Carney's approval is falling + Calgary Mayoral polling update!
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Summary
In this video, we debunk a poll that claims that Prime Minister Mark Carney is the most popular Prime Minister of all time. We look at other pollsters, including Nanos, to prove that this is not the case.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We're on the board in this video because we are going to be doing a
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debunking of a poll that is floating around out there, supposedly showing that Mark Carney is as
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popular as he has ever been right now. In fact, he is the most popular Prime Minister of all time,
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or at least since we actually started doing polling on Prime Minister's approval ratings
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back in the 1950s. This is not true at all, and this is going to be a bit of a lesson on the sorts
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of pollsters you can trust and the ones that you can completely discount, especially when a pollster
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is being celebrated by Dean Blundell and CultMTL in terms of their results. Yeah, do not trust that
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pollster, but we are talking about Spark Insights today, and I'm going to be comparing their numbers
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to other numbers being put out by other pollsters, even some that I don't really like that much,
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to show that this is completely unrealistic, and in fact, Mark Carney's approval rating is falling
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over time because he is not immune to reality, and Canadians will react negatively to bad things
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that he and his government do. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you guys, if you like
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my polling videos, make sure to drop a like on this video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber,
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as well as leave a comment on what you think about this whole polling situation. Also, if you live in
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Calgary, I am going to be later on in this video doing a segment on the Calgary mayoral race, where
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the candidates stand, and specifically why I think Sonia Sharp is the best person to be backing if
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you're a conservative and want reform on the municipal level in Calgary. I do have a link below,
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as well as pinned at the top of the comments, if you want a Sonia Sharp sign, I encourage you to get
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one. But first, we'll start off with this Spark Insight poll. This poll truly claims that right now,
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Mark Carney's approval rating is 68%. His disapproval rating is only 32%. Now, I can kind of already tell
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exactly what this pollster is doing to come to this conclusion. Any pollster worth their salt is not
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actually going to have 100% like this. There's going to be a lot of undecided people. You're going to
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determine whether someone is slightly approving of the prime minister or very approving of him.
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Do you think he's doing a great job or he's just doing a pretty good job? Do you really dislike him
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or is it only you're a little disappointed? And this number is completely insane. Mark Carney is at
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68% approval. The only other prime minister to ever get close to that is actually Justin Trudeau
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right after he first got elected. Before he had messed anything up, he got to 67% in a single poll.
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Maybe it was a Spark Insight poll, but only one poll. And I kind of somewhat believe that Justin Trudeau
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in 2015 could be as high as 67, not 68. But maybe I could see on his high end, he could get 68%.
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You know, it was the return of a Justin, of Justin, not Justin Trudeau, but it was the return of a
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Trudeau. You know, a lot of people did like Pierre Elliott Trudeau who weren't from the West. So having
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Justin assume office, obviously his approval rating in somewhere like Quebec might be 80%. In Ontario,
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it might be in the seventies. In Alberta, maybe people give him the chance, give him a chance in like
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he has 40% approval. But Mark Carney, after the Air Canada fiasco is going to be at 68%. Not a chance.
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And I want to show you some numbers to prove why this doesn't make sense at all. We're going to be
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going through some other pollsters, including Nanos. I don't even like Nanos. Their polling methodology
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during elections is great. Between elections, they actually use a cheaper form of polling that has a
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very heavy left bias overall. But I even want to show you, even on their power rankings of the
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parties, this is where they show how potentially powerful a party could be. What they do is they
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pull Canadians on, would this party be your first choice or second choice? And then they add the
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numbers together. And that's how they do their power ratings. So in the recent Nanos power ratings,
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they'll have the Conservatives at 45.2%. Because, you know, naturally, Canada has a little bit more of a
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left lean in its political culture. So you'll probably have, you know, 38%, 34%. Again, Nanos is
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polling samples, very left leaning. 34% of people choose them as their first choice, then you'll have
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another 13% choose them as their second choice. But even on this poll, the current power rating for the
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Liberals is 63%. So the Liberal Party can only get to 63% in Nanos' very left skewed poll, where people
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can choose whether or not they would choose the Liberal Party as their first or second choice party to vote
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vote for. Do you really approve of the guy who runs the party that you would only choose as your second
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choice? Even Nanos, I believe, whenever they do an approval rating of the Prime Minister, he might be at 60%,
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might be at 58%. I don't doubt that Carney is currently rated positively. He just got into office a little bit ago.
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Generally, people will give him a chance. And there are a lot of people out there who think that to dislike
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Donald Trump means to approve of Mark Carney. And even then, you will not get his approval rating
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at as high as 68%. That is patently absurd. That is called a cooked poll, or a poll so badly done,
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they should be going back to the drawing board. Now, I want to show you what his current approval,
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his high watermark in Abacus Data's numbers was back in June, where his approval rating reached as high
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as 51%. Now, that's not super, super high, but it makes sense considering the fact that, well, you know,
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a lot of Canadians don't really want the Liberals around, and they just see him as the caretaker
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of a fourth Liberal term. This is the more pessimistic polling, but even in this poll, they have just a
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30% disapproval rating, because, you know, Abacus is smart, and they don't force you to actually pick
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a party actually started back then they were at 27. But jumping ahead, right now, that was their high
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water, that was his high watermark in June. Right now, Carney's approval rating according to Abacus
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is only 48%. So do you think that they're wrong? A pollster who does far more polling than Spark
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Insights? And actually, Carney's 20% more popular than Abacus is letting on. But again, it feels
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manufactured. The fact, again, their poll equaled 100, and there was no, there was no undecided people
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makes it feel like they're basically saying if you had to say yes or no, what would you do? And they
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have a more liberal sample. And they're basically saying, even if you're only leaning him slightly,
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you either have to say approve or disapprove. And most people who don't know will say,
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I guess I approve. Because when you don't know, are you really going to say something bad about the
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guy if they force you to say approve or disapprove? And then even in a recent innovative research poll,
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the liberals are falling right now. We have seen in pretty much every polling sample done since the
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Eric Hanna fiasco and him flip-flopping on the trade issue with on a trade deal with the United States,
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that his approval rating, the government's approval rating, the national liberal polling has been
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falling to the point that you actually had Abacus data show that the conservatives gained a three-point
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lead or a two-point lead, something like that. Even Nanos, who I think is way over-polling the liberals,
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they went from having the liberals up 13, 14 points to just being up 10 points because there was an effect.
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You know what Spark Insight had the liberals at back in May in terms of Carney's approval?
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60% right after he gets elected. This is May 30th's number that they had. He's only been elected for a
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month, couldn't possibly have messed up anything. And somehow, in a few months after he's suffered
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through multiple flubs, little mini scandals, the Eric Hanna fiasco, somehow he's gone up by eight points.
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That's how you can tell a poll is not reliable. Reality will go one way and the poll will go the
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other. This is why you do not even consider polls like Spark Insight. It's bad. I, again,
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do not doubt that Mark Carney probably has a positive approval rating, even in Abacus data,
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which has the conservatives up a few points. Mark Carney's approval rating is better than Pierre
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Polyev's, even though Polyev, in the national numbers, his party is leading. It's because,
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again, Carney's kind of in this pocket of time where people don't really know enough about him.
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He just got elected. You know, give the boy a chance, kind of in an effect where people will just
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say nice things. But the thing is, you're going to go up as your government does stupid things,
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as you guys get caught in scandals, as you guys don't release a budget, you have a massive deficit,
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and you are basically capitulating on the trade issue. And by the way, we should be trying to sign
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a trade deal with the Americans. But after all the elbows up rhetoric, you're capitulating,
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and your approval rating goes up. That is a bad poll. That is just a propaganda poll.
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And when you actually go and you read the sorts of things that Spark Insight puts out on their
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website, yeah, these guys are liberals. They're just out-and-out liberals who maybe their polls
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are not scuffed, but at least the methodology is bad, and they're not fixing it for a reason.
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Here is a title from Bruce Anderson, the guy who runs Spark Insight's blog. It says,
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Polyev, the ideologue is a conservative problem. Canadians prefer politicians who are pragmatic,
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especially in challenging times. Pragmatic? Pragmatic sounds like, you know, they react
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to policy failures and they try to shift in the other direction. We've just been doubling down
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with the liberals. Pragmatic kind of describes Polyev wanting to adjust things the other way,
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since the way we're doing it is not currently working. And the whole article is just him basically
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showing, oh, people hate Polyev's guts based on my crappy polls. It's probably because he's too
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conservative and they should get rid of him and replace him with an O'Toole type person.
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No, that's entirely wrong. If you think that that's real, I don't know. I have a bridge to
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sell you in Brooklyn. I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. I have the deed for it. I will give it
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to you if you believe that Carney went from 60% approval in May, which maybe that's plausible. A lot
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of people are giving the benefit of the doubt. And as he fails, he goes up higher. No, he does not.
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Anyways, I'm going to clear the board and then I'm going to come back with the poll out from Calgary
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and show you where the candidates are currently standing and how I think the race is going to
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be evolving over time. Okay, now we are back with the Calgary numbers. So back in late June,
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Leger put out a poll just asking Calgarians who are you going to be, who do you think you're going
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to be voting for for mayor? Now we're very far out. So I'm going to, I'm going to clarify or just like
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basically give you the little disclaimer that both their June 28th poll and their most recent poll that
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they released in later August, both have 45% of people who are currently undecided. That is probably
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not going to even change for another 30 days. Maybe it goes down to maybe 35% undecided, but people in
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municipal elections genuinely take a little bit longer to decide who they're going to be voting
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for. You know, there's no easy party labels to follow. Yes, there are now parties like the Calgary
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party, which is super left wing. And then you have communities first, which is more conservative.
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But the thing is that people aren't used to it yet. So when a candidate is backed by a certain party,
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it doesn't matter. And in fact, the two candidates who are currently leading are independents,
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both more liberal people. But I find some of these things are going to be name recognition based,
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but we can still determine things about how Calgary municipal politics is shaping up
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based on where the polls are currently kind of headed, because it demonstrates momentum or a lack
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of momentum behind specific people. And so in the last poll that they did, this will be the June poll,
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and then I will have the August poll on the other side. So we have June over here, and we have August
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over here. So June got a little bit cut off. I'm just trying to keep some good looking columns here.
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So in June, we had Jeremy Farkas was leading this poll with 19%. And then following him was Jody Gondek,
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oh goodness, at, I believe it was 12%. Now, I actually say that Farkas and Gondek as people,
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back when they ran against each other in 2021, were very different individuals. Farkas has always
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been a more social liberal, but on fiscal issues, he was a hawk. And now he's basically become Nahid
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Nenshi. Like the man desperately wants to be mayor. And so he is willing to be a left-wing progressive
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if he thinks it will benefit him. His entire website, like previous election, was based on
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fiscal responsibility and cutting taxes and wasteful spending. And now it's programs, programs,
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programs, programs, just running on programs. But in the June poll, we actually had Jeff Davison
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running at 10%, which is pretty respectable. And then Sonia Sharp, who I support,
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was back with 7%. Now, naturally, the three top people in this early poll had an advantage. All
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three of them had run for mayor last time. Farkas came second, of course, Gondek won, and Davison
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came third place. Actually, Davison had 13% in that last election. I believe Farkas had 28%,
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and Gondek had something like 43%. And so you can see a big shift there from Farkas now being a leader
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in these races to Gondek kind of being a more middle of the pack, a little bit weaker. And Davison
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kind of mostly maintaining what he had last time. But naturally, a lot of people got used to seeing
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their names all over the city in the last election. And so they had kind of a disproportionate advantage
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over somebody like Sharp. There's also Thiessen in this race, who's kind of also a hyper-progressive
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like Gondek. And he actually has unions on his side. In his last poll, I think he only had like 3%.
