The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - July 30, 2024


BC NDP in major trouble as BC Conservatives surge!


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

185.6267

Word count

2,886

Sentence count

166


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Theresa Watt crossed the floor to join the BC Conservative Party. This is a huge coup for the Tories and could help them crack open seats in Metro Vancouver and break up the BC United Party. I talk about why you should vote for the Conservatives.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Well, it's been a crazy day in British Columbia provincial politics.
00:00:05.120 Not only did a new poll come out that I can talk about, but I was actually just at the announcement press conference of another BC United MLA crossing the floor to join the BC Conservatives.
00:00:18.420 Guys, the BC United Party, even though I still see a few people on X trying to defend them and say, no, they could have a comeback, they could win a few seats.
00:00:26.300 They can't, they're not going to win. Not only are they not going to win, they're not going to win a single seat at all.
00:00:33.160 It's an irrelevant party. It satisfies nobody's interest.
00:00:36.220 Like, I don't like the BC NDP at all, but I can understand why somebody would.
00:00:42.100 If you're a hyper-progressive, in a certain sense, they do everything that you want them to do.
00:00:47.500 But if you don't like what the BC NDP is doing, you're going to go vote for the BC Conservatives because they're the opposite of what the BC NDP are.
00:00:55.100 Nobody's, like, kind of in the mood for safe supply or wants a little bit of SOGI-123 or kind of also likes the carbon tax.
00:01:04.120 Either you like it or you don't like it.
00:01:06.460 And that is what this entire election is.
00:01:08.680 It's a referendum on the BC NDP, which used to be the BC Liberals' agenda.
00:01:14.540 And so if you like it, you might stick with them.
00:01:16.880 Bad choice, in my opinion.
00:01:18.480 And if you don't like it, you're going to be going and voting for the BC Conservative Party.
00:01:22.840 Or you can vote for the Greens.
00:01:24.000 Do whatever you want.
00:01:24.760 If you're going to vote, if you were thinking of voting NDP, I'd suggest you vote for the Greens, just out of pure self-interest from my perspective.
00:01:32.520 But I was at that press conference today, and I want to be a little bit selfish and give myself some credit,
00:01:36.860 because I think I took some pretty good photos of the announcement of former BC United MLA, Theresa Watt, now coming over to the BC Conservatives.
00:01:45.600 That is going to help out the Conservatives a lot in the Metro Vancouver area.
00:01:50.420 Of course, she is an MLA in the city of Richmond.
00:01:54.960 So this is a big coup for the Conservatives.
00:01:58.360 This is going to absolutely crack open Metro Vancouver.
00:02:02.340 A lot of the ridings that were previously leaning Conservative are probably now going to be solidified in Metro Vancouver.
00:02:08.460 And a lot of the ridings that were previously leaning or likely NDP ridings are now going to either switch over to Conservative or become tough toss-up races.
00:02:19.080 Even though the NDP has more money than the Conservatives, at the end of the day, voters tend to vote for what they want.
00:02:25.860 Money helps raise brand recognition.
00:02:28.260 It helps drive out your vote.
00:02:30.480 But at the end of the day, if people don't like you, they're not going to vote for you.
00:02:33.280 That's why BC United collapsed, despite for a couple quarters before this last quarter, they were out fundraising the BC Conservatives still, even though their popularity is going through the floor.
00:02:44.120 Money does not buy popularity.
00:02:46.360 Again, it helps you win an election.
00:02:48.460 You're on the cusp of winning.
00:02:50.040 But like the BC United is trying to do now, it's not going to actually give you momentum, despite the fact they're ballyhooing the fact that they brought in $200,000.
00:02:58.200 Who cares?
00:02:58.880 It really doesn't mean anything.
00:03:00.280 But I'm about to get into the polling results that just came out from ResearchCo.
00:03:05.400 But before that, I'm just going to ask you that if you live in British Columbia, go down to the description of this video below, or I'll have it pop up in this corner.
00:03:14.740 Donate to the Abbotsford South BC Conservative Riding.
00:03:18.140 We need to win the entire Fraser Valley Abbotsford area.
00:03:21.120 What we're going to do is collect money into the EDA that I'm helping in the Abbotsford South with Bruce Bandman.
00:03:27.340 We are going to be easily fully funded very quickly.
00:03:29.920 And then we're going to start helping distribute money out to ridings that need it, that can win.
00:03:35.200 We're going to try and win 100% of the ridings out here.
00:03:38.020 And that requires us to be a bit strategic.
00:03:41.120 So if you want to do that, it really helps us out.
00:03:43.900 If you donate $100, you get 75% of it back in a tax credit.
00:03:47.880 So it only costs you $25.
00:03:49.340 Up to $550, it only costs you 50% because you get a 50% tax credit.
00:03:55.740 And then I believe you can donate up to like $1,400 and get 33% back.
00:03:59.740 Anyways, sorry for being selfish with the whole donation thing.
00:04:03.040 But to beat the NDP, the Conservatives do need the money to drive out their vote.
00:04:06.760 So these are the numbers that just came out from ResearchCo.
00:04:10.080 So it shows that the BC NDP is leading the Conservatives by three points.
00:04:15.980 But I'm going to get into why this is such a great poll for the Conservatives.
00:04:19.240 So we have David Eby's BC NDP at 41%, John Rusted's Conservatives at 38%, First to No's Greens at 10%,
00:04:28.620 and we have Kevin Falcon's BC United Party at 9% with 2% going other, likely either CHP,
00:04:36.340 Christian Heritage Party voters, or people who are undecided and don't know really what the race dynamics are.
00:04:41.560 As close as we are to this election dropping, there are still going to be a lot of people
00:04:46.840 who actually don't realize that the BC Conservatives are the main opposition to the NDP.
00:04:52.600 Most people aren't, you know, psychopaths like me, and they don't follow politics all that closely.
00:04:57.560 And so a lot of people probably still assume that this is going to be a BC NDP versus BC Liberal election.
00:05:04.960 And with the Conservatives in, it's a very different type of race.
00:05:08.020 Because even though the BC Liberals were always a little bit more center left,
00:05:11.400 and then the BC NDP were further left, the BC Conservatives completely shake things up.
00:05:16.300 They don't just take the more center-right voters that the Liberals used to rely on
00:05:21.500 and then took, you know, for granted when they changed the name to United
00:05:24.620 and started turfing out people like John Rusted, who later became the Conservative leader.
00:05:29.060 The thing is that the Conservatives actually have a lot of cross-spectrum appeal.
00:05:34.300 The BC NDP may be a further left party, but it had a lot of blue-collar appeal
00:05:40.220 when John Horgan was the leader of the party.
00:05:43.100 John Horgan does not seem like a cocktail party politician the way that David Eby does.
00:05:49.460 David Eby is an activist.
00:05:51.240 He is a protester who is somehow occupying the Premier's office because his own party acclaimed him
00:05:56.160 after John Horgan stepped down from having cancer.
00:05:59.200 John Horgan famously does not like David Eby.
00:06:02.180 If you talk to anyone who knows the inner workings of British Columbia politics,
00:06:06.300 John Horgan finds David Eby annoying.
00:06:08.440 And his own caucus, David Eby's caucus, finds him annoying because he is a control freak
00:06:14.760 and he's not even particularly competent.
00:06:17.020 He is definitely radical and that's why eight members of his own caucus,
00:06:20.360 who probably could have been re-elected, have dropped out because they don't like working with them,
00:06:25.160 even if they won re-election to another majority government.
00:06:28.380 A lot of these people don't want to work with David Eby.
00:06:31.080 That is an indictment.
00:06:32.080 That's what the former Green Party leader came out and spilt out onto the floor, Andrew Weaver,
00:06:36.520 basically saying, yeah, no, he's incompetent, nobody likes him,
00:06:40.020 and then he actually endorsed the Conservative Party.
00:06:42.980 So that has to tell you something that Conservative politics or the politics in British Columbia
00:06:48.700 have been upended when Green Party politicians are coming out to slap the NDP
00:06:53.620 and then saying that the Conservatives are doing a great job, people should vote for them,
00:06:57.220 not even endorsing his old party, the Greens.
00:07:00.700 Very funny.
00:07:01.360 But yes, the NDP in this poll are leading the Conservatives.
00:07:06.880 The problem is, is that previous ResearchCo polls are actually showing,
00:07:12.020 I'm going to try and pull it up here,
00:07:13.660 but previous ResearchCo polls were showing the NDP far further ahead.
00:07:18.000 So this is actually a massive deterioration in the BC NDP's lead, according to ResearchCo.
00:07:24.960 And every single pollster has its own methodology.
00:07:27.660 You've got to always keep that in mind, that different pollsters tend to target different people
00:07:32.760 to poll them, so you have to kind of read the polls based on the way that they conduct themselves.
00:07:39.080 And this poll from ResearchCo is online.
00:07:42.040 They tend to have a big Metro Vancouver sample compared to other pollsters,
00:07:46.640 which means that it is going to be a little bit more of an NDP-leaning poll.
00:07:50.120 Not intentionally, that's just the way they do it.
00:07:51.860 Online polls tend to also get a lot more younger people, which the NDP relies on the votes of a lot of students.
00:07:58.860 And still, you see a massive rise for the BC Conservatives.
00:08:03.680 Back at the very beginning of the year, January 2024, they had the Conservatives at 25%,
00:08:09.840 United 17%, and the NDP way up there at 46%, a 21-point lead.
00:08:18.740 Next one had the lead shrink to just 18 points, and then it shrunk to just 10 points, just 7 points,
00:08:26.620 and now it's shrunk to just 3%.
00:08:29.620 And the problem for the BC NDP is although, based on the seat projections from this poll,
00:08:36.200 they would still win a majority.
00:08:37.700 It's basically a two-party province.
00:08:39.220 It's either one's going to win a majority or the other one, unless it's a real squeaker,
00:08:42.760 and the Greens have the one seat that prevents either one from getting a majority.
00:08:47.900 But it's a province where it's going to be either way.
00:08:51.560 But the NDP, if the Conservatives can gain a few more points, are easily going to win this election.
00:08:57.560 And the reason is, is because the areas where they have the ability to make gains,
00:09:02.820 the Conservatives are the only party that can make gains.
00:09:05.040 Like, the NDP can become defensive, where they can make gains in places where they're already popular
00:09:10.540 to try and stave off the Conservatives,
00:09:12.780 but the NDP has no ability to go on the offensive to try and win other seats elsewhere.
00:09:17.900 The problem is, they can pretty much just protect what they have now,
00:09:21.320 and maybe try and keep the BC Conservatives from winning some Metro Vancouver ridings,
00:09:26.400 but they have no ability to pick up old BC Liberal ridings.
00:09:29.660 Now, what I mean by that is that while the NDP is ahead on Vancouver Island, Victoria, and Metro Vancouver,
00:09:38.100 in the other areas of British Columbia, they're way behind,
00:09:42.080 where even if they gain 5% or 6%, they're not winning maybe more than one or two seats.
00:09:46.740 It's right now in many areas, they're winning zero seats.
00:09:49.540 And it would take a massive increase in support in those areas for them to even get close to winning anything.
00:09:55.260 So here's what the research code poll had said.
00:09:57.860 It says, the BC NDP is ahead of the BC Conservatives in Metro Vancouver, 44% to 35%,
00:10:03.900 and Vancouver Island, 43% to 32%,
00:10:07.160 while the BC Conservatives lead the BC NDP in Northern BC, 57% to 31%,
00:10:13.260 and the Fraser Valley, 47% to 28%.
00:10:17.160 So you see the difference there.
00:10:19.260 Yes, there are more seats on Vancouver Island and Metro Vancouver
00:10:23.400 compared to Northern BC and the Fraser Valley,
00:10:25.580 but at the same time, the margins that the NDP are leading in their favorite areas
00:10:33.380 are far smaller than the areas where the Conservatives are leading.
00:10:37.040 So a 3% change, a 4% or 5% change in the vote in the Metro Vancouver area and on Vancouver Island
00:10:44.880 would result in the Conservatives potentially winning 10%, 12%, 15% more seats,
00:10:51.180 or 15% more seats, whereas if the BC NDP started doing 5 or 6 points better in the Fraser Valley,
00:10:59.140 probably wouldn't really change much at all.
00:11:01.060 Northern BC really wouldn't change much.
00:11:03.440 I think they have one seat in Northern BC that they still have,
00:11:06.680 and plus or minus a few points, it really doesn't make a difference.
00:11:10.420 So that is why the BC Conservatives, this is such a good poll for them.
00:11:15.680 Yes, they're behind, but it's a poll that never favored them,
00:11:18.940 and they're still making massive gains.
00:11:20.720 They've gone up 4% since the last one was done,
00:11:25.900 and on top of that, this poll showed that David Eby was becoming much less popular.
00:11:32.080 He is still the most popular leader,
00:11:33.760 but it's because John Rustad doesn't have the highest name recognition still,
00:11:37.040 but a big problem for Eby is that he's actually lost.
00:11:41.440 His approval rating has gone down.
00:11:43.980 I don't need to bring it up on screen, no worries.
00:11:45.920 But his approval rating has actually shrunk by 5%,
