Mark Slapinski

00:00:00.000 If there was a single doubt in your mind that Polyev would ace his leadership review

00:00:03.280 and become the next Prime Minister of Canada, you simply have not been paying attention.

00:00:08.240 But don't take it from me. Take it from the fine folks at CTV.

00:00:12.020 He's set to face the biggest test yet to his leadership this week.

00:00:15.960 Party members will decide on Friday whether Polyev stays or goes as leader.

00:00:20.840 How will he fare at the convention vote in Calgary?

00:00:23.420 I spoke with Shachi Krill, President of the Angus Reid Institute

00:00:26.420 and Abacus Data CEO David Colletto a little earlier.

00:00:30.680 Hi, Shachi. Hi, David. Thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate you making the time.

00:00:35.260 Hey there.

00:00:36.280 Shachi, I'll start with you.

00:00:37.360 Before we get into the sort of mechanics of the party itself and conservative supporters,

00:00:42.300 top-line numbers, what are you seeing in the electorate right now

00:00:45.420 for the conservatives versus the liberals and Polyev versus Carney?

00:00:50.300 So right now, I mean, the conservatives, and we'll have new numbers early next week,

00:00:55.120 but they are holding their own within a couple of points of the liberals.

00:01:00.000 Sometimes a statistical tie.

00:01:01.860 So, you know, when we talk about the challenges for Pierre Polyev, you know, certainly conservatives

00:01:08.120 will push back and point out, well, if we were doing so badly, you know, why are we in very

00:01:14.080 good competitive situation with the liberals?

00:01:17.620 But that doesn't account for the fact that it's still not enough mathematically in terms of

00:01:24.180 percentage of popular vote or the number of seats they return to parliament to be in a position to

00:01:29.560 form a majority and that anybody but conservative sentiment continues to prevail.

00:01:36.120 In the era of Donald Trump, you will find block voters, NDP voters, even green voters who may hold their noses

00:01:42.980 and vote for the liberals because the narrative or the perception of Polyev, you know, sort of being

00:01:49.900 too close to that right-wing side of politics, too close to Trumpian politics, has been just absolutely toxic for him.

00:01:57.980 It's been kryptonite.

00:01:58.840 The lady in the video is saying the same thing that I've been saying for a while.

00:02:02.920 Liberals and conservatives are still tied right now, which is great.

00:02:06.180 And that's with Donald Trump in the picture.

00:02:08.400 The second that Donald Trump gets out of the picture, gets out of voters' minds, that's when the liberals are going to go down in the polls

00:02:14.740 and the conservative party is going to go up and up.

00:02:17.920 Donald Trump obviously won't be around forever.

00:02:19.860 And considering how bad his polling numbers are right now, there's a good chance he could lose the midterms.

00:02:25.360 The faster that Trump gets out of office, the faster we can get Polyev in office.

00:02:29.780 And you also start to see, Vashi, some wobbles and some doubts among past conservative voters.

00:02:36.720 So when we talk to people who voted conservative just about a year ago in that 2025 spring election,

00:02:43.980 only about 60% of those voters, an important distinction, those aren't paid up conservative party members.

00:02:49.700 They're people who voted, who now say only about 58%, 60% basically say Polyev should stay.

00:02:57.500 About a quarter of them think he should go.

00:02:59.760 So that is the concern, you know, in terms of the broad electorate.

00:03:04.680 What the party thinks of him, what his true faithful grassroots members think of him, obviously another story.

00:03:10.820 And David, you've done a deep dive into those numbers as well.

00:03:13.620 How would you explain sort of the different factions that make up a Polyev supporter base?

00:03:21.240 Yeah, well, I think if you look at what we call the conservative base, right,

00:03:25.360 those would be people who say, I'm not going to vote for any other party.

00:03:28.300 It's conservative or nothing.

00:03:29.940 They represent about one in four Canadians.

00:03:31.820 So it's a substantial number that make up its base.

00:03:34.920 It's always had that.

00:03:35.700 It's always had the advantage of a really high floor, and it's larger than the Liberals or the New Democrats or any other party.

00:03:42.960 But the problem is, as Sashi just highlighted, the ceiling is also quite low.

00:03:50.520 But if you look at those who are in that base, not only do they really like Pierre Polyev.

00:03:56.320 In fact, they tell us they trust him far more than they do even Stephen Harper or Doug Ford or Danielle Smith.

