Danielle Smith would crush Naheed Nenshi in an election, polls show
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, I talk about the current leadership candidates in the Alberta NDP leadership race, including former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Sarah Hoffman, and Kathleen Ganley, and why they are all running for the party leadership. I also talk about some of the challenges facing the UCP leadership candidates, and whether or not they have a shot at winning the next election.
Transcript
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Right now in Alberta provincial polling, Premier Daniel Smith and the UCP are set to win big if
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there's another provincial election held. Obviously, we're a few years away from that
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occurring again, but considering that we had a really tight provincial election where the UCP
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only barely won the majority of seats by about 1,800 votes spread across a few ridings in
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Calgary, this is a very good result for the UCP so soon after the provincial election.
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Right now, according to a new Abacus data poll, they have a 16% lead over the NDP, but we could
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chalk this up to the fact that right now the NDP is effectively not running with a leader.
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While Rachel Notley is kind of still the leader of the NDP, we know she's going to be replaced by one
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of the several leadership contestants that are running for the NDP provincial leadership.
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But let's be fair, I think we all know, at least if you're in the province of Alberta and you've
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been following this, the new leader of the NDP is likely going to be former Calgary Mayor Nahid
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Nenshi. And so this is the Abacus breakdown of the popularity of these different individuals
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vying for the control of the party and what kind of people generally think about them.
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And so right now, Nahid obviously has a big advantage over everybody because he has a high
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amount of name recognition, not only in his former city of Calgary where he was the mayor,
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but just all over the province. Another person who has a decently high amount of name
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recognition would be Sarah Hoffman and Kathleen Gangley being former ministers and MLAs for
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the NDP government back in 2015. But overall, the funny thing is that there's a lot of people
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who don't really know much about a lot of the people running. Even Sarah Hoffman has 51% of
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respondents in this Abacus data poll saying that they don't know enough about her to really
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say if they have a positive or negative sort of feeling about her. But the thing that Nenshi
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really needs to be careful of, because he, in a certain sense, is actually kind of a threat to
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Danielle Smith. Even though I don't like him because I'm a conservative and I find his personality quite,
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you know, arrogant and smarmy. Overall, a lot of people do like him. Progressive, urban voters tend
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to like Nenshi. The problem for Nenshi is that even when you look at this Abacus data poll,
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a lot of people actually kind of like Nenshi because since he's been out of politics for a few years,
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people have a more neutral view of him. Plus, frankly, the current mayor, Jody Gondek in Calgary,
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is so bad she makes people wish Nenshi was back, even though he was just the sort of,
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she was just the logical conclusion of all of Nenshi's policies. Even Nenshi really doesn't have
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that great an approval rating. 31% positive, 19% neutral, 23% negative. So, you know, net impression
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is above eight, but there's still 26% of people who haven't decided. And when you look at these
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other polls of Daniel Smith's approval rating, I don't think I brought it up here, but her approval
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rating right now is 38% with people. I think her disapproval is like 31 and there's a bunch of
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people who haven't made up their minds. So, although the NDP waged much of its provincial
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election strategy against the popularity of Daniel Smith as a person, I think a lot of the waters have
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come since the provincial election. Everyone thought of that as a big fever dream and maybe
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they should be evaluating Daniel Smith under merits. And I'm someone during a leadership race for the
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UCB was not a supporter of Daniel Smith for several reasons that I would stand by. I think even some of
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the issues I had have come out to be continuing to be issues now, but overall, I would say a lot of
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the policy is very good, especially on parental rights. I'd like to see a big tax cut passed sooner
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rather than pushed off till later, but overall people actually like Daniel Smith. So the NDP can't
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simply rely on the fact that because Nenshi is the most well-known and probably going to win
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the leadership race that he is automatically going to be a contender with Smith. Yes, he might be an
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outsized personality who has a strong base of support, but Daniel Smith does too. And all Nenshi will
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be able to run on is that somehow he'll do the job better. But if the UCP and Daniel Smith are keeping
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the province pretty stable, it's a hard argument to get a lot of middle-class voters to say that they