00:11:49.000 where I believe he only has an approval rating of like plus 10 right now,
00:11:53.760 which that sounds good compared to other leaders like Kevin Falcon,
00:11:58.280 who's at a minus 21% rating.
00:12:01.100 But at one point, David Eby was the most popular premier in the country.
00:12:05.440 He had like a plus 30 rating.
00:12:07.740 Now it's only plus 10.
00:12:09.200 It's deteriorating fast.
00:12:11.220 And again, this is a poll that is going to favor Eby more than disfavor him the way Main Street does.
00:12:17.620 And so this is not good numbers for the NDP.
00:12:20.080 If this is the best numbers that they have, they probably will lose the election.
00:12:23.980 In the next Main Street poll, the last one had them tied.
00:12:26.600 I don't doubt the next one will probably have the BC Conservatives leaning.
00:12:29.700 So if you're in BC, please donate to the BC Conservatives.
00:12:35.980 Really, at this point, the only big advantage that the NDP has is in money.
00:12:41.480 So $100, it only costs you $25 to donate $100.
00:12:45.160 There's a link in the description below.
00:12:47.680 And the other, I guess there's not really much else for me to talk about.
00:12:51.160 But yeah, I'm out here in Abbotsford South.
00:12:53.720 I'm trying to make sure that the Conservatives all have their candidates up to speed,
00:12:57.200 that we're hitting all the doors.
00:12:58.720 This is a very winnable election.
00:13:01.140 The problem, again, is that the BC NDP have nothing really new to announce.
00:13:05.880 I've heard a lot of people say that as the NDP has been announcing new initiatives,
00:13:11.160 new programs, new spending items, their polling has only kept deteriorating.
00:13:15.640 Because nobody's really waiting for a new program.
00:13:18.820 Nobody's waiting for a fresh vision from the NDP.
00:13:21.840 The NDP's character and brand is very baked into the cake at this point.
00:13:25.980 People know what David Eby is mostly all about.
00:13:29.500 They either like what the NDP is doing or they don't like it.
00:13:32.820 And most people don't like it.
00:13:34.560 In issue-based polling, when you ask them,
00:13:36.700 how is the NDP government doing on health care?
00:13:39.120 It's like 78% of people think that health care is bad in the province.
00:13:43.180 You ask people about education, drugs, crime, all these issues, taxes, affordability.
00:13:48.780 The government is way underwater on all those issues.
00:13:51.620 I think their best issue is their ability to negotiate with the federal liberal government,
00:13:55.660 which is obviously going to be something that they have good ratings on
00:13:58.800 since they are an NDP government and the federal liberals are very left-wing like they are.
00:14:04.040 But that's the only thing that they actually have a positive rating on.
00:14:07.120 Everything else, nobody thinks they're doing a good job.
00:14:09.980 And so that is what also gives the conservatives an advantage.
00:14:13.880 Conservative voters are going to be passionate.
00:14:16.000 They're going to be driven to get Eby out.
00:14:17.820 Whereas Eby voters, Eby NDP voters, really, what are you doing?
00:14:22.840 You're just showing up to defend Eby and just keeping us on the course that we're on.
00:14:26.940 And the course isn't great.
00:14:28.340 You might be scared into thinking that the conservatives are going to do bad things.
00:14:33.520 The media might put out some hit pieces saying that the conservatives are going to cut spending
00:14:37.740 to health care, which they're not.
00:14:39.060 It's stupid.
00:14:39.700 No party has ever run on cutting health care.
00:14:41.980 No party has ever cut health care in Canada since the federal liberals did back in the 90s.
00:14:47.920 It's a complete distraction.
00:14:50.340 But unless you're somebody who's voting NDP because you've been spooked into the thinking
00:14:53.840 that the conservatives are scary, you don't really have that much of a motivation to showing up
00:14:58.460 and voting for the NDP unless you're like a hyper, hyper downtown Vancouver, downtown Victoria
00:15:04.640 progressive.
00:15:05.540 And those people are very much on a popularity decline.
00:15:08.720 As people see the results of the policies that those people favor.
00:15:13.700 Yeah.
00:15:14.100 So I think a lot of stuff is going to be happening over the next week.
00:15:17.620 A lot of exciting announcements might be coming out.
00:15:19.980 I'm going to be helping to fight it out here.
00:15:22.380 So if you guys want to support me and you don't live in British Columbia, you can donate
00:15:26.380 to my legal fund in the description below.
00:15:29.200 And other than that, I'll see you guys in my next video.
00:15:32.180 Have a great one.