00:04:03.500 But they actually think overwhelmingly that he makes the party more electable, right?

00:04:08.280 And so that's, I think, a really important point about his relationship with that base.

00:04:13.300 They agree with him in not just his tone.

00:04:16.840 They want more confrontation.

00:04:18.560 They think the system is rigged against them.

00:04:21.100 They think, you know, the media is not reporting anything fairly.

00:04:24.800 They have deep suspicions around a lot of public institutions.

00:04:28.760 And yet, almost every other Canadian disagrees with that perspective.

00:04:32.360 And that's the paradox facing Polyev's leadership, in that at once he is likely going to do very, very well next weekend.

00:04:40.060 But at the same time, the more that people learn that, the more they might be off-putting for the exact reason that Sashi said at the beginning around the connection with Trump.

00:04:49.540 There's this weird thing sometimes in politics, and the three of us have talked about this before,

00:04:53.260 but, Sashi, where something feels really inevitable or really certain, and then all of a sudden it isn't.

00:04:59.680 And I've covered lots of stuff like that.

00:05:01.480 And I feel like it's almost impossible for Mr. Polyev not to do well in this leadership review,

00:05:08.720 given the support, as David mentions, he does have among the base of the party.

00:05:12.940 Is there a world in which that's not going to happen?

00:05:15.760 Like, what do you think is going to happen?

00:05:17.380 My God, it would be breathtaking, right?

00:05:20.400 Like, it would be a jaw-dropping moment if we didn't see what the political class,

00:05:27.560 or however we want to describe ourselves, view as him not receiving a threshold high enough to continue.

00:05:35.320 Because we have to remember, this is, as David's pointed out, Polyev's party.

00:05:40.760 The guy won the leadership with, what, like 90% of the vote?

00:05:45.000 So you would have to see a tremendous amount of defection from, you know,

00:05:50.480 a near-unanimous endorsement from him when he took the leadership.

00:05:54.520 And when we've asked conservatives in the past to kind of debrief and reflect on what went wrong in the last election,

00:06:01.960 you know, who do you blame?

00:06:03.600 Conservative voters at that time, and those diehards that David was talking about, 1.00

00:06:07.780 but even those who cast a, let's call it a warm or a friendly vote, if not, if not, you know,

00:06:13.340 until a death to us part loyalty vote, they didn't blame Polyev.

00:06:18.380 They blamed Trump.

00:06:20.420 They blamed Carney.

00:06:22.280 They blamed circumstances.

00:06:24.520 But they didn't blame the leader's approach in that last campaign, which arguably cost him the election.

00:06:31.500 So to see a level of defection that really calls his leadership into question, I do think would be, you know,

00:06:38.800 we can all doubt ourselves and, you know, talk to me in the wee hours, I guess, over the weekend morning to find out where things are at.

00:06:46.360 But it would be, I think, a really gobsmacking moment if he didn't have it.

00:06:51.380 The other piece of it is at least publicly, and yes, there have been floor crossings, and yes, there have been sort of voce grumblings about, you know,

00:07:00.660 from within conservative ranks, but you don't right now see an alternative.

00:07:05.620 And I find that, you know, for people to defect or to go somewhere else, it's not just should Polyev stay or go, it's what's my alternative.

00:07:15.120 And that alternative piece, you're not seeing or hearing within the ranks of the party or the caucus.

00:07:19.680 It feels like a very unique situation, David, in that, and I could be misinterpreting this,

00:07:24.360 but in that, like, I do feel as though Mr. Polyev's leadership of the party has taken the base

00:07:29.840 and the size of the scope of the level of support for the party to do heights.

00:07:34.280 At the same time, among the rest of the electorate, it does feel like that same leadership,

00:07:41.000 that is such a benefit to the party in some ways, is a real detriment in others.

00:07:44.340 It is, and let's be clear.

00:07:47.640 Historically, that's been a problem for conservative, particularly at the national level, conservative leaders, right,

00:07:52.260 who have always had a difficult time expanding beyond a certain number.

00:07:56.680 Even Stephen Harper did.

00:07:57.820 There was, you know, he hit 41, and he could not break past that when he won his majority.

00:08:02.420 The problem is that in the current context, where we have more or less a two-and-a-half-party system

00:08:09.760 with the bloc in Quebec, but really two parties outside of it, means that's not enough.

