The polls are not looking good for the Liberals, but does that mean that Erin O'Toole could actually become Prime Minister? Candice and Hamish Marshall, our in-house pollster, joins us to break it all down.
00:00:00.000The polls are not looking good for the Liberals, but does that mean that Erin O'Toole could actually become Prime Minister?
00:00:05.060Trunor's in-house pollster joins us to break it all down. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:00:14.420We have seen a remarkable change in the polls over the last week.
00:00:18.720Now, we've talked about it on the show that Justin Trudeau is not running a very good campaign.
00:00:22.860A few of his major wedge issues have sort of fallen apart.
00:00:26.140But the way that the polls have reacted is quite sharp and quite telling.
00:00:30.520So I'm going to go through a couple of them here and I'm joined by Hamish Marshall, who is our in-house pollster at Trunor, who's going to help us make sense of it all.
00:00:38.580I think the most interesting thing I've seen so far is the 338 Canada breakdown, which is the aggregator of all the polls.
00:00:45.800So on August 13th, before this thing was called, the odds of Trudeau winning a majority government were at 58 percent.
00:01:16.680Well, it's been obviously a big move in the polls for the Conservatives.
00:01:20.620I mean, they had been earlier in the summer at some historic lows and they're moving into a position where, depending on the pollster, they're somewhere between five and five points behind to one point ahead in some cases.
00:01:31.700So this election has become extremely competitive.
00:01:36.660You know, as much as we'd seen in previous polls, like we spoke about in the past, people didn't seem scared by the idea of a liberal majority government.
00:01:43.500People are questioning the rationale for this election and Trudeau has not had a particularly good reason for it.
00:01:49.760And it's given them some stumbles and O'Toole has has come out of the gate strong.
00:01:57.700Absolutely. Well, let's talk about that, because there was a poll that came out that showed that the vast majority of Canadians don't want an election.
00:02:05.100They think that that we could have waited a year calling this election a power grab.
00:02:09.780So we talked about this on the night that the writ was drawn up and the election was announced that in some ways, Trudeau has a fair rationale for calling an election,
00:02:17.880just given that the pandemic is over and he wants a new agenda for his new spending, his new vision for spending in Canada.
00:02:25.380It doesn't seem like Canadians really agree. So so let's go back to that question.
00:02:29.520Do you think that that he will pay for forcing an early election that I mean, if you're looking at the polls right now,
00:02:35.860we may end up in the exact same boat with another liberal minority.
00:02:40.880Do you think Trudeau will pay for that? And do you think Trudeau will be able to maintain his role as prime minister and leader of the party if that happens?
00:02:46.780Well, I think I think it's up to Trudeau. I think if the election was held today, I think that would be a big, big problem for him.
00:02:53.000The election is going to be held on September 20th. So, you know, Trudeau's got the better part of a month now to get it right,
00:02:58.460to figure out what to figure out how to give that rationale and figure out what he needs to do going forward.
00:03:04.540So what is the problem today? Whether it'll be a problem September 20th remains to be seen.
00:03:08.620If he wins a minority, the question is, I don't think I don't think there's there'd be a push to get rid of him as as as a liberal leader.
00:03:18.460I think the question is whether he wants to stick around with something like that.
00:03:22.620He is, you know, he has completely remade the liberal party in his own image,
00:03:27.540and I don't believe there would be any mechanism or any desire or capacity to really to move past him.
00:04:05.280So is it possible that the conservatives are actually winning this election so far?
00:04:09.260Well, I mean, if we look at all the polls, there's there's clearly a two or one three point gap called a two point gap.
00:04:15.420The liberals seem to be ahead across all the pollsters.
00:04:18.360You know, this is a rolling poll, which they take a certain number of poll of interviews every night and drop off a previous night.
00:04:25.660So these sort of things, you think it's easy to move up and down a point or two.
00:04:30.680And they've got the conservatives ahead by zero point four percent.
00:04:33.820I'd point out that in the in the 2019 election, conservatives won the election by one point one percent in terms of the popular vote,
00:04:40.300but still lost in terms of the number of seats.
00:04:43.020So, you know, a lead of of point four percent is certainly encouraging for the conservatives.
00:04:49.020And I don't want to I don't want to take that away in any way.
00:04:51.040But extrapolating that to to victory is is, I think, very, very premature.
00:04:57.920Interesting. Let's talk a little bit about the demographics, because there was an Ipsos poll that came out on August 24th that I found quite interesting and very surprising.
00:05:06.840So it had the conservatives ahead in Ontario at 35 versus the liberals, 31, the conservatives ahead in British Columbia at 34 versus the liberals, 31 in British Columbia.
