The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Conservative within striking distance of winning Calgary Mayor Race!

00:00:00.160 Ahoy everyone, Wyatt Claypool here back on the whiteboard today to give you what should be the last Calgary polling update before the election on the 20th.

00:00:11.620 This election is bound to have a Hollywood finish because this last poll we are going to go over is super, super tight.

00:00:22.080 We have been covering this race since back when Sonia Sharp, who I am supporting, was in fourth place in the polls, but through putting together what has been a very competent campaign and being the obviously more conservative candidate in the race, she has been moving up the ranks and now is in striking distance of winning the whole thing.

00:00:43.120 Naturally, I think she has the advantage in this because she is running with a party rather than her main opponent, Jeremy Farkas, just running as an independent, but we will see how things play out.

00:00:55.140 But before we get into the exact details, of course, I'm going to plug that if you don't have a Sonia Sharp sign yet and you live in the city of Calgary, and goodness, you actually want a conservative to be the mayor for once, make sure to go in the description below and click the link to go get a sign for Sonia Sharp.

00:01:13.120 Also, I will link in my endorsement list for the entire Calgary election. I think there's only a couple of positions that I've left out. There's one public school board dual ward that I don't have someone for. School board trustees run in two wards at a time, which sounds absolutely nightmarish.

00:01:33.580 So I'm missing one public school board trustee, and then I only had two Catholic school board trustees I've endorsed. Naturally, it's really difficult to get information on every small race that's going on around the city.

00:01:46.020 And then I also have endorsements for Airdrie, Edmonton, Cochran, Red Deer, Medicine Hat, and I think I already said Edmonton.

00:01:55.940 You guys can go check it out. But we are here to talk about Calgary.

00:02:00.680 So when I say this race is tight, I mean, previously I said it was tight, and that's when Jeremy Farkas was at like 30%.

00:02:08.900 And he is basically Nenshi 3.0 because Jody Gondek was Nenshi 2.0, which is so sad because he used to be good.

00:02:18.380 He used to be conservative, and he's just decided that all that matters to him is being mayor, so he has put on basically a bodysuit of Naheed Nenshi attempting to become the mayor.

00:02:30.860 Because heck, that guy was mayor three elections in a row, and Gondek became mayor. How about I just become like them, and maybe I can be mayor too?

00:02:39.960 But Farkas right now has been basically falling down or stalling out a bit.

00:02:46.060 He is still in the lead, but he's not exactly been gaining ground in the way you would want to.

00:02:51.300 When you're in the lead, you don't just want to stay in the lead, you want to expand that lead.

00:02:56.280 I'm giving Farkas on this chart, rightfully so, a Nenshi purple color here. 1.00

00:03:02.140 And Farkas is currently at, according to the Janet Brown poll that just came out, 27%.

00:03:09.180 And then, he is followed closely behind by both Sharp and Gondek, who have the same rating of 23%.

00:03:19.920 So this is definitely going to be a close race, and when I go over the undecideds, you'll know exactly what I mean here.

00:03:28.260 So we have 23% for Sharp here, and then I will give Gondek the horrible pink color that she has made for all of her signs.

00:03:37.420 She is tied with Sharp at 23%.

00:03:41.120 But I think it's safe to say that at this point, Gondek can't win.

00:03:47.020 Now, you could think, well, why if she's tied with Sharp, and you said Sharp is in striking distance of winning?

00:03:53.480 Yes, but she's the incumbent. 1.00

00:03:55.960 Everyone and their dog knows who Gondek is.

00:03:59.260 If you're trailing, and you are fighting to stay in maybe second place, you're not winning if you're the incumbent.

00:04:06.280 If you're an up-and-comer, and you used to be in many of the polls at 7% behind Jeff Davison,

00:04:15.660 and now you're in second place only a few points behind the leader, yeah, you can potentially win.

00:04:22.720 And now I'll mark Jeff Davison down here in a light blue, because he's kind of pretending to be conservative this time around,

00:04:29.100 even though the man ran basically as a liberal.

00:04:32.680 Previously, Jeff Davison was super liberal on council.

00:04:36.940 When I say that, I mean the man had a one-to-one voting record, pretty much,

00:04:41.820 with Nenshi and Gondek when he was on council between 2017 and 2021.

00:04:46.120 Voted for every tax increase, voted to defund the police,

00:04:49.040 voted against every single measure to try and find wasteful spending in government and cut it.

00:04:54.260 It was a disaster.

00:04:55.680 And he is only at 16%.

