Danielle Smith crushes Nenshi in Alberta polls - Recalls fail miserably!
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Summary
In this episode of the Canadian Polling Update, I discuss the latest results from the latest Leger poll, and compare it to the previous results from a few months ago. I also discuss the embarrassing effort to recall UCP MLAs in the riding of Calgary-Wentworth.
Transcript
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Ahoy everyone, Wyatt Claypool here, back with another Canadian polling update.
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This time we will actually be talking about the province of Alberta,
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which I haven't done a polling video on in about six months.
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And this should be a really fun one, because while the federal polls are very back and forth
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month to month between the Liberals and the Conservatives, in Alberta, us Albertans have
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it right, and Premier Daniel Smith and the UCP are absolutely stomping out Nahid Nenshi
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Like, honestly, I always thought that Nenshi was going to perform better as the NDP leader
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in Alberta, and I stupidly assumed that because he was elected three times as Calgary mayor
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that that would translate to a lot of popularity, you know, province-wide.
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But as my friend Chris from the Great Canadian Bagel Channel has pointed out, he's a fantastic
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polling analyst, by the way, just because you got elected as a mayor doesn't actually mean
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you're going to be popular across the whole province.
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And in fact, it may not even indicate that you're even popular in the city that you used
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to represent, because municipal races notoriously have very low turnout.
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So really all Nenshi proved by being elected mayor of Calgary three times is that public sector
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union workers really like him, and other people don't really vote in those elections.
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And as soon as he stepped in as the Alberta NDP leader, which he won by a landslide, like
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he easily was elected the Alberta NDP leader, he is bottomed out hard.
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And I think it's because he's trying to run for Premier as if he's running for mayor, basically
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trying to corner progressive voters everywhere, the corner of the market on progressive voters,
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but that doesn't really work in a province like Alberta.
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And frankly, it probably wouldn't even work in a province like Ontario or British Columbia.
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You kind of have to like widen out your appeal.
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And Nenshi keeps making his appeal more narrow over time.
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But anyways, so we're going to be talking about the results from a new Leger poll today and
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comparing it to the last results that they released a few months ago.
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And then I also want to talk about the embarrassing effort to try and recall UCP MLAs.
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I want to show you guys just how poor the results were in the riding of Calgary Bow, where the
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NDP and the Alberta Teachers Association put all of their resources in order to get rid of
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Demetrius Nicolaitis won a pretty thin plurality of the vote in the last Alberta election.
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And so in theory, he should have been one of the easiest people to recall.
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And this isn't a province like British Columbia, where you need 40% of registered voters to
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You need like 18% and you get 60 days to do it.
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And although there are some restrictions on how you can collect signatures, it shouldn't
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be that difficult if people genuinely didn't like the minister.
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And so the NDP just ended up making themselves look like whiny scolds.
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But we will be getting to that topic later on in this video.
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So first, before we get into the numbers, I just want to remind you guys, if you like
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the show, make sure to leave a like on this video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber,
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leave a comment about what you think about all this.
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And if you want to support the show financially, I encourage you to hit the join button below
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the video and make a small monthly contribution.
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It makes the channel more sustainable for me and makes me less reliant on the YouTube algorithm
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and allows me to cover more niche topics like Alberta provincial polling rather than only
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A lot of other channels basically only talk about national issues because it's perceived
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as the topic areas that are going to get the most clicks.
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But I, based on how I do things, I like to cover provincial stuff and even sometimes municipal
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stuff, which naturally doesn't get as much attention.
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But I'm not trying to, you know, pin an award to my chest.
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But if I don't cover it, I don't think any other YouTuber will cover it.
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So I want to, I'm just going to show you the results from the latest Leger poll, and then
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I will basically like, you know, draw an up arrow or down arrow afterwards and show you
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how much it's changed since the last time they did a poll.
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Now, this Leger poll, and these are pretty realistic results.
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I sometimes will caution people not to believe a poll if the results are too much of what
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they would like to see, or they're just completely like anti whatever you think would be happening.
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Like federally, if you see a poll that's like plus 14 liberal, I'm sorry, federal politics
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is not an arena where you're going to see a plus 14 either way, at least not in our current
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state. But in Alberta, this result actually seems realistic. Even if we take a few points
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off what the UCP have, they are still winning a absolutely thumping majority. So in this latest
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poll from Leger with around 823 people polled, which is a pretty good sample size for Alberta,
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we have the UCP in this poll at 50%, winning effectively a majority of the vote, since I do
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believe they have rounded this one down. Oh my goodness, my writing is so bad here,
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because my easel is falling apart. This is annoying for me. So we have 50% for the UCP in this poll.
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And of course, that is only a good result insofar as the NDP isn't close. And they are not close.
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The NDP does not even crack into the 40s. The NDP is stuck at 37% in this new Leger poll.
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And then they labeled them as the Alberta Party in this poll, but they've changed their name
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recently to the Progressive Tory Party, which is led by two former UCP MLAs, Peter Guthrie and Scott
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Sinclair. In this poll, despite it being fairly widely covered, what they were doing with the
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Alberta Party and changing the name and trying to create a center-right alternative to the Conservatives,
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to the UCP, the Progressive Tory Party in this poll only came in with 4% of the vote.
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They could literally double their votes and steal them exclusively from Daniel Smith's UCP,
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and Daniel Smith would still win another majority next election. And now I have these two categories
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because there are actually a lot of parties that exist in Alberta right now, which also sort of says
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something about BC politics. Whenever you see sort of whiny establishment BC conservatives saying,
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why does one BC exist? You're splitting our vote. Daniel Smith's doing a good job. And so what you
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actually have happening is there's no vote split. It's not because like everyone in Alberta is very
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anti-vote splitting. That doesn't matter. It's because Daniel Smith and the UCP are doing a good
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job. So there's nowhere that the vote is actually going to split. So LW here and RW is left-wing and
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right-wing because there's so many parties. I'm just going to basically amalgamate all of the percentages
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into these two categories. So when it comes to left-wing parties, that being the Green Party of
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Alberta, the Liberal Party of Alberta, and I'll even take a couple of points from other and add that
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together. Right now, there are about 5% of people voting for other left-wing parties in Alberta,
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which really is a shame on the progressive Tories that they can't even beat all of the other
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also ran parties in this poll. And then on the more right-wing side, I'll use a slightly darker
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shade or I'll use a purple color. Now I'm trying to compare them to the PPC. But on the right wing
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with parties like the Wild Rose Loyalty Coalition, the Republican Party of Alberta, and some of the
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other voters, I would say that they are also here at around 5% as well. I'm basically splitting
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other in half because Alberta is naturally a more right-wing province. Other in this poll had 3%,
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so I gave 1% to the left-wing parties and 2% to the right-wing parties. The Republican Party of
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Alberta is effectively no bother to Daniel Smith and the UCP, which again, it demonstrates that if a
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party is doing a good job, they are not going to have their vote split. Daniel Smith is at no risk
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from the other right-wing parties or the progressive Tories. She's at 50% regardless because she's done
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a good job as premier. I used to not even really like Daniel Smith very much. I really didn't want
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her winning the leadership of the UCP back in the day because she had done some silly progressive
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things when she was Wild Rose leader and said some weird stuff about net zero policy and immigration.
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But since then, I would at least say it wasn't like I was wrong. I think I was right about her.
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And then she shifted her politics in a direction where I now like her. And so she's brought people
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like me solidly on board with the UCP and I'm not going to leave. I was still going to vote UCP
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anyways. I voted UCP in 2023. But if there was anyone who had more hesitation than me, who was
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wanting to vote for a different right-wing party, or maybe if they're a little more center as a
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conservative, they want to vote progressive Tory. She's done a lot of work to make sure that people
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are going to stick with the UCP. And now I want to show you guys what the polls were like just a few
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months ago with the UCP. So this last poll was done in October from Leger. So I want to show you
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what the changes have been since then. So we'll just basically start with the, I guess, progressive
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Tories. The Liberals have actually fallen by 4%. They actually were at 9% in the last Leger poll,
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which probably demonstrates a lot of people shortly after the last federal election were
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selecting Liberal and all the polls not realizing this is the provincial Liberals, which are barely
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a real party. I really doubt anyone even recognizes the Liberal party leader. I don't even know what his
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first name is. I just know that his last name is Roggeveen or whatever. So they used to be at 9%
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and they've fallen for. The progressive Tories have rightfully gone up 2% since they weren't really much
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of a thing back in October. And they've kind of become a little bit more of a thing, but not
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really. I think right-wing parties are down, but they didn't actually pull that specifically last
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time. And the conservative party, we're going to be getting to the NDP and the conservatives in just
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a second. The NDP have actually fallen by 2%, which ain't good because they already weren't
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polling that well compared to the conservatives' last poll. But the conservatives, since the last
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Leger poll, have increased the most, or the biggest change has actually been in favor of Daniel Smith,
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increasing by 6 points, going from 44% all the way to 60, or sorry, to 50. Again, even back in the last
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poll, 44% to 39%, Daniel Smith probably still wins a majority in that poll. But overall, I think this
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demonstrates that Nahid Nenshi and the NDP's whining over the past, like, few months has not been doing
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good things for them. The NDP doesn't understand its voter base at all. Rachel Notley kind of did. She
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understood that you need working class people to vote NDP if you're ever going to win an election.
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But what we have with Nahid Nenshi is a man who is so progressive that he runs headfirst into every
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single issue that is going to tick off Alberta parents, that's going to tick off working class
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voters, that's going to make business people downtown Calgary mad. He is against coal mining in
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the Rockies, which that's a great way of turning off trades workers and working class, you know, labor
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people. He's gone after parental rights, which is a great way of pushing people over to the UCP.
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And also, this recall effort that I'm going to be getting to in a second has just made the NDP
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look extremely petty. Now, I know the NDP and the Alberta Teachers Association is not strictly
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involved with the recall efforts because it must remain nonpartisan. The people going around
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collecting signatures must be local to the riding. But everyone knows the sort of people who were
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involved in this stuff and organizing it were the NDP. It was the ATA. It was Jason Schilling,
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the president of the ATA, Nahid Nenshi. They weren't overtly involved, but it was clearly a
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front for them because they basically triggered it because the Alberta teachers were not given a
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generous enough increase in their pay and more like teachers in classrooms and teacher assistants.
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Daniel Smith probably gave more than I would have offered to the Alberta Teachers Association,
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and they tried to protest and shut down schools because they got like, what was it? I think they
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were promised a 12% wage increase over three years or four years. That was deemed not good enough.
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They were given 3,000 more teachers promised, 1,500 teachers assistants promised, and that was not
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good enough for the ATA. So they attempted to recall pretty much every UCP MLA for some reason,
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but they were mainly going after the education minister, Demetrius Nicolaitis, because apparently
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he had lost the confidence of the voters of his riding. This is the way that they had to frame it
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because it has to be a local reason to get rid of somebody. So apparently he lost confidence.
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Totally had nothing to do with the ATA not getting not only the generous offer from Daniel Smith,
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but $2 billion more in benefits. It was because Demetrius just hasn't been conserving his
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constituents very well. So I need to pull up for you. I'm going to erase this, and then we're going
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to come back, and I want to show you just how pathetic the recall effort was in Calgary-Bow.
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Okay, now we're back. So in Alberta, in order to recall politicians, they recently changed the rules
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from the absurdly high measure of needing 40% of all registered voters to sign the petition,
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to needing, like it's some complex formula, but in Calgary-Bow, it translated to basically needing
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the signatures of 60% of the number of people who ended up actually casting a ballot. Now you don't
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have to find the people who cast ballots, but just that's the specific number, 60% of the number of
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people who ended up casting ballots. And because there were 20, let's make sure to write this properly,
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we had 26,486 people voted in Calgary-Bow. That meant they needed around 16,006 signatures in order
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to recall Demetrius Nicolaitis in Calgary-Bow. Now, that doesn't seem like that tall of an order. Yeah,
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maybe it's going to be difficult getting people to volunteer going door to door in the riding,
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considering they must be from the riding, and you can't just bust in a bunch of activists.
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But still, you have a team of like 12 people or so going out every day for 60 days, or even going
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out every other day. Shouldn't be that difficult. I've gone campaigning before, and even when I need
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to make people buy a membership for me running in the Calgary-Signal Hill nomination, which actually
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does cover the Calgary-Bow area, even needing people to pay $15 for a membership,
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and then sign up to get me on the ballot for the nomination. Although I was later kicked out,
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but that's another story for another day. I was able to get a decent amount of people to sign up,
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at least onto my contact sheets every day. And it's far more daunting to sign up to some random guy's
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attempt to run for a nomination than it is to supposedly get rid of somebody that people don't
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like. Now, people actually do like Demetrius. That's why this whole thing failed. But in theory,
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it should have been easy if the narrative the NDP and the ATA had set out was actually true.
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So they needed the 16,006 signatures in order to get this thing across the board. Do you know how
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many they got? They got a grand total over 60 days of 6,519 signatures. That's not even half. That is
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just a little bit over. That is approximately 40% of the signatures that they required. And this is
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the guy. They thought, they absolutely, if they were going to recall one guy, it was going to be
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Demetrius Nicolaitis. Now, I need to show you something even more embarrassing, is that in the last
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election, Demetrius, and I don't think it's actually 60% of the registered voters you need to sign the
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petition. I think it has something to do with what the person got who won in the last election,
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plus a certain amount of votes. But his NDP opponent in this riding, Drew Farrell, in the last
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election, ended up getting 12,552 votes, which was around 47% of that election.
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That election. So they couldn't even get, they only got a little bit more than half
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of what Drew Farrell got in the last election. They couldn't even hunt down the people who voted
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NDP in the last election to sign it. Now, they still would have been short by a bit, because
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obviously that would be insane that you can get the same amount of signatures as the person who lost
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the election still recall them, or even the amount of people who voted for the guy. That would be way
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too easy of a threshold. But the fact that they came in this low is absolutely pathetic. And now
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there are recalls against people like Angela Pitt, and Danielle Smith herself, and pretty much every
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Calgary area UCP MLA. And it's not going to work, guys. In fact, actually, in British Columbia,
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there's a group of people, including conservative insiders, who want to try and recall Dallas Brody,
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and they're going to require 40% registered voters to sign the thing, which is going to be like 28,000
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signatures in order to get rid of her in 90 days or something like that. So they get a little bit
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more time, but there's a lot more signatures. In a riding where it's like 54% Chinese Canadians,
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and the stereotype that exists, which is it's stereotype for a reason is that Chinese voters don't like to
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sign random things people stick in their faces. So they're pretty screwed. But yeah, this is why
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Nahid Nenshi and the NDP are not very popular right now. This is why Danielle Smith and the
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Conservatives are leading them by 13 points. It's because they offer nothing, they don't understand
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the voting demographics they need to win, they reject working class people, and people who own
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businesses and who work in finance for public sector union workers only. That's the only group of
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people the NDP actually serves. They are high-pitched whiners about absolutely everything,
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and all this recall stuff makes them look like sore losers from the last election. I was predicting this
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when the recall started. This is going to turn voters against the NDP, because they look like
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troublemakers, not actually people who are ready to govern. I don't even know, I think, and I'm not even
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sure if Nahid Nenshi even makes it to the next election as NDP leader, because of just how poorly
00:19:11.880
he's been performing with all the initiatives he set out on. Danielle Smith keeps embarrassing the
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guy, and she knows how to play her political cards right, regardless if you like the policies,
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and I like the policies. She's really good at playing politics, and then she just assumes
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that politics is just pleasing whatever activists are in his party, but that is not how it works
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anywhere. Now, the base of your party really matters in an election, but you also do need to try and reach
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normal people. Now, I always go after the Conservatives federally and in other provinces,
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because sometimes they forget their base exists, but in Alberta, the NDP doesn't understand that
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anyone outside of their base exists, and I mean not just support base, I mean membership base. The
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NDP does things like, again, trying to ban coal mining in the Rockies, thinking that this is going
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to be a big vote-getter. Yeah, you just lost Banff Kananaskis trying to do that. You're going to lose
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a lot of Calgary finance guys who, in fact, don't want us to ruin the economy because a bunch of
00:20:10.020
greeny leftists told them to, but whatever. This is all hilarious to me. That's probably it for this
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video, guys. I'm going to be back in the next day or two with another BC polling update, because we
00:20:21.340
do, in fact, have another poll out actually from Leger, like the one that did the previous poll we
00:20:26.420
just talked about today, and it had 1 BC at 6% of the vote, which is not bad at all, because that is
00:20:31.820
the first time Leger has even bothered polling 1 BC in its polls for the province of British
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Columbia. Why am I stumbling all over myself? Well, it's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes,
00:20:43.660
guys. But anyways, with all that being said, thank you guys for watching. Like, share,