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But now, let's jump ahead to the August poll that they just released over at Leger. This one actually had
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Gondek leading. But I would even say, I would still characterize her polling as not very good.
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She went up, and she is at 15% now. So that is a gain of 3 for her. Farkas actually crashed down
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quite a bit. And I cannot, I don't think this is just a polling error. He fell from 19% to 14%.
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He lost 5 points since their last poll. And the man has high name recognition. Him and Gondek.
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Gondek is known by like 60-70% of people. Kind of funny that people can live in a city and not know
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who the mayor is. But you know, a lot of people know who Gondek is. The fact that only 15% of people
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are choosing Gondek in a poll tells you they don't like her very much. The fact that 45% of people are
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undecided is pathetic for her. Do you think that Ralph Klein had people undecided on him after his
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first term? Do you think even although he wasn't a great mayor, Dave Bronconye had high approvals.
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A lot of people were going to choose him in the next election. Naheed Nenshi, I don't like the guy,
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but he was a character. He was charismatic, and the people who liked him really liked him.
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And he probably had high polling going into the 2013 mayor's race, which is why nobody really ran
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against him in that one. I think John Lord did or whatever and got cleaned up. Naturally, he wasn't
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even really much of an opponent. But then in this poll, we now have Sharp maintaining most of what she
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has and jumping up to eight points. But the big story of this poll, I actually find, is that Jeff
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Davison fell down as well like Farkas and is only at 6% in this poll. He went from 10 to 6, having lost
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four points. And then you had Farkas here losing five. You had Gondek, oh no, sorry, Farkas.
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I was running on Gondeks. Gondek gained three points.
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Gondek lost, or Gondek, sorry, you know, Farkas lost five. I'm getting all frazzled here. And
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Sharp gained one. Specifically, Sharp is the one I'm also supporting because she's the only person
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who's actually running on cutting spending. If you think all these other people just run on,
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I'm going to freeze your taxes. No, you're not. Spending government budgets naturally have to
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grow over time to pay for more stuff. And either they're going to be paying for it on higher price
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evaluations of your house, which is your taxes going up, or they're going to have to raise the
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rate. Saying that they're freezing your taxes just means that they will freeze the rate, but they can
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still evaluate your house to be $50,000 more than it was last year in order to get you some more money
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out of you. Thiessen in this poll, I believe actually fell down. What am I saying? I believe
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you. I actually know it. He is now only at 2%, and he's lost a point. I actually believe Thiessen and
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the Calgary party are going to be more formidable as election day approaches because they have basically
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union backing. A union front group is effectively backing the party. Calgary's future is still a third
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party advertiser, but I believe that Calgary's future and the Calgary party are almost working
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in tandem. You can even look at their logos, and they're kind of the same kind of progressive,
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bubbly kind of fonts and whatnot. And the type of people they're running are very much the type of
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people that the Calgary's future pack endorsed last time. But what I think is going on here is that
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Davison is pretty much just trying to run as, like, I am the chosen son, I am the conservative
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guy, and you should all trust me. And he's just kind of, like, waiting for a groundswell to come
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for him. And it's not coming because he's not a conservative. He had a terrible voting record in
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the last election, in the last time he was on council. Obviously, he ran for mayor, so he wasn't on
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council over the last four years. But when he was on council between 2017 and 2021, the man couldn't find
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some stupid spending he didn't like. He also couldn't find any ways of, you know, reducing costs that
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he actually liked either. So he always voted for more spending, and he always voted against cost-saving
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measures. Whereas Sonia Sharp, as much as Davison's people very dishonestly are trying to label her as
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a liberal, yes, she is more socially liberal. It's municipal politics. I really don't care about social
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issues and municipal politics. And by the way, Davison's also a social liberal. But Sharp, in her voting
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record, is actually pretty good overall. There's some votes in there I disagree with. And in fact,
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most of them she's walked back and would usually help sponsor a piece of, like, a motion in order
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to basically roll it back. Like when the city banned plastic bags and straws, although the federal
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government also banned them, so it didn't really have an effect on what the municipal government
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did. She actually helped sponsor, with Dan McLean, a motion in order to roll back the single-use
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plastic ban in the city. And so even if she voted in favor of it, which I actually have never been
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able to find if she voted for it or not, the thing is she has been sponsoring things in the right
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direction. She's opposed things like blanket rezoning. She's opposed things like tax increases,
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where Jeff supported them every time. And right now we are seeing Sonia Sharp, with some momentum
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going forward, able to hold on to and gain a little bit on what she used to have. We see Davison
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losing 40% of what he used to have. He went from 10 to 6. And at least Sharp actually has a track
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record of being conservative, so I don't know what all the hooping and hollering online is about how
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we gotta get behind Jeff. He's the conservative chosen son. Did you know he volunteered on some
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conservative campaigns? It's called networking. That's not impressive. Who gives a crap if Sonia
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volunteered or not? She's been running a more serious campaign and probably didn't take time off
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to doorknock in ridings that the conservatives federally were easily going to win. Anyways,
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but that should probably be it for me today, guys. Hopefully you don't mind this Calgary municipal
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polling update. Hopefully all my Calgarian viewers stuck around for this. But this is specifically why
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I see Sharp as the best option. These two, Gontek and Farkas, are honestly not polling all that well.
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15% and 14% for the people who ran last time and is the incumbent mayor is pretty
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bad because people know who these people are and they're really not flocking to them.
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45% of people being undecided means a lot of people are looking for somebody else.
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Now, Davidson over a couple months has lost support. People stopped looking at him after
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observing him for a couple of months. It should be pretty easy to maintain what you have and grow
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it a little bit even when people aren't paying attention that much. To fall off from 10 to 6 is
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really pathetic. Right now, Sharp is not only the more reliable person on her votes, but is actually
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growing and maintaining. You can actually catch those two from 8% to 14 and 16. As people start
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deciding, she just has to start winning those decided votes by a decent margin in order to overtake
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the other two. I think as time goes on, with the fact that she's running a full slate of candidates
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in the rest of the city, is naturally going to help raise her name recognition and give her a lot of
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get-out-the-vote kind of campaigning apparatus. Whereas both Davidson and Farkas, if you like Farkas
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still, they're running as independents and I guarantee they will have a much smaller turnout game because
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they don't have allies in the different wards running for council who will also remind people
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to get out and vote for the mayoral candidate. But anyways, as we get closer, I am going to update my
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own website and let you know who I would vote for in the different wards. So in like Ward 9,
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I'm not even backing the Sonia Sharp community's first candidate in Ward 9. A little bit too lefty
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for me. It was somebody who has flirted with running for the NDP in the past. And this doesn't mean I
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dislike the community's first slate. I'd probably vote for the vast majority of them. In Ward 9,
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it's an example of where I'd vote for like Gar-Gar. He's an independent candidate. I think he's pretty
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good. In Ward 6, I'd be voting for Joanne Burst. There is no community's first candidate there.
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She's a good candidate. She's an independent. And pretty much everywhere else, you could vote for
00:23:38.920
the community's first candidate if you're just looking for a default. But I will be putting
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out a list later where I kind of nuance it out a little bit. And in some wards, there's going to be
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two people that I think are good that you can choose between. And in other wards, I might be picking
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an independent because there's no community's first candidate. But for now, that's probably all you
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really need to know. But anyways, with that being said, I will see you guys all later.