The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Carney's approval is falling + Calgary Mayoral polling update!

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We're on the board in this video because we are going to be doing a

00:00:06.460 debunking of a poll that is floating around out there, supposedly showing that Mark Carney is as

00:00:12.900 popular as he has ever been right now. In fact, he is the most popular Prime Minister of all time,

00:00:19.840 or at least since we actually started doing polling on Prime Minister's approval ratings

00:00:24.360 back in the 1950s. This is not true at all, and this is going to be a bit of a lesson on the sorts

00:00:31.200 of pollsters you can trust and the ones that you can completely discount, especially when a pollster

00:00:37.140 is being celebrated by Dean Blundell and CultMTL in terms of their results. Yeah, do not trust that

00:00:43.720 pollster, but we are talking about Spark Insights today, and I'm going to be comparing their numbers

00:00:49.100 to other numbers being put out by other pollsters, even some that I don't really like that much,

00:00:53.840 to show that this is completely unrealistic, and in fact, Mark Carney's approval rating is falling

00:00:59.380 over time because he is not immune to reality, and Canadians will react negatively to bad things

00:01:06.100 that he and his government do. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you guys, if you like

00:01:11.120 my polling videos, make sure to drop a like on this video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber,

00:01:16.840 as well as leave a comment on what you think about this whole polling situation. Also, if you live in

00:01:22.800 Calgary, I am going to be later on in this video doing a segment on the Calgary mayoral race, where

00:01:28.640 the candidates stand, and specifically why I think Sonia Sharp is the best person to be backing if

00:01:33.980 you're a conservative and want reform on the municipal level in Calgary. I do have a link below,

00:01:38.860 as well as pinned at the top of the comments, if you want a Sonia Sharp sign, I encourage you to get

00:01:42.620 one. But first, we'll start off with this Spark Insight poll. This poll truly claims that right now,

00:01:50.040 Mark Carney's approval rating is 68%. His disapproval rating is only 32%. Now, I can kind of already tell

00:02:01.840 exactly what this pollster is doing to come to this conclusion. Any pollster worth their salt is not

00:02:09.440 actually going to have 100% like this. There's going to be a lot of undecided people. You're going to

00:02:15.920 determine whether someone is slightly approving of the prime minister or very approving of him.

00:02:21.080 Do you think he's doing a great job or he's just doing a pretty good job? Do you really dislike him

00:02:25.780 or is it only you're a little disappointed? And this number is completely insane. Mark Carney is at

00:02:33.100 68% approval. The only other prime minister to ever get close to that is actually Justin Trudeau

00:02:40.060 right after he first got elected. Before he had messed anything up, he got to 67% in a single poll.

00:02:48.160 Maybe it was a Spark Insight poll, but only one poll. And I kind of somewhat believe that Justin Trudeau

00:02:53.980 in 2015 could be as high as 67, not 68. But maybe I could see on his high end, he could get 68%.

00:03:02.380 You know, it was the return of a Justin, of Justin, not Justin Trudeau, but it was the return of a

00:03:08.300 Trudeau. You know, a lot of people did like Pierre Elliott Trudeau who weren't from the West. So having

00:03:13.600 Justin assume office, obviously his approval rating in somewhere like Quebec might be 80%. In Ontario,

00:03:19.640 it might be in the seventies. In Alberta, maybe people give him the chance, give him a chance in like

00:03:24.980 he has 40% approval. But Mark Carney, after the Air Canada fiasco is going to be at 68%. Not a chance.

00:03:33.480 And I want to show you some numbers to prove why this doesn't make sense at all. We're going to be

00:03:39.340 going through some other pollsters, including Nanos. I don't even like Nanos. Their polling methodology

00:03:47.120 during elections is great. Between elections, they actually use a cheaper form of polling that has a

00:03:52.940 very heavy left bias overall. But I even want to show you, even on their power rankings of the

00:04:00.420 parties, this is where they show how potentially powerful a party could be. What they do is they

00:04:06.320 pull Canadians on, would this party be your first choice or second choice? And then they add the

00:04:10.780 numbers together. And that's how they do their power ratings. So in the recent Nanos power ratings,

00:04:16.260 they'll have the Conservatives at 45.2%. Because, you know, naturally, Canada has a little bit more of a

00:04:22.480 left lean in its political culture. So you'll probably have, you know, 38%, 34%. Again, Nanos is

00:04:29.320 polling samples, very left leaning. 34% of people choose them as their first choice, then you'll have

00:04:34.540 another 13% choose them as their second choice. But even on this poll, the current power rating for the

00:04:42.180 Liberals is 63%. So the Liberal Party can only get to 63% in Nanos' very left skewed poll, where people

00:04:55.640 can choose whether or not they would choose the Liberal Party as their first or second choice party to vote

00:05:01.640 vote for. Do you really approve of the guy who runs the party that you would only choose as your second

00:05:08.480 choice? Even Nanos, I believe, whenever they do an approval rating of the Prime Minister, he might be at 60%,

00:05:14.700 might be at 58%. I don't doubt that Carney is currently rated positively. He just got into office a little bit ago.

00:05:21.480 Generally, people will give him a chance. And there are a lot of people out there who think that to dislike

00:05:27.580 Donald Trump means to approve of Mark Carney. And even then, you will not get his approval rating

00:05:32.980 at as high as 68%. That is patently absurd. That is called a cooked poll, or a poll so badly done,

00:05:41.760 they should be going back to the drawing board. Now, I want to show you what his current approval,

00:05:47.200 his high watermark in Abacus Data's numbers was back in June, where his approval rating reached as high

00:05:55.340 as 51%. Now, that's not super, super high, but it makes sense considering the fact that, well, you know,

00:06:05.680 a lot of Canadians don't really want the Liberals around, and they just see him as the caretaker

00:06:10.420 of a fourth Liberal term. This is the more pessimistic polling, but even in this poll, they have just a

00:06:17.060 30% disapproval rating, because, you know, Abacus is smart, and they don't force you to actually pick

00:06:23.780 a party actually started back then they were at 27. But jumping ahead, right now, that was their high

00:06:30.620 water, that was his high watermark in June. Right now, Carney's approval rating according to Abacus

00:06:35.480 is only 48%. So do you think that they're wrong? A pollster who does far more polling than Spark

00:06:43.340 Insights? And actually, Carney's 20% more popular than Abacus is letting on. But again, it feels

00:06:51.280 manufactured. The fact, again, their poll equaled 100, and there was no, there was no undecided people

00:06:57.260 makes it feel like they're basically saying if you had to say yes or no, what would you do? And they

00:07:01.780 have a more liberal sample. And they're basically saying, even if you're only leaning him slightly,

00:07:06.620 you either have to say approve or disapprove. And most people who don't know will say,

00:07:10.120 I guess I approve. Because when you don't know, are you really going to say something bad about the

00:07:14.600 guy if they force you to say approve or disapprove? And then even in a recent innovative research poll,

00:07:22.020 the liberals are falling right now. We have seen in pretty much every polling sample done since the

00:07:29.160 Eric Hanna fiasco and him flip-flopping on the trade issue with on a trade deal with the United States,

00:07:35.880 that his approval rating, the government's approval rating, the national liberal polling has been

00:07:41.780 falling to the point that you actually had Abacus data show that the conservatives gained a three-point

00:07:48.300 lead or a two-point lead, something like that. Even Nanos, who I think is way over-polling the liberals,

00:07:55.000 they went from having the liberals up 13, 14 points to just being up 10 points because there was an effect.

00:08:01.760 You know what Spark Insight had the liberals at back in May in terms of Carney's approval?

00:08:10.480 60% right after he gets elected. This is May 30th's number that they had. He's only been elected for a

00:08:18.940 month, couldn't possibly have messed up anything. And somehow, in a few months after he's suffered

00:08:25.760 through multiple flubs, little mini scandals, the Eric Hanna fiasco, somehow he's gone up by eight points.

00:08:35.600 That's how you can tell a poll is not reliable. Reality will go one way and the poll will go the

00:08:41.120 other. This is why you do not even consider polls like Spark Insight. It's bad. I, again,

00:08:49.120 do not doubt that Mark Carney probably has a positive approval rating, even in Abacus data,

00:08:55.180 which has the conservatives up a few points. Mark Carney's approval rating is better than Pierre

00:08:59.680 Polyev's, even though Polyev, in the national numbers, his party is leading. It's because,

00:09:04.620 again, Carney's kind of in this pocket of time where people don't really know enough about him.

00:09:09.060 He just got elected. You know, give the boy a chance, kind of in an effect where people will just

00:09:13.260 say nice things. But the thing is, you're going to go up as your government does stupid things, 1.00

00:09:19.620 as you guys get caught in scandals, as you guys don't release a budget, you have a massive deficit, 0.98

00:09:24.820 and you are basically capitulating on the trade issue. And by the way, we should be trying to sign

00:09:29.080 a trade deal with the Americans. But after all the elbows up rhetoric, you're capitulating,

00:09:32.920 and your approval rating goes up. That is a bad poll. That is just a propaganda poll.

00:09:38.600 And when you actually go and you read the sorts of things that Spark Insight puts out on their

00:09:44.120 website, yeah, these guys are liberals. They're just out-and-out liberals who maybe their polls

00:09:50.400 are not scuffed, but at least the methodology is bad, and they're not fixing it for a reason.

00:09:56.180 Here is a title from Bruce Anderson, the guy who runs Spark Insight's blog. It says,

00:10:01.340 Polyev, the ideologue is a conservative problem. Canadians prefer politicians who are pragmatic,

00:10:06.680 especially in challenging times. Pragmatic? Pragmatic sounds like, you know, they react

00:10:13.860 to policy failures and they try to shift in the other direction. We've just been doubling down

00:10:18.260 with the liberals. Pragmatic kind of describes Polyev wanting to adjust things the other way,

00:10:23.760 since the way we're doing it is not currently working. And the whole article is just him basically

00:10:28.880 showing, oh, people hate Polyev's guts based on my crappy polls. It's probably because he's too

00:10:33.920 conservative and they should get rid of him and replace him with an O'Toole type person.

00:10:38.060 No, that's entirely wrong. If you think that that's real, I don't know. I have a bridge to

00:10:43.440 sell you in Brooklyn. I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. I have the deed for it. I will give it

00:10:47.860 to you if you believe that Carney went from 60% approval in May, which maybe that's plausible. A lot

00:10:54.800 of people are giving the benefit of the doubt. And as he fails, he goes up higher. No, he does not.

00:10:59.940 Anyways, I'm going to clear the board and then I'm going to come back with the poll out from Calgary

00:11:05.340 and show you where the candidates are currently standing and how I think the race is going to

00:11:10.160 be evolving over time. Okay, now we are back with the Calgary numbers. So back in late June,

00:11:19.360 Leger put out a poll just asking Calgarians who are you going to be, who do you think you're going

00:11:24.160 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

00:11:30.020 basically give you the little disclaimer that both their June 28th poll and their most recent poll that

00:11:37.360 they released in later August, both have 45% of people who are currently undecided. That is probably

00:11:45.980 not going to even change for another 30 days. Maybe it goes down to maybe 35% undecided, but people in

00:11:52.700 municipal elections genuinely take a little bit longer to decide who they're going to be voting

00:11:58.480 for. You know, there's no easy party labels to follow. Yes, there are now parties like the Calgary

00:12:04.240 party, which is super left wing. And then you have communities first, which is more conservative.

00:12:09.020 But the thing is that people aren't used to it yet. So when a candidate is backed by a certain party,

00:12:14.260 it doesn't matter. And in fact, the two candidates who are currently leading are independents,

00:12:18.640 both more liberal people. But I find some of these things are going to be name recognition based,

00:12:24.240 but we can still determine things about how Calgary municipal politics is shaping up

00:12:29.120 based on where the polls are currently kind of headed, because it demonstrates momentum or a lack

00:12:36.020 of momentum behind specific people. And so in the last poll that they did, this will be the June poll,

00:12:43.080 and then I will have the August poll on the other side. So we have June over here, and we have August

00:12:50.280 over here. So June got a little bit cut off. I'm just trying to keep some good looking columns here.

00:12:56.420 So in June, we had Jeremy Farkas was leading this poll with 19%. And then following him was Jody Gondek,

00:13:10.240 oh goodness, at, I believe it was 12%. Now, I actually say that Farkas and Gondek as people,

00:13:20.480 back when they ran against each other in 2021, were very different individuals. Farkas has always 0.92

00:13:26.640 been a more social liberal, but on fiscal issues, he was a hawk. And now he's basically become Nahid

00:13:33.260 Nenshi. Like the man desperately wants to be mayor. And so he is willing to be a left-wing progressive

00:13:39.240 if he thinks it will benefit him. His entire website, like previous election, was based on

00:13:44.300 fiscal responsibility and cutting taxes and wasteful spending. And now it's programs, programs,

00:13:49.480 programs, programs, just running on programs. But in the June poll, we actually had Jeff Davison

00:13:55.740 running at 10%, which is pretty respectable. And then Sonia Sharp, who I support,

00:14:06.800 was back with 7%. Now, naturally, the three top people in this early poll had an advantage. All

00:14:15.620 three of them had run for mayor last time. Farkas came second, of course, Gondek won, and Davison

00:14:21.300 came third place. Actually, Davison had 13% in that last election. I believe Farkas had 28%,

00:14:28.840 and Gondek had something like 43%. And so you can see a big shift there from Farkas now being a leader

00:14:37.140 in these races to Gondek kind of being a more middle of the pack, a little bit weaker. And Davison

00:14:43.340 kind of mostly maintaining what he had last time. But naturally, a lot of people got used to seeing

00:14:49.060 their names all over the city in the last election. And so they had kind of a disproportionate advantage

00:14:54.240 over somebody like Sharp. There's also Thiessen in this race, who's kind of also a hyper-progressive

00:15:00.320 like Gondek. And he actually has unions on his side. In his last poll, I think he only had like 3%.

00:15:06.420 But now, let's jump ahead to the August poll that they just released over at Leger. This one actually had

00:15:15.640 Gondek leading. But I would even say, I would still characterize her polling as not very good.

00:15:24.080 She went up, and she is at 15% now. So that is a gain of 3 for her. Farkas actually crashed down 1.00

00:15:32.700 quite a bit. And I cannot, I don't think this is just a polling error. He fell from 19% to 14%.

00:15:41.900 He lost 5 points since their last poll. And the man has high name recognition. Him and Gondek.

00:15:48.640 Gondek is known by like 60-70% of people. Kind of funny that people can live in a city and not know

00:15:54.020 who the mayor is. But you know, a lot of people know who Gondek is. The fact that only 15% of people

00:15:59.780 are choosing Gondek in a poll tells you they don't like her very much. The fact that 45% of people are

00:16:05.300 undecided is pathetic for her. Do you think that Ralph Klein had people undecided on him after his 0.91

00:16:11.820 first term? Do you think even although he wasn't a great mayor, Dave Bronconye had high approvals.

00:16:18.960 A lot of people were going to choose him in the next election. Naheed Nenshi, I don't like the guy,

00:16:23.640 but he was a character. He was charismatic, and the people who liked him really liked him.

00:16:27.500 And he probably had high polling going into the 2013 mayor's race, which is why nobody really ran

00:16:36.100 against him in that one. I think John Lord did or whatever and got cleaned up. Naturally, he wasn't

00:16:41.260 even really much of an opponent. But then in this poll, we now have Sharp maintaining most of what she 1.00

00:16:49.500 has and jumping up to eight points. But the big story of this poll, I actually find, is that Jeff

00:16:57.740 Davison fell down as well like Farkas and is only at 6% in this poll. He went from 10 to 6, having lost

00:17:10.020 four points. And then you had Farkas here losing five. You had Gondek, oh no, sorry, Farkas. 0.99

00:17:17.140 I was running on Gondeks. Gondek gained three points.

00:17:24.740 Gondek lost, or Gondek, sorry, you know, Farkas lost five. I'm getting all frazzled here. And

00:17:31.740 Sharp gained one. Specifically, Sharp is the one I'm also supporting because she's the only person

00:17:38.280 who's actually running on cutting spending. If you think all these other people just run on,

00:17:43.020 I'm going to freeze your taxes. No, you're not. Spending government budgets naturally have to

00:17:47.900 grow over time to pay for more stuff. And either they're going to be paying for it on higher price

00:17:53.880 evaluations of your house, which is your taxes going up, or they're going to have to raise the

00:17:57.800 rate. Saying that they're freezing your taxes just means that they will freeze the rate, but they can

00:18:02.580 still evaluate your house to be $50,000 more than it was last year in order to get you some more money

00:18:08.080 out of you. Thiessen in this poll, I believe actually fell down. What am I saying? I believe

00:18:14.700 you. I actually know it. He is now only at 2%, and he's lost a point. I actually believe Thiessen and

00:18:22.040 the Calgary party are going to be more formidable as election day approaches because they have basically

00:18:28.620 union backing. A union front group is effectively backing the party. Calgary's future is still a third

00:18:36.240 party advertiser, but I believe that Calgary's future and the Calgary party are almost working

00:18:42.060 in tandem. You can even look at their logos, and they're kind of the same kind of progressive,

00:18:46.620 bubbly kind of fonts and whatnot. And the type of people they're running are very much the type of

00:18:51.460 people that the Calgary's future pack endorsed last time. But what I think is going on here is that

00:18:59.020 Davison is pretty much just trying to run as, like, I am the chosen son, I am the conservative

00:19:05.440 guy, and you should all trust me. And he's just kind of, like, waiting for a groundswell to come

00:19:09.900 for him. And it's not coming because he's not a conservative. He had a terrible voting record in

00:19:15.140 the last election, in the last time he was on council. Obviously, he ran for mayor, so he wasn't on

00:19:19.820 council over the last four years. But when he was on council between 2017 and 2021, the man couldn't find

00:19:26.040 some stupid spending he didn't like. He also couldn't find any ways of, you know, reducing costs that 0.98

00:19:31.740 he actually liked either. So he always voted for more spending, and he always voted against cost-saving

00:19:36.580 measures. Whereas Sonia Sharp, as much as Davison's people very dishonestly are trying to label her as

00:19:42.660 a liberal, yes, she is more socially liberal. It's municipal politics. I really don't care about social

00:19:48.280 issues and municipal politics. And by the way, Davison's also a social liberal. But Sharp, in her voting 0.99

00:19:53.880 record, is actually pretty good overall. There's some votes in there I disagree with. And in fact,

00:19:59.320 most of them she's walked back and would usually help sponsor a piece of, like, a motion in order

00:20:04.680 to basically roll it back. Like when the city banned plastic bags and straws, although the federal

00:20:10.660 government also banned them, so it didn't really have an effect on what the municipal government

00:20:14.160 did. She actually helped sponsor, with Dan McLean, a motion in order to roll back the single-use

00:20:22.120 plastic ban in the city. And so even if she voted in favor of it, which I actually have never been

00:20:26.580 able to find if she voted for it or not, the thing is she has been sponsoring things in the right

00:20:31.400 direction. She's opposed things like blanket rezoning. She's opposed things like tax increases, 1.00

00:20:35.520 where Jeff supported them every time. And right now we are seeing Sonia Sharp, with some momentum

00:20:41.840 going forward, able to hold on to and gain a little bit on what she used to have. We see Davison

00:20:47.140 losing 40% of what he used to have. He went from 10 to 6. And at least Sharp actually has a track

00:20:55.860 record of being conservative, so I don't know what all the hooping and hollering online is about how

00:21:00.860 we gotta get behind Jeff. He's the conservative chosen son. Did you know he volunteered on some

00:21:05.720 conservative campaigns? It's called networking. That's not impressive. Who gives a crap if Sonia

00:21:10.820 volunteered or not? She's been running a more serious campaign and probably didn't take time off 0.98

00:21:15.280 to doorknock in ridings that the conservatives federally were easily going to win. Anyways,

00:21:20.900 but that should probably be it for me today, guys. Hopefully you don't mind this Calgary municipal

00:21:26.200 polling update. Hopefully all my Calgarian viewers stuck around for this. But this is specifically why

00:21:32.220 I see Sharp as the best option. These two, Gontek and Farkas, are honestly not polling all that well.

00:21:38.680 15% and 14% for the people who ran last time and is the incumbent mayor is pretty

00:21:45.160 bad because people know who these people are and they're really not flocking to them.

00:21:49.300 45% of people being undecided means a lot of people are looking for somebody else.

00:21:53.840 Now, Davidson over a couple months has lost support. People stopped looking at him after

00:22:00.140 observing him for a couple of months. It should be pretty easy to maintain what you have and grow

00:22:04.520 it a little bit even when people aren't paying attention that much. To fall off from 10 to 6 is

00:22:09.440 really pathetic. Right now, Sharp is not only the more reliable person on her votes, but is actually 0.95

00:22:16.100 growing and maintaining. You can actually catch those two from 8% to 14 and 16. As people start

00:22:24.240 deciding, she just has to start winning those decided votes by a decent margin in order to overtake 1.00

00:22:30.220 the other two. I think as time goes on, with the fact that she's running a full slate of candidates

00:22:35.260 in the rest of the city, is naturally going to help raise her name recognition and give her a lot of 0.99

00:22:41.080 get-out-the-vote kind of campaigning apparatus. Whereas both Davidson and Farkas, if you like Farkas

00:22:47.460 still, they're running as independents and I guarantee they will have a much smaller turnout game because

00:22:53.740 they don't have allies in the different wards running for council who will also remind people

00:22:57.980 to get out and vote for the mayoral candidate. But anyways, as we get closer, I am going to update my

00:23:03.780 own website and let you know who I would vote for in the different wards. So in like Ward 9,

00:23:08.900 I'm not even backing the Sonia Sharp community's first candidate in Ward 9. A little bit too lefty

00:23:14.180 for me. It was somebody who has flirted with running for the NDP in the past. And this doesn't mean I

00:23:19.280 dislike the community's first slate. I'd probably vote for the vast majority of them. In Ward 9,

00:23:23.700 it's an example of where I'd vote for like Gar-Gar. He's an independent candidate. I think he's pretty

00:23:29.580 good. In Ward 6, I'd be voting for Joanne Burst. There is no community's first candidate there. 0.99

00:23:34.420 She's a good candidate. She's an independent. And pretty much everywhere else, you could vote for 1.00

00:23:38.920 the community's first candidate if you're just looking for a default. But I will be putting

00:23:43.020 out a list later where I kind of nuance it out a little bit. And in some wards, there's going to be

00:23:47.440 two people that I think are good that you can choose between. And in other wards, I might be picking

00:23:51.700 an independent because there's no community's first candidate. But for now, that's probably all you

00:23:57.040 really need to know. But anyways, with that being said, I will see you guys all later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - September 03, 2025

Carney's approval is falling + Calgary Mayoral polling update!

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