00:08:15.660 It's not enough to have assembled a coalition that's larger, maybe, than you've ever been able to do,

00:08:20.680 as long as, one, you've got a stronger liberal party,

00:08:23.520 and two, that Polyev is so off-putting to so many more people

00:08:28.420 that you may be inclined to vote NDP or green or bloc, but you're going to actually say,

00:08:32.720 you know what, no way, I'm going to go and vote liberal just to stop this guy.

00:08:36.380 And so that is the, that's the fundamental problem.

00:08:39.440 And I agree, I'm not sure there's someone who at once can both speak to the base of the party

00:08:45.060 and also grow it, right?

00:08:47.040 I don't believe that if Jean Charest was leader of the Conservative Party today,

00:08:51.180 that one, they would have won the last election,

00:08:53.680 or two, that they'd be in any stronger position,

00:08:55.800 because about a quarter of the Conservative base would look at Mr. Charest and say,

00:09:00.080 you're the exact problem that I want to see blown up and seen broken down and seen changed.

00:09:05.580 And so this is, this is the challenge that, that, that I think is not going to go away

00:09:11.620 if you replace Pierre Polyev.

00:09:13.100 It's going to continue because of the, what I call the opinion architecture

00:09:17.040 of the Conservative movement in Canada right now.

00:09:19.780 So let's summarize this, and I'll give you my interpretation of what they just said.

00:09:23.580 Polyev is going to ace his leadership review, and even CTV acknowledges it.

00:09:28.080 There is nobody else that's qualified to lead the Conservative Party,

00:09:31.840 and at least in my opinion, there's nobody else qualified to become the next Prime Minister of Canada.

00:09:36.880 That role belongs to Polyev and nobody else.

00:09:39.800 Now, when the mainstream media, which is obviously very biased against Polyev,

00:09:44.040 says good things, or things that are sort of in the middle,

00:09:47.760 that's a great sign, and that means Polyev is doing really well.

00:09:51.420 And I'll be the first to admit that politics is complicated, it's tricky,

00:09:55.420 and there's not a clear path to Polyev winning the next election.

00:09:58.860 However, he's got a new campaign manager, he has a new team,

00:10:02.620 and I think he's smart enough to approach the next election

00:10:05.120 a little bit differently than he approached the last election.

00:10:07.900 He did a great job last election, and he got some good numbers,

00:10:11.800 but unfortunately, he didn't win.

00:10:13.780 When you look at polling, the Conservatives lead in so many areas.

00:10:17.420 Canadians trust Conservatives when it comes to the economy and the cost of living.

00:10:21.860 So, on those issues, normal Canadians, they have a lot of faith in Polyev.

00:10:26.540 The only wild card right now, perhaps ironically, is the United States President.

00:10:30.880 Whenever the United States President starts acting up,

00:10:33.720 saying silly things like he wants to take over Greenland,

00:10:36.380 that pushes people away from the Conservative Party and into the arms of people like Carney.

00:10:41.480 So, a big part of the next election will be whether or not Trump decides to

00:10:45.580 stop saying stuff like that, or whether he keeps acting up.

00:10:49.420 Conservatives win on a lot of issues.

00:10:51.320 Canadians trust Polyev when it comes to the economy, cost of living.

00:10:55.260 The only thing the Liberals really dominate in is with Trump.

00:10:58.460 Now, if Trump just keeps his mouth shut, the Conservatives should do fine. 0.95

00:11:02.180 But whenever Trump starts saying silly things like he wants to annex Greenland, 0.79

00:11:07.120 all that does is push people away from people like Polyev and push them into the arms of people 0.98

00:11:11.700 like Carney.

00:11:12.700 And I hope people understand that.

00:11:14.120 Obviously, Canada and America are better off as allies.

00:11:17.320 And I think both Canada and America would have been better off if Polyev was in office,

00:11:22.060 and both Trump and Polyev work together.

00:11:24.600 But for whatever reason, Trump doesn't seem to understand that.

00:11:27.940 And I don't understand why he does what he does, but it's definitely not good for our

00:11:32.280 country, specifically Conservatives.

00:11:34.300 That being said, I'm still optimistic.

00:11:36.120 I'm still optimistic.

00:11:37.500 There's still a path to victory, however tricky it is.

00:11:40.680 And we're going to win, and we're going to win big.

00:11:42.920 So, thanks for tuning in.

00:11:44.240 I love you all.

00:11:45.240 Talk to you tomorrow, Patriots.

CTV Makes SHOCKING CONFESSION About Poilievre

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript