrible view

00:15:34.360 and a view in line with where they are in the prime minister.

00:15:36.400 29% have a strongly negative view of him,

00:15:39.500 and 12% have a strongly positive view.

00:15:43.080 But, you know, he's,

00:15:44.520 and only 5% don't really know who he is,

00:15:46.520 so that's really changed as well.

00:15:48.440 And then, of course, you know,

00:15:49.600 just to show that, well,

00:15:50.520 it's interesting to see how leader people feel to leaders.

00:15:53.220 People loving you doesn't help that much.

00:15:55.380 You know, Jagmeet Singh is plus 27.

00:15:58.320 People quite like the guy.

00:15:59.660 15% have a, have a strongly positive view.

00:16:02.660 47% have a moderately positive view.

00:16:05.860 Very, you know,

00:16:06.820 not only between combined and only 36% have a negative view.

00:16:11.740 It doesn't matter.

00:16:12.800 Just because 27, you know,

00:16:13.940 with all these people like him,

00:16:14.880 he's still not winning the election.

00:16:16.040 In fact, his, his poll numbers have probably

00:16:17.780 wafted down a little bit

00:16:20.600 since the beginning of the campaign.

00:16:22.840 And, you know,

00:16:23.580 and it really goes to show that, you know,

00:16:25.620 like I said, Singh is,

00:16:26.960 people who like him,

00:16:27.960 and I think even 40 something percent of conservatives,

00:16:34.520 yeah, 43% of conservatives have a positive view of Singh.

00:16:37.660 Not that it's doing them any good.

00:16:40.020 Well, it's interesting because,

00:16:41.920 you know,

00:16:42.640 in some ways Singh is non-threatening

00:16:44.560 because I think a lot of people recognize that,

00:16:46.260 you know, he's not going to become prime minister.

00:16:47.600 So it's more like,

00:16:48.740 hey, would you want to go have a beer with this guy?

00:16:50.600 And people are like, yeah,

00:16:50.980 it seems like a nice guy.

00:16:52.460 You know, it seems like he cares

00:16:53.780 and his heart's in the right place.

00:16:55.140 But yeah, you're right.

00:16:55.840 It doesn't mean that he's going to have,

00:16:57.420 have any chance at becoming the prime minister.

00:17:00.600 Just one more question here.

00:17:02.100 You sort of zeroed in on this idea of trust,

00:17:06.880 trust in Trudeau,

00:17:08.560 trust in O'Toole.

00:17:09.440 I mean, that's sort of key here

00:17:10.820 because people know Justin Trudeau is a known entity.

00:17:13.940 We know what we're going to get with him.

00:17:15.920 O'Toole was relatively sort of unknown,

00:17:18.940 I think, prior to the campaign.

00:17:21.620 So the fact that he has been able to improve his impression

00:17:25.600 is impressive.

00:17:30.040 Do you see these numbers sort of holding

00:17:32.220 for the rest of the campaign?

00:17:33.560 Or is there any possibility for a swing

00:17:35.220 after the debates going on here today and tomorrow?

00:17:37.860 You know, I think the debates,

00:17:38.940 I think the, really, the English debate matters.

00:17:42.700 The second French debate doesn't really matter.

00:17:44.500 The viewing numbers under it is so poor.

00:17:48.180 So unless something explosive happens

00:17:50.100 that then becomes a clip that's shared around Quebec,

00:17:52.760 I don't think we should expect

00:17:54.500 the second French debate

00:17:56.480 to make much of a difference.

00:17:58.860 But the English debate can certainly have an impact

00:18:01.740 for each of the main leaders, for good or for ill.

00:18:05.340 I mean, it's rare the debates have a big impact,

00:18:07.920 but they certainly have hurt or helped people

00:18:09.940 at various points.

00:18:12.480 So, as you said,

00:18:13.680 one of the things I wanted to ask about was trust.

00:18:15.320 We said, you know,

00:18:16.060 how much do we ask people on a scale from zero to 10,

00:18:18.420 how much they trust Trudeau and O'Toole?

00:18:20.960 And they came up with fairly similar scores.

00:18:23.520 You know, O'Toole's actually slightly better at 4.15.

00:18:26.980 And Trudeau's is 4.09.

00:18:30.840 These are not particularly strong scores

00:18:32.680 for either one of them,

00:18:33.860 but it's interesting after O'Toole started

00:18:35.820 with quite bad personal numbers a few weeks ago

00:18:39.220 that he's slightly ahead of Trudeau,

00:18:41.580 and that's certainly encouraging.

00:18:43.300 And, you know, we again see that the support levels

00:18:47.760 generally follow what Ballot had done.

00:18:50.500 It is worth noting that on by age and gender,

00:18:54.360 you know, O'Toole has a lot more trust

00:18:58.260 with men over 35.

00:19:00.780 It's significantly more,

00:19:02.520 which should be very encouraging.

00:19:04.980 It's more likely to get them out to vote

00:19:06.380 and more likely that the attacks on him

00:19:09.060 will not work as well with that group.

00:19:11.980 And it's also worth noting that women, 1.00

00:19:14.080 middle-aged women, 35 to 54,

00:19:15.700 that we've seen in the past

00:19:16.680 and some of the other results

00:19:17.620 have got skepticism of Trudeau,

00:19:19.420 but groups tied in the Met polls,

00:19:20.880 while Trudeau is slightly more trusted with them

00:19:23.180 than O'Toole.

00:19:24.320 It's not very much.

00:19:25.160 It's not like the elite he has with older women.

00:19:27.300 The one note of caution I would say for conservatives

00:19:29.620 is that given two leaders

00:19:32.500 that have about equal levels of trust,

00:19:34.560 a significant number of Canadians

00:19:35.740 are going to kind of go with the double they know.

00:19:37.340 They sort of say,

00:19:37.780 well, they're both about,

00:19:38.660 let's trust them about the same.

00:19:39.720 They're going to go with the double they know. 0.84

00:19:41.560 And so we'll see if O'Toole can overcome that

00:19:44.040 and gain trust or gain,

00:19:45.800 or maybe put a hole inside of Trudeau's boat

00:19:48.640 and drive those trust levels down even more for him

00:19:51.700 in the remaining part of the campaign.

00:19:56.400 Well, thank you so much, Hamish.

00:19:57.680 You've really tapped something interesting here

00:19:59.640 and painting a picture of a very, very close election,

00:20:02.500 very exciting.

00:20:03.580 As a journalist, you know,

00:20:04.420 this is exactly what you want,

00:20:05.400 a very close race

00:20:07.480 and a lot of people tuning in.

00:20:09.200 So thank you so much for this research.

00:20:11.800 And again, for anyone who wants to go

00:20:13.720 take a closer look,

00:20:14.760 go on over to TNC.news.

00:20:17.280 Thank you, Hamish, so much for joining us.

00:20:19.360 My pleasure.

00:20:20.380 I'm Candice Malcolm,

00:20:21.200 and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - September 09, 2021

Exclusive True North polling shows the Liberals have blown a spectacular lead

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript