The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - August 24, 2025


Carney Liberals FALL HARD in new poll - CPC now leading!


Episode Stats

Length

22 minutes

Words per Minute

174.50865

Word Count

3,966

Sentence Count

226

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

Abacus Data has a new poll out on August 20th, and it's not good news for the Liberals. They are now at 43%, the Tories are at 40%, and the Bloc is at 8%. What does it mean for the rest of the parties?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We have a big poll to discuss on the show today out from Abacus Data.
00:00:07.900 Mark Carney and his Liberal government have fallen really hard in the polls because of their series of really bad moves in government over the summer,
00:00:17.420 concluding with the Air Canada fiasco.
00:00:20.080 Now, this most recent poll was conducted on August 20th, so this is not taking into account Mark Carney's most recent flip-flop on a trade deal with the United States.
00:00:31.600 We may actually start seeing the Liberals' numbers slip harder now that he has betrayed the elbows-up crowd yet again.
00:00:39.280 But I want to take you guys through what the numbers were back on Abacus' last poll on August 7th and what they are now on August 20th.
00:00:46.980 Now, remember on August 7th, even then, the Liberals were starting to trend down in their popularity.
00:00:53.280 We could see the honeymoon ending, I was predicting, maybe September, October, like late September, mid-October.
00:01:00.180 We were going to finally see the artificial goodwill wear off, and now we were going to see more realistic numbers out for the Liberals and for Mark Carney.
00:01:08.800 You know, his disapproval rating would be going up a couple of points per month.
00:01:13.240 His approval rating would be falling at the same rate, but now we are seeing a big drop-off because of just glaringly stupid things they've been doing recently.
00:01:23.120 Again, Air Canada, we had the Palestinian thing that had occurred.
00:01:27.180 There's just been a lot of unforced errors that, even if you're a Liberal supporter, if you were a more reluctant one in the last election, you're probably heading to the door right now.
00:01:36.140 But before we get into it, I just want to remind you guys, hey, if you like the show, if you like these whiteboard videos and the breakdown of the polls, make sure to like this video.
00:01:45.080 Subscribe to the channel if you are not yet a subscriber.
00:01:47.680 I'm trying to get to 100,000 subscribers by mid-December of this year.
00:01:52.000 And leave a comment on what you think about the current political situation in Canada.
00:01:55.940 But now, let's time travel back, not very far, to August 7th.
00:02:01.780 And I think the fact that things have fallen this hard this quickly is quite a thing.
00:02:07.700 And just letting you know, this poll actually has the Conservatives up, the August 20th one, and they were not up back on August 7th.
00:02:14.540 But back on August 7th, we had the Liberals at 43%.
00:02:20.640 We had the Conservative Party with Nthier Polyev at 40%, which isn't bad for them.
00:02:27.800 And then the NDP, who I will represent as green here, were at 8%.
00:02:35.060 And I'll just use the same color for the Bloc.
00:02:37.720 And the Bloc was at 6%.
00:02:39.660 You know, these are kind of also-ran parties, but it does have an effect, especially the Bloc Québécois, when it comes to how many seats the Liberals end up getting in Quebec.
00:02:48.900 Actually, let's see if I can make that a little bit thicker for you guys, seeing me fix my mistakes on the fly here.
00:02:55.520 You know, 8, 6, not sure how much that actually helped.
00:02:59.480 But now, let's leap forth and come now to August 20th.
00:03:04.520 Now, where are the parties right now as of August 20th?
00:03:08.460 Well, let's fill in the Conservatives first, and then the rest of the parties.
00:03:13.320 The Conservatives have only risen by one point.
00:03:16.360 It makes sense right now.
00:03:17.820 They were the party that just lost the last election.
00:03:20.680 If people are moving away from the Liberals, they may just be becoming undecided at the moment.
00:03:25.620 But right now, the Conservatives are holding strong.
00:03:27.860 And I think it is in no small part because of how Pierre Polyev has been actually moving to the right on policies where the Canadian public is to the right on them, like on immigration, like on taxes.
00:03:39.760 He's been doing a really good job firming up his positions on these issues that I think that the party went too soft on during the general election.
00:03:47.580 And it's not that he started losing voters or he started alienating them and they thought he was a phony.
00:03:52.480 It's just that your motivation to show up and vote went down a little bit.
00:03:56.560 So I think the Conservative turnout suffered.
00:03:58.480 In this poll, the NDP is at seven and the Bloc Quebecois is also at seven.
00:04:04.220 I actually think that what we are going to see here, this may actually be a bit of a missed poll for the NDP.
00:04:09.740 I see them in the next few months probably rising because as the Eric-Handa fallout kind of takes shape, takes a bit more hold on the public.
00:04:20.680 Because even on August 20th, we hadn't really felt the full effects of people kind of mulling over the news of how the Liberals had mishandled that situation in their minds.
00:04:30.060 And so I think that we are going to see the NDP starting to punch above 10% in the polls at some point before the year runs out.
00:04:38.460 But now this is where we get to the Liberal Party.
00:04:42.680 So the Liberal Party in the last poll that Abacus did on August 7th was 43%.
00:04:49.060 They are now 39%.
00:04:53.840 Now, I probably don't have to tell you that this is not great for the Liberals.
00:04:58.860 They have fallen a full four points in just 13 days.
00:05:06.900 In just 13 days.
00:05:08.220 And this isn't even accounting for the current tariff issue where he's basically saying,
00:05:15.380 Actually, we have a great deal with the Americans and we'll drop a bunch of their tariffs.
00:05:19.360 Please, Trump, you know, please just sign a deal with us.
00:05:23.140 Reduce the tariffs.
00:05:23.960 I really need a win before the fall.
00:05:25.860 This is happening.
00:05:26.820 This drop of 4% is happening before that actually broke.
00:05:31.320 Because that happened on the 20th.
00:05:32.940 And this poll came out, was finalized on the 20th.
00:05:35.960 So we would have not picked up any of this at all.
00:05:38.120 The Conservatives obviously have gone up by one point from 13 days ago.
00:05:45.640 And with the also-ran parties, I would say they're effectively at an even.
00:05:49.280 Bloc goes up by one.
00:05:50.380 NDP goes up, down by one.
00:05:52.480 Basically, the other in the category is holding firm.
00:05:56.900 The main area where the Liberals are hurting is that they're hurting when it comes to those voters who are on the margins.
00:06:03.520 Those people who voted for the Liberals possibly in this last general election.
00:06:08.340 But now with the actions of Mark Carney, the inability to deliver a budget, the high deficits, the Palestinian terror state recognition,
00:06:16.520 Eric Handa situation, and now the tariff flip-flopping.
00:06:19.900 If you were voting for him because you want someone tough on Trump, well, you know, it didn't really work out.
00:06:25.960 You know, it didn't really happen.
00:06:27.500 And it was kind of, you may be, or kind of foolish to assume that we were going to be tough on the Americans.
00:06:32.420 Because why would we be?
00:06:34.000 It actually is true that they're our best trading partner.
00:06:36.700 But if you were following Mark Carney during the election, that was not his attitude at all.
00:06:41.720 It was elbows up.
00:06:43.440 We're going to fight back.
00:06:44.800 And I see this guy now on social media posting.
00:06:47.920 Maybe I'll show you the guys that's on screen a little bit later.
00:06:50.320 Or we'll do it now before I erase the board and move on to a different, a different part, a different poll.
00:06:57.500 But you have these people acting like you're stupid if you thought that he was going to actually be elbows up.
00:07:02.760 All of his rhetoric during the campaign had nothing to do with this.
00:07:06.320 Here is this guy, Mike Gerald Gibbs.
00:07:09.540 You know, of course, pride flag, Ukraine flag, he, him.
00:07:13.200 I even support Ukraine, but I always find it annoying when these progressives pretend that they care.
00:07:17.380 Well, they didn't care when Russia invaded Ukraine back in 2014.
00:07:20.640 They only care now because it's the thing.
00:07:23.080 But Mike Gerald Gibbs says, no one expecting, no one was expecting Carney to keep tariffs on the U.S.
00:07:28.520 That was always a temporary measure.
00:07:30.620 We punched back and made our point.
00:07:32.620 We need to buy time for Canadian workers while we build a new economy based on new trade partners.
00:07:37.840 Carney is not retreating.
00:07:38.820 He's buying us time.
00:07:40.520 It's like, okay.
00:07:41.560 You've got to be seriously dull to think that putting, that Carney wasn't actually putting tariffs on to pressure the Americans into maybe breaking.
00:07:50.540 He was just doing this to give them a little taste of his ultimate power.
00:07:53.980 And then he was going to pull back because apparently we need to trade with other countries.
00:07:57.540 But reducing the tariffs, in effect, would mean that we would start trading with the Americans more again, which is not even a bad thing.
00:08:04.360 But all these people are having to bend themselves into pretzels pretending like Carney's actually being intellectually consistent here.
00:08:11.920 And you could say, well, see, people like Mike Gerald Gibbs are out there who are just going to keep making excuses for the liberals.
00:08:18.220 Yes, but that is about the 20%, 23% of liberals who are still going to vote liberal even when Justin Trudeau was still the prime minister and leading the party back in December.
00:08:29.000 The thing is that politics is done along the margins.
00:08:32.000 Right now, this poll, I want to quickly bring up what Sheree Attiste had said.
00:08:37.300 I'm not going to show him on screen right now.
00:08:39.680 But the amount of seats that he currently gives to the conservatives based on his own model, this poll, this right now, this margin of 3% lead or just a 2% lead for the conservatives, this would actually result in 172 seats for the conservatives.
00:08:59.200 And only, let me check again, it would only be 135 seats or 36 seats for the NDP.
00:09:09.440 That's obviously, or for the liberals, that's obviously not very good.
00:09:13.660 So the conservatives only have to beat the liberals in theory by two points in the national popular vote, not just to win the most seats, but to get a majority government, a bare majority, but it is still a majority.
00:09:27.020 And so this is where I would tell the pure poly of just stick to your guns, actually toughen on policy because you're not going to win by finding new voters.
00:09:36.560 The conservatives actually have a very robust voter coalition right now.
00:09:40.480 The problem is, how are we going to make sure that we, because right now in the last election, we had 68 and a half turnouts.
00:09:46.720 So 68% of the general public decided to show up and vote.
00:09:51.000 But of conservative supporters, of the demographics that conservatives do really well with, I assume they brought out probably three quarters of them.
00:09:58.300 75% of religious Christians probably showed up for the conservatives who, you know, typically vote.
00:10:03.800 But what you want, you know, the gun owners, the farmers, whatnot, you know, just families who don't like, who like parental rights and don't like things like SOGI or gender theory.
00:10:14.240 You want those people coming out at 85%, at 82%.
00:10:17.500 That is when you're going from struggling to beat the liberals in the GTA and falling only 8,000 votes short, actually, within the closest ridings of getting the minority government, to not just winning the minority, but getting the majority.
00:10:30.740 Because that's going to get you an extra 200, 300,000 voters if you get those sorts of turnout numbers.
00:10:36.960 But I just want to quickly erase this board now.
00:10:39.360 And I want to come back with some of the other interesting points that were in this abacus data poll.
00:10:44.520 Thanks for bearing with me, guys.
00:10:46.560 I've actually had to delete this video and re-record this section because somehow, when I had originally hit pause to erase the board and then come back and unpause, the microphone screwed up and started making me sound like I had consumed an entire tank load of helium.
00:11:05.020 So for any of you who saw that, hopefully it was good for a laugh, but now I want to do this the right way.
00:11:11.720 So in this part of the abacus data poll, they ask people whether or not they want to see a change in government.
00:11:20.220 And I'm going to bring up this result on screen.
00:11:23.100 It's hard to see, but you can just kind of see the changing lines over time.
00:11:27.700 The bottom red line is those who want to see a liberal government re-elected.
00:11:31.860 The top green line are those who definitely want to see a change in government and they think there are much better parties out there.
00:11:39.440 And the more mild green line in the middle are people who'd like to see change, but they don't know if there is a better option out there.
00:11:47.660 Now, I want to start writing down on the board here for you guys what some of the sort of indicators are that we are exiting a liberal honeymoon.
00:11:57.240 That a lot of people put some hope into them, but now marginally people are starting to fall off.
00:12:03.160 And maybe especially a lot of conservative liberal switch voters are saying, OK, well, Carney's not really the guy I expected him to be.
00:12:10.960 So I'm not sure if I really want these people in office anymore.
00:12:14.460 Back in mid-summer, to give you an impression, the amount of people who thought we definitely needed a change, who I will indicate in blue, was 39%.
00:12:24.480 So this is around June time.
00:12:27.580 At the same time, the amount of people who want a liberal government definitely re-elected was 35%.
00:12:34.940 Now, yeah, that isn't the 39% they have now, or at the time I think they were at like 43 in the polls or 44.
00:12:44.660 It's always going to lag a bit.
00:12:46.460 This number is like the hardcore liberal base.
00:12:50.340 This is people who will basically be absolutely voting liberal no matter what.
00:12:56.240 And then when we get down to the people who want to see a change in government, but they don't know if there's a better option, at that time it was about 26%.
00:13:06.020 This doesn't mean that they won't vote conservative or that they won't vote liberal.
00:13:11.740 They may still end up voting liberal, not wanting change, but thinking that there isn't any good options out there.
00:13:17.340 They may hold their nose and vote liberal, they may hold their nose and vote NDP, they may hold their nose and vote conservative.
00:13:24.680 They're kind of wild card voters.
00:13:26.520 We don't know where they're going.
00:13:28.200 But this was around July, very beginning of July.
00:13:32.300 Now, what we have on August 20th is we now have 42% of people wanting change and thinking there are much better options out there.
00:13:42.820 Like there's a party in their minds they definitely will vote for instead of the liberals.
00:13:46.960 The liberals, wanting the liberals re-elected, the hardcore base of the liberal party, like their national polling, has dropped down to 31%
00:13:55.700 with the amount of people who think that they want a change in government, but they're not sure if there are better options, has just gone up by one point.
00:14:04.700 But the general shift here has been significant.
00:14:08.740 This, the people who want somewhat of a change, is up one.
00:14:12.840 We have now the liberals down by four.
00:14:17.640 And the wanting change and definitely thinking there are better options available right now, which benefits conservatives a lot, is up three points.
00:14:26.220 So quite a bit of swing has taken place here.
00:14:30.420 Great news for the conservatives and not so great for the liberals as their hardcore base is dropping significantly.
00:14:36.480 And remember, this was done before people were even able to react to the trade flip-flop from Mark Carney.
00:14:44.560 This poll was conducted the day before or was finalized the day of Carney's flip-flop.
00:14:50.180 But nobody would have been thinking about it when they were taking the poll that day.
00:14:55.360 I don't even think anyone would have been asked the poll question even after the press conference of Mark Carney.
00:15:01.120 And even then, this poll, usually pollsters, collect their data over several days.
00:15:07.200 I was actually just recording.
00:15:08.980 It was actually after the first time I finished this video, and now I'm having to re-record the section.
00:15:14.040 But in the first, before, after I finished the video the first time and went to go do the great Canadian bagel cast with my friend Chris,
00:15:22.100 he pointed out that this Abacus poll was actually being conducted before the Ericanda fiasco had started.
00:15:28.420 It was kind of, it started, the poll started when the Ericanda thing first kicked off,
00:15:34.700 but it hadn't picked up the people who were mad at the liberals that occurred halfway through the entire fiasco when they ordered people back to work.
00:15:42.460 So this may actually be understating the damage it's done to the liberal brand.
00:15:46.940 But now I want to go to one more poll result from this poll because I think it also indicates that the shifting priorities of Canadians are also going to be undermining the liberal party.
00:16:01.440 So I'm just going to clean up the board and then come back and finish up,
00:16:05.360 and hopefully I don't sound like a car alarm like I did in the previous video.
00:16:10.140 So yeah, bear with me, guys.
00:16:12.620 And we're back.
00:16:13.680 In this section, I want to talk about the top issues for Canadians right now.
00:16:19.360 I want to compare the current poll, which is, again, collected on August 20th or finalized on August 20th,
00:16:25.420 and I want to compare that to the one that was conducted on June 29th,
00:16:30.040 because this is where the liberals may be having some trouble with some of the issues and how people are shifting their priorities.
00:16:38.020 Donald Trump was obviously a top issue in the last federal election.
00:16:41.960 It drove a lot of people to vote liberal, in part because I don't think the conservatives did a good enough job with dealing with the issue of Donald Trump.
00:16:49.440 I don't think they needed to go anti-Trump.
00:16:51.280 I think they just needed to do better on pointing out the liberals are actually hurting our economy so badly it's going to let Trump the Americans siphon off a lot of our economic activity down south.
00:17:03.880 Now, back in June 29th, and this is still not at its height.
00:17:09.920 It was obviously at its height during the election.
00:17:12.720 But back in June, 46% of people rated Donald Trump as in their top three issues that they vote along the lines of.
00:17:23.100 That is staggeringly high for something that, frankly, doesn't matter all that much.
00:17:29.320 Now, if I jump over to now, August 20th, only 38% of people rate Donald Trump within their top three issues.