00:04:59.420 Now, there are other candidates in this race,

00:05:02.740 and maybe just for the sake of completion, I will write them down on the side here in black.

00:05:08.800 We really don't need to know their names, because they are irrelevant.

00:05:12.640 Like, they'll play into potentially who's going to win, but they're not going to be on the bar chart

00:05:18.120 when you're watching the news at night, going back and forth to see who's going to win.

00:05:21.820 But right now, Brian Thiessen is the closest to relevant, and Brian is, I'll just put him at a B,

00:05:28.820 Brian is at 8%.

00:05:30.640 He's running the Calgary Party, who is running a full slate of candidates.

00:05:35.020 The only party that is running a full slate, you know, Sharp has her own team, 0.97

00:05:39.840 but they're only running, I think, 10 people, 9 people.

00:05:43.460 Whereas, Calgary Party is running a full slate, even though, oddly enough,

00:05:47.500 their mayoral candidate is extremely just underwhelming.

00:05:51.500 And then, we also have Sarah Elder, who is sitting at only 1%.

00:05:57.960 We have Grant Pryor at 1%.

00:06:02.260 And we also have, who else is even at 1%?

00:06:06.860 I think that's literally it.

00:06:08.940 Yeah, that's pretty much it.

00:06:10.900 Grant Pryor, we have Brian Thiessen, and then we have Sarah Elder.

00:06:16.520 Sarah Elder is literally only in this race, basically, to trip up Farkas, 1.00

00:06:21.340 which is kind of funny.

00:06:22.680 But when you actually go for the undecideds, we actually have, in this race,

00:06:28.400 you currently have, and this is why the thing is so close,

00:06:31.820 and I want to explain why this doesn't actually mean it's anyone's race,

00:06:35.280 but there's a lot of room left for Sonia Sharp to grow. 1.00

00:06:38.200 So, when you have undecideds in this race, which I'll just do with the UND,

00:06:43.560 you currently have 34% of people in this poll who do not know who they're voting for.

00:06:50.660 And, in fact, the turnout in early voting was minuscule.

00:06:55.880 You can kind of see it right here.

00:06:57.740 I'll just write it on the side.

00:06:59.160 So, previously, in 2021, and you could say it's COVID,

00:07:02.880 and I think that is probably about a good explanation for why the turnout was really high in 2021.

00:07:09.360 But the amount of early ballots that were cast in 2021 was around, I believe it was 141,000.

00:07:18.200 And this time, same amount of early voting time, as I'm aware,

00:07:23.420 you had, I believe, 95,000 ballots returned.

00:07:29.940 So, we had 141,000 ballots returned last time.

00:07:33.420 In a city with a smaller population back then, and now only 95,000 four years later,

00:07:40.400 that really strikes me as people do not particularly like Gondek or Farkas.

00:07:47.000 Because you could say, well, Farkas is not the incumbent, but Gondek is the incumbent.

00:07:51.940 When turnout is low, typically that's good for an incumbent.

00:07:56.540 In an election that they're leading in.

00:07:59.560 The problem is, is Gondek has basically not been leading for well over a month,

00:08:03.780 and she was only leading before because of name recognition.

00:08:06.720 As Sharpe's name recognition has gone up, she's actually been increasing in the polls.

00:08:12.540 Again, going from some of the early Leger polls from just 7% all the way up now to 23%, a massive increase.

00:08:22.320 This is with a lot less decided, obviously, so everyone's kind of gone up.

00:08:27.700 But in terms of their polling position, you have had Gondek falling over time from first

00:08:33.220 into this kind of second, third state that she's been in in a lot of the new polls.

00:08:38.480 Farkas has basically just maintained.

00:08:42.040 Everyone also knows who Farkas is. 0.99

00:08:44.820 He kind of has always had about a third of people willing to vote for him,

00:08:48.060 a little less than a third of people willing to vote for him.

00:08:50.560 And that's kind of dangerous when turnout is so low.

00:08:53.920 People had time to know who you were last time,

00:08:56.820 they have had a lot of time to know who you are this time,

00:08:59.660 you've served on council,

00:09:01.200 and they're not running out of the house to cast ballots for you.

00:09:04.860 That's a problem, especially when Sharpe has a team all over the city

00:09:09.180 who not only are stumping for themselves running for council,

00:09:12.420 but they're also stumping for her.

00:09:14.240 Farkas pretty much has to recreate his campaign in every single ward,

00:09:19.080 whereas Sharpe can basically have a citywide mayor campaign at the same time

00:09:24.980 she has all these councillors running around getting votes for themselves 1.00

00:09:28.020 and also pushing for her.

00:09:29.720 And in fact, the person who is running for Ward 11 for the community's first slate,

00:09:34.760 who I like a lot, Rob Ward, is easily going to win that one.

00:09:38.920 He almost won it last time.

00:09:40.240 There was just crazy amounts of extra conservative candidates

00:09:42.940 who took just enough votes away from him that he didn't win.

00:09:46.200 And that's a real example of vote splitting.

00:09:48.500 He was a robust candidate with a lot of vote,

00:09:51.060 and there was just a couple people taking 1,000 votes here and there.

00:09:54.760 Vote splitting doesn't work when there's like two candidates that only get 20%.

00:09:58.320 That's just both of them probably were not working very hard,

00:10:01.540 or neither one was the bigger candidate.

00:10:03.720 Vote splitting is like the person's almost there,

00:10:06.440 and someone gets like 2% of the vote by like running around telling people,

00:10:10.000 no, I'm the real conservative, even though they're not even attempting to win.

00:10:13.720 And that is Jeremy Farkas' old Ward,

00:10:16.880 and Rob Ward is going to win it probably by more than 50%,

00:10:20.700 and he's stumping for Sonia.

00:10:22.540 So you're going to have Farkas doing worse in his old stomping grounds, 1.00

00:10:26.300 and then he's going to have to try and make up the vote in other places around the city,

00:10:31.120 whereas Sonia in her old Ward of Ward 1,

00:10:34.920 she has a community's first candidate replacing her,

00:10:37.880 who both is campaigning for themselves as well as her.

00:10:41.000 So yeah, I think that right now with polling position,

00:10:44.460 with 34% undecided,

00:10:47.200 this doesn't mean that Gondek can win.

00:10:50.100 Gondek cannot win,

00:10:51.740 and Jeff Davison, I'm sorry to all of his team,

00:10:54.580 Jeff Davison can also not win.

00:10:58.740 Just because you say, well, it's anyone's game, 34% are undecided.

00:11:02.720 And okay, let's literally think of this through.

00:11:07.940 If we double Jeff Davison from 16% to 32% of the raw vote,

00:11:16.700 that would mean that he ended up taking what would even be left here.

00:11:21.680 It would be 18% left to split among these three candidates

00:11:25.780 and some of the other also-ran candidates.

00:11:28.060 Do you really think that he is going to almost take half of all the rest of the available vote

00:11:33.780 just to be, what would that be?

00:11:36.200 It would only be 5% higher than what Farkas currently has.

00:11:39.700 So he would have to almost take half of the undecided vote that is left,

00:11:44.260 and then he would have to hope that Farkas doesn't grab up 5% more himself,

00:11:48.860 which ain't that hard,

00:11:50.020 because he would only have to have,

00:11:51.680 in this theoretical scenario,

00:11:53.380 less than a third of what he gained from the undecideds

00:11:56.840 in order to finish out the race.

00:11:59.600 Sonya, obviously, is within four points.

00:12:02.820 Again, we are in a race where it affects Gondek more, 0.76

00:12:06.940 I guess what you would say, more dramatically,

00:12:10.360 that if you haven't picked her yet, you're probably not going to pick her.

00:12:12.980 But that's also a problem for Farkas. 0.98

00:12:15.020 Everyone knows who he is.

00:12:16.240 If you haven't picked him yet, you probably aren't going to pick him,

00:12:18.700 mostly because you were probably a previous conservative supporter of him,

00:12:22.780 and then he became the candidate with mask-wearing managers

00:12:27.560 and people who are all in favor of blanket rezoning.

00:12:31.180 It was just leaked today that Farkas is on a Discord server of people,

00:12:35.780 it's called More Neighbors,

00:12:37.500 and they're the hyperdensification advocacy group.

00:12:41.580 They believe, you know, we need more neighbors around us,

00:12:44.420 just densify everywhere,

00:12:45.720 because that means there's more property for more people.

00:12:48.700 He is literally bouncing his ideas off of them in their Discord,

00:12:54.140 his ideas off of them.

00:12:55.860 When you're pandering to those people,

00:12:57.940 you should not be mayor.

00:12:59.020 You're not conservative.

00:13:00.260 I've read his website to you guys.

00:13:03.080 Point 25 of his housing plan is that we need housing

00:13:05.760 that makes people from racialized communities,

00:13:08.400 indigenous communities,

00:13:09.720 the 2SLGBTQIA plus community comfortable.

00:13:13.380 It's like, what are you talking about?

00:13:15.340 He wants like a housing first approach to crime,

00:13:17.900 that's not how crime and addiction works.

00:13:21.200 You can't just give someone a house

00:13:23.160 and then hope that they're going to get off of meth

00:13:24.840 because you gave it to them.

00:13:26.700 So Farkas is in the position where,

00:13:29.520 if you're one of these 34%, 0.96

00:13:31.020 why haven't you jumped on board yet?

00:13:33.460 And if you haven't jumped on board,

00:13:34.700 it's probably because you actually don't really like the 2025 version of him.

00:13:37.860 And I think it's actually fairly realistic that in all this,

00:13:42.240 that a Sonia Sharp could actually grab up that 16% that Davison would want. 0.99

00:13:48.180 And that's not even her doubling her vote an unrealistic way,

00:13:51.140 the way Davison would be.

00:13:52.420 She's already at 23.

00:13:53.840 She could potentially grab up 40% of those remaining, 0.99

00:13:57.120 especially because the endorsements have been very good.

00:14:00.240 You have had her be able to get federal MPs endorsing her,

00:14:04.060 other conservatives like Stephanie Cousy and Shavloy Majumdar.

00:14:07.600 You have had provincial MLAs coming out to endorse her.

00:14:11.000 A lot of people are jumping on board.

00:14:13.140 I even had a good inside lane on the idea of a lot of people

00:14:16.560 who were previously having supported Jeff Davison

00:14:19.320 were jumping over because it's just not going to happen.

00:14:22.980 Not only is he not an actual conservative,

00:14:24.960 he's just pretending to be right now,

00:14:26.600 but clearly you're not going to somehow catch fire now,

00:14:31.380 especially when he's been spending arguably like the most

00:14:34.880 in the first half of the year.

00:14:36.340 He raised the fourth most,

00:14:38.660 which makes sense he's in fourth place,

00:14:40.480 and he spent the most in the first half of the year.

00:14:42.960 It's been ridiculous how much the man has spent,

00:14:45.460 and I have not noticed any of it.

00:14:47.220 Have you ever watched a movie where it's been talked about

00:14:50.520 how big the budget for it was,

00:14:52.440 and then you go and watch it and you're like,

00:14:54.520 where was all of that money on screen?

00:14:56.420 I didn't see any of that, like, $200 million they spent. 1.00

00:15:00.360 This was crap. 0.97

00:15:01.520 You know, the camera work and the editing wasn't even good. 1.00

00:15:04.260 That is the Jeff Davison campaign.

00:15:06.320 It is the bloated Hollywood flop,

00:15:09.340 whereas Sharp is, again, within four points,

00:15:12.280 and she could basically take, you know,

00:15:15.300 a third of the vote left.

00:15:17.200 If she could take a third of it left,

00:15:18.920 and then two-thirds kind of more evenly splits

00:15:21.120 with everyone else,

00:15:22.160 I would say if she can take 40% of the remaining, 0.67

00:15:24.900 she is in business.

00:15:25.740 And that's not unrealistic because

00:15:27.300 Gondek's not going to get any of the remaining

00:15:29.520 pretty much at this point.

00:15:30.920 Maybe 5%, but that would be at that best. 0.92

00:15:33.980 Davison is not going to get a lot of the remaining vote

00:15:36.080 because he just can't win,

00:15:37.740 and a lot of people know it,

00:15:39.140 and the endorsements are coming for Sonia.

00:15:41.720 And then, Farkas, again, if she can just keep it 40%,

00:15:46.240 and Farkas takes a third, she would then beat him. 0.79

00:15:48.900 If he got only, like, 30% of the remaining vote,

00:15:52.140 and she got 40%, that would be enough to catch him.

00:15:55.000 And again, it's all about turnout,

00:15:56.380 and she is going to have the better turnout game

00:15:58.700 in this election.

00:15:59.960 So anyways, that should be it for me today in this video.

00:16:04.740 But I do want to show you guys one more thing

00:16:07.320 before I close the video out,

00:16:09.520 and that is my endorsement list,

00:16:11.100 just so you guys can see it.

00:16:12.580 I have it on my website.

00:16:13.940 I will be linking it in the description below.

00:16:16.640 I can even just read off all of the endorsements

00:16:18.960 if you guys just want to sit back

00:16:20.460 and wait for your award to be called.

00:16:22.980 I'm not going to read the rest of Alberta

00:16:24.580 because that would be a bit much.

00:16:26.520 So I have here, Mayor, of course,

00:16:29.540 we are endorsing Sonia Sharp.

00:16:31.640 Council, in Ward 1,

00:16:33.120 we are going to endorse the community's first replacement

00:16:36.940 for Sonia Sharp, who is Kim Tyers.

00:16:40.040 Ward 2, Jennifer Winesse,

00:16:41.660 who has been a generally pretty good councillor.

00:16:43.860 She can be re-elected.

00:16:44.980 She'll do things like repeal blanket rezoning with Sonia. 1.00

00:16:48.560 Ward 3, I'm endorsing Christy Edwards

00:16:50.620 from the Better Calgary Party.

00:16:52.980 Ward 4, Jeremy Wong from Communities First.

00:16:57.060 Ward 5, the Independent, Tariq Khan.

00:16:59.700 Ward 6, the Independent, Joanne Burse.

00:17:02.480 Ward 7, Terry Wong.

00:17:04.640 Ward 8, Cornelia Wiebe,

00:17:06.720 also from Communities First,

00:17:07.960 and Terry Wong is also from it.

00:17:09.680 Ward 9, I'm endorsing the Independent, Gargar.

00:17:12.500 He is a very good pro-cop candidate.

00:17:14.800 That's basically the big issue

00:17:16.200 I think he's really great on.

00:17:17.880 Ward 10, re-electing André Chabot,

00:17:20.280 now running for Communities First.

00:17:21.600 Ward 11, Communities First candidate, Rob Ward.

00:17:24.580 Ward 12, Communities First candidate, Shane Bysick.

00:17:28.320 Ward 13, Communities First candidate, Dan McLean.

00:17:31.520 Ward 14, Candidate Landon Johnson.

00:17:34.540 He is an Independent.

00:17:36.220 And then school board 1 and 2,

00:17:37.760 I say Cindy Dubray.

00:17:39.180 Ward 3 and 4, Joanie Liu.

00:17:43.180 Ward 6 and 7, Jennifer Stewart.

00:17:46.500 Ward 8 and 9, Olga Knight.

00:17:48.640 Ward 11 and 13, Tyson Ario.

00:17:50.660 Ward 12 and 14, Darzouk.

00:17:53.340 But if you vote in Catholic school board,

00:17:55.040 6 and 8, I say Valerie Dove for.

00:17:57.180 Ward 12 and 13, Steve Chapman.

00:18:00.060 Okay.

00:18:00.960 You've heard all that stuff.

00:18:02.640 I will link that in the description below.

00:18:05.000 If you live in the city of Calgary,

00:18:07.320 please vote.

00:18:08.380 Like, my goodness,

00:18:09.640 if Sonya Sharp doesn't win 1.00

00:18:11.340 and Gondek or Farkas

00:18:13.120 somehow beat her by 1% or whatever,

00:18:15.720 even though I think it's more likely to be Farkas 1.00

00:18:17.440 if she gets beaten.

00:18:19.240 If you didn't vote,

00:18:20.440 my goodness,

00:18:21.000 you can't complain.

00:18:21.940 Because this is the problem.

00:18:23.420 We have a very conservative city in Calgary,

00:18:25.960 but conservatives do not vote.

00:18:27.860 And then they'll wonder, like,

00:18:29.060 oh my goodness,

00:18:30.020 the vote must have been rigged.

00:18:31.640 It's like,

00:18:31.960 no, you didn't vote.

00:18:33.440 Like, I love it when people say,

00:18:35.200 oh my goodness,

00:18:36.220 Gondek won.

00:18:36.800 Must have been a voting machine thing.

00:18:38.580 Yet no one voted.

00:18:39.560 Of course she won.

00:18:40.680 Only 40% of people voted,

00:18:42.500 and it was all the union people.

00:18:44.000 It was like maybe

00:18:44.840 to like 8-15% of the turnout

00:18:47.080 was actual conservatives,

00:18:48.200 and then the rest of the 85%

00:18:50.040 was like moderates and progressives.

00:18:52.300 Of course she won,

00:18:53.520 and the entire progressive slate won.

00:18:55.660 Ugh.

00:18:56.700 Anyway, so,

00:18:57.940 make sure you vote.

00:18:58.900 That's basically the thesis of this video.

00:19:01.120 If you don't know who I'm endorsing

00:19:02.520 and you want to check out my other ones

00:19:03.940 if you're in Medicine Hat

00:19:04.880 or Edmonton, Airdrie,

00:19:06.600 Cochran, Red Deer,

00:19:07.980 check out the link.

00:19:09.080 Go look at it.

00:19:10.240 And I will see you guys all next time.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - October 15, 2025

Conservative within striking distance of winning Calgary Mayor Race!

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