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want radical change with a party that tends to not exactly be super pro-free market. So before I get
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to the overall polling when it comes to the different leaders against Daniel Smith's UCP, I just want to
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quickly comment also on the fact that Racky Pankeoli actually dropped out of the leadership race,
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which was kind of funny. You'll see her name on a fourth down from Nenshi. Racky was kind of
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considered to be like, if you're an Alberta politico, you'll know the name Ed Stelmack,
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the former PC premier. She kind of seemed like she would be the Ed Stelmack of this NDP leadership
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race. Ed Stelmack, I believe in 2005, famously came up through the middle in order to become the
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new leader of the PC party and the premier of the province. It was like a big fight between Ted Morton
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and Jim Dinnings. And although those two had the vast majority of the support, Ed Stelmack with like 17%
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on the first ballot slowly rose up to be everyone's, you know, third favorite choice,
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which naturally made him the premier because everyone else, the two, the Dinnings and Morton
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camps hated each other. That's what people thought Racky Pankeoli would be, but that doesn't seem like
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it's actually in the cards since she came out and endorsed Nenshi. And so that really leaves the only,
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I would say, true opposition to Nenshi, being Sarah Hoffman, Gangly, and Stonehouse,
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and McGowan basically teaming up in order to try and overwhelm him. It almost turns into the
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Daniel Smith versus the rest of the crowd UCP leadership race, where Daniel Smith, oddly enough,
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didn't actually gain that much after each ballot on the UCP leadership race, because either you liked
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her or you didn't like her. So first ballot, she's at 42%. Looks like she should lock this up on next
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ballot. Next ballot comes up, you know, A here drops out, throws her support to Travis Taves or Rachel
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or Rebecca Schultz. And then they keep going down, slowly shuffling more support behind Rebecca
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Schultz and Taves, but until it becomes the Daniel Smith and Taves showdown, which it was actually a
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very close leadership race. And I will take credit for being like the one person who said, no, this is
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going to go down to the very last ballot. Yes, you might see a lot of pro Danielle stuff all over
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social media and a lot of people saying they like her, but there's a lot of people who also wanted
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someone else who felt like more of like a calm waters type candidate like Travis Taves. But now, this is
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where the NDP should be a little bit scared. If Nahid Nenshi is going to be the guy who's going to ride in
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on a white horse and save you all from yourselves, your radical party, and Rachel Notley was your
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moderate face, and Nenshi's the only one who can replace her and make the party seem moderate to
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especially middle class and upper middle class voters. Nah, not really. The thing is, Nenshi's a very known
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quantity. And even when you see Nenshi polling against the UCP, he polls at 42% with the UCP at
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51. Now, let's go back to this poll, 56 to 40. So, he improves the general margin that the NDP would
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have by only a little bit. So, this is a 16% lead for the UCP. And with Nenshi as the leader, it'd be
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a 9% lead for the UCP. And obviously, the general polling goes up for pretty much everyone except
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McGowan and Hoffman. But overall, this really is demonstrating to me that Nenshi is kind of like
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whenever people mention, well, why doesn't Oprah Winfrey run for US President? She's not going to run for
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US President, because although she's popular outside of politics, as soon as you take someone like her who
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has a lot of baggage, and you make her a presidential candidate, the whole positive vibes sort of feel of that
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person wears off quickly. You can kind of be a positive vibes kind of person in municipal politics.
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But once you're in provincial politics or federal, where everything's much more ideological,
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municipal politics is still ideological, but you can kind of fake it a little bit because it's
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nonpartisan. Once Nenshi comes out as the kind of big orange monster, stop being the big purple monster,
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he then actually has to stand by hard and fast policies. And he has a base of NDP radicals holding
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him accountable to their radical agenda. So he can't pretend to be some Alberta Party, you know,
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leader, some very neutral, not the Alberta Party is not even center, they're actually left, but they're
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just not as left as the NDP. He can't pretend to be some moderate liberal kind of person. Plus,
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people don't like liberals in in Alberta. So he can't market himself as the softer kind of version,
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because he'll just come off like he's Justin Trudeau. And so this poll of his popularity up against
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the UCP, this is, oh, this one was actually Polera Palace. So he was 42-51 with the UCP.
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And now with Abacus, he is at 38-53, which is kind of funny that Rachel Notley actually does better
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than Nenshi would do. And that someone like Sarah Hoffman isn't that far behind. The problem again,
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for Nenshi is that he's a known quantity. So he doesn't have that much room to grow.
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So this poll might show that 26% of people don't know enough about him to say anything,
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and 19% are neutral. But if they weren't positive now, it's going to be hard for him to convince
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them later. But you can't deny that Nenshi does get the base out. The problem is, even though he
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got in back in 2010 on a youth movement, he would be someone I'd classify, I think it was actually a
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little bit earlier than in 2009. He is an old politician. When I say that, I mean that you
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can't sort of re-roll the youth trick to get today. It's like Barack Obama, if he ran for president
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again, he can't. He can't go out and get the youth vote, because he's a known quantity. He is an old
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politician that people have seen around a while. To be a youth politician, you almost have to be that
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spark that comes out of nowhere. And when you look, and I'm not trying to be insulting, but Nenshi's
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rally is extremely old pensioners. So these are people who liked him as mayor, they know the name,
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they trust him because they've seen him on legacy media a lot. But you're not going to go up to an
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18-year-old and say, Nenshi's running for premier. That's not how it's going to work. Plus, Nenshi
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might have been charismatic, but it was mostly labor unions that made it so that it was a rollover every
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time he was running for mayor. They tried to get rid of him with Bill Smith back in, I believe, the 2017
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mayor's race. And that might have worked, but it's just that trade unions tend to rule municipal
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elections, so Nenshi couldn't be beat. Even though when you pulled it out, most people hated Nenshi,
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it's just most people aren't engaged in municipal politics. And I will say, and this is a little bit
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of a trailing off thing, but people trying to be like, Nenshi claimed there's 1,200 people at his
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rally, but there was only 618. It's a big rally, guys. It's actually impressive. He actually went over
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capacity for what that room was allowed to have. So I'm not going to say like, oh,
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well, he only has 618. He had 1,200. Not to take a shot at Key and Bexty. Key and Bexty does a good
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job. And I know that people hate the idea when people are like, there's 18,000 people in this
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room. And it's like, dude, the room has a capacity of 400 people. I really doubt it. But Nenshi does
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get the base out. The problem is that base is probably stalwart NDP voters, people who decide
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they're not going to vote UCP a long time ago. And I don't think that Nenshi is going to be able to do
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anything to prove he's sort of like a breath of fresh air for the province, especially if people's
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tax rates are going down, the province feels stable, wait times in hospitals go down, Nenshi's dead in
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the water. He has nothing to market himself with if there's not a massive disaster when it comes to
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public policy. But here's a video he released from that rally. And you can make your own mind if you
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think he's particularly inspiring. And even this entire video, it's not marketing him on ideas. It's not
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marketing him on I have a fresh vision for the province. It's marketing him on the fact he's
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Nenshi. And really, that's all Nenshi has is that he's Nenshi. Because if he says anything
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ideological, he's no longer Nenshi. He's a socialist NDP politician.
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I'd like to introduce to all of you in my hometown on this stage.
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I just want to mention that Raki Pankhioli, who I said was kind of like, she had been like the
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DEI type moderate NDP choice, like a very insider, like consultant type choice. I like how she's the
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executive chair of the campaign. I remember Court Ellington, the Calgary Foothills NDP MLA, was his
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chair, his campaign chair. But I like how they've now made her the executive chair just so that she
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had a little bit more power than Court Ellington. You know, just sort of the pettiness of, you know,
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horse trading and politics. The next leader of the Alberta NDP, and the next premier of Alberta,
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And I want to share with you my jersey that I've worn for years and years and years.
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I'm going to, I'm not going to play this whole thing, but like,
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And that's the funny thing, is I could see Nenshi
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because he's still acting as the union leader while he