00:17:40.180 And that's top three.
00:17:41.200 That's not top issues.
00:17:42.720 That's top three.
00:17:43.700 And to show you that this isn't just how polls shift over time, when you go to the economy, actually, I'm going to swap this out with cost of living.
00:17:52.300 They also have an economy section, but economy, cost of living, the economy went from 59% or the cost of living went from 59% back in late June, and now it's at 60%.
00:18:06.260 So it hasn't shifted at all.
00:18:07.880 The actual economy technically went from around 38% to 36%, but cost of living is the economy at the end of the day for most people.
00:18:18.160 But you can forgive me for my mistake there.
00:18:21.740 But then let's go down to migration or immigration.
00:18:25.560 I just did this because it sticks on the board a little bit easier.
00:18:28.700 Back on June 29, 20% of people rated immigration as a top issue for them.
00:18:35.600 And now, on August 20th, we have 25% of people rating that as a top issue.
00:18:44.120 There should be no surprise as to why Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives have hardened their stance on immigration.
00:18:51.480 It's because it actually is becoming a top of mind issue, whereas the issue of Donald Trump and the Americans has been falling significantly.
00:18:59.560 That is an 8% drop over time.
00:19:03.320 And not that long.
00:19:05.720 This isn't how many people care about it over a year, and 8% would be significant over a year.
00:19:10.500 This is just from the very end of June to nearing the end of August, just a couple months later.
00:19:18.180 And people really do not care all that much about Donald Trump compared to the election and to a couple of months ago.
00:19:26.020 And so why this is bad for the Liberals is if I show you the top issues on the screen right now, you would be kind of hard to press to find areas where the Liberals would be on top.
00:19:38.620 Rise in cost of living, that actually is going to be more of a conservative issue because it affects younger people as well as voters living on fixed incomes at an older age.
00:19:49.900 And so that is going to be favoring the Conservatives overall.
00:19:53.740 Donald Trump and his administration is a liberal-leaning issue.
00:19:58.140 And then economy, that's always going to be conservative.
00:20:00.740 Housing, it's going to be conservative.
00:20:02.160 Health care, that one's a little bit more of a mixed bag, but let's say the Liberals have the edge on health care.
00:20:08.180 They still have to share that issue with the NDP, who typically have all the nurses' unions endorsing them.
00:20:13.840 And then as you go down the list when it comes to crime and public safety and unemployment and whatnot, yeah, the Liberals will lead on climate change, but some of these other issues, it's still mostly going towards the Conservatives.
00:20:26.120 So right now, if the Liberals lose the white whale that is Donald Trump as an issue in Canadian politics, they don't have anything readily available to replace it with unless they can boost their credibility on the economy.
00:20:39.500 But again, that is still a conservative-leaning issue, and the Conservatives have a grab bag of other issues to run the next campaign on.
00:20:47.580 But that should be it for this video, guys.
00:20:50.320 I probably will do another follow-up with this Abacus data poll.
00:20:53.660 Well, again, I apologize for somehow StreamYard's humiliating me by raising the pitch of my voice and making me sound like a small flute halfway through my original upload.
00:21:05.340 It was so strange. It wasn't like I made an editing mistake.
00:21:08.380 All I do with these videos is hit play, hit stop recording, I trim the first two seconds of dead air on either end, and then I upload the video.
00:21:16.200 It's like a pre-recorded radio show, the style that I do it.
00:21:19.160 And somehow the act of pausing the video and unpausing the video screwed up everything.
00:21:25.760 So thank you for being part of the exclusive club of people who heard my very strange voice.
00:21:31.640 If you saw that version of the video, do me a favor and forget that that happened.
00:21:35.800 And I also just wanted to mention at the end of this video, hey, if you're in British Columbia in September, I am going to be doing a town hall with the 1BC party on September 13th in Abbotsford.
00:21:50.900 I will be linking that in the description of the video below, as well as the Great Canadian Bagel podcast, which Chris should be putting out with me tomorrow morning.
00:21:59.920 Usually he uploads on Mondays, we record on Sundays, and he uploads on Mondays.
00:22:04.400 We just did a small podcast talking about polls and the current position that Mark Carney and the Liberals are in.
00:22:10.240 But with that being said, I will see you guys later.
00:22:13.620 I will see you guys later.