00:05:17.960And this is surprising to me in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the NDP are surging at 39 percent to the conservatives, 32.
00:05:26.220So if this was the case and this held, Hamish, this would be a pretty different map than the 2019 election where the conservatives swept Saskatchewan, didn't do that well in Ontario, British Columbia.
00:05:37.020So what what is happening and why is it so different this time around?
00:05:41.180Well, that's what Ipsos numbers are saying.
00:05:44.320Other pollsters are showing different provincial numbers.
00:05:46.740But, you know, you're right, it would be a different map, not so much in British Columbia, it would actually still be good news for the liberals.
00:05:52.320You know, the conservatives got 34 percent in British Columbia in 2019.
00:05:57.240So this isn't an improvement. But the liberals got, I believe, 27 or so.
00:06:02.580So this is actually an improvement for liberals. You can still see the liberals gain in that environment.
00:06:06.680Manitoba and Saskatchewan numbers are fascinating.
00:06:08.920You'd see the NDP picking up seats in Winnipeg for sure, and maybe a conservative seat in Saskatoon West.
00:06:16.740The interesting thing is that in Winnipeg is that while those numbers, the big NDP surge, those are almost certainly going to be the liberal seats that would fall to the NDP, which would, which would, which further hurts Trudeau's quest for majority.
00:06:29.880And then Ontario, as far as I know, Ipsos, I think, is the only pollster that puts conservatives ahead in Ontario.
00:06:34.940But a close Ontario, even a split, even if the conservatives and liberals are completely tied in Ontario, that would mean 15, maybe 20 more seats for the conservatives.
00:06:45.820You know, the conservatives lost in Ontario by about eight and a half percent last time.
00:06:49.200So even a tie would be a significant, significant change.
00:06:52.500Well, that could be right there, the difference between a liberal majority or not.
00:06:57.100One other demographic poll that I wanted to point out, because I just thought it was so interesting and so counter to what you think about when you think about who the conservative base is.
00:07:06.100This is an ECOS poll from August 22nd, and it shows that the conservatives have the most support among 18 to 34 year olds, 33 percent to the liberals, 28 to the NDP, 20.
00:07:19.700And then and then the next youngest demographic, 35 to 49 year olds.
00:07:23.260The conservatives are also leading in that with 33 percent to the liberals, 27 NDP, 18.
00:07:28.700Can we talk about what it is that young people are seeing in the conservative party and in Erin O'Toole that are making them shift in this direction?
00:07:38.560Well, I don't I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but I think that's more likely to come out of methodological issues because they're ECOS collecting their data via demon dial, which is going to skew towards landlines.
00:07:49.180And you're typically going to get quite small samples of people under really under 40 or 45 answering the phone numbers with landlines and that can create some some anomalies.
00:08:01.660You know, if we look at the the the polling from other from other pollsters, Angus Reid, for instance, and Abacus, companies like that.
00:08:13.880What we're seeing is that the conservatives have definitely we've seen the growing they've grown with middle aged men.
00:08:22.740They're still behind with older women and with women up to 30 middle aged women, 35, 54.
00:08:29.180And this is the key group conservatives in order for the conservatives to win a government.
00:08:34.280They have to basically be tied with women, you know, when men in general, and men over 35 fairly strongly.
00:08:41.620And then basically be tied with women over 35, ideally be ahead of women over 35.
00:08:51.640One of the more interesting things that's changed in the last a little while, last 10 years or so, is that when Harper was winning his governments, he won women over 55 by fairly strong margins.
00:09:03.400But Trudeau has won that group in 2015 quite decisively and 2019, not quite as decisively and conservatives actually did better with with middle aged women than with older women.
00:09:16.340But those are both groups that the conservatives need to win back.
00:09:19.440What we're seeing is that most pollsters show the numbers are decent with those groups, but not where they need to be.
00:09:26.000You know, the conservatives looking across, you know, there's I don't know how many polls, there's been a dozen polls out in the last week or so.
00:09:32.740Looking across them and taking them as a as a group, we see is the conservatives have a strong base that can allow them to to to to see a path towards victory.
00:09:42.000But they're not there by any stretch of the imagination.
00:09:45.360There's an awful lot of politics to come over the next three weeks.
00:09:48.580Well, absolutely. The campaign is still young. We still have four weeks left of campaigning and election.
00:09:53.360So we will continue to have Hamish Marshall to break it all down and help us make sense of it all.
00:09:59.920True North's in-house pollster, Hamish Marshall, thank you so much for joining us.