A new online poll from Abacus has the BC Tories leading the BC NDP by 6 points. This is a massive turnaround for BC NDP Premier David Eby, who was leading by 18 points in November. In this episode, I break down why this is happening and why it could spell trouble for him.
00:00:00.000A new and very interesting poll is out for the British Columbia provincial election that demonstrates that B.C. NDP Premier David Eby is in a lot of trouble.
00:00:09.680Because previously, all the polling that was showing the B.C. Conservatives catching up and even leading the B.C. NDP with decided voters were all IVR polls.
00:00:18.580And supposedly, IVR polls are messy and sometimes they're very off with their results, although a lot of the pollsters doing them have very good records, so I kind of doubt that.
00:00:28.960But everyone's been saying, well, wait until an online poll actually shows the same thing.
00:00:36.060But first, before I dive into this Abacus data poll, I just want to go back to the one that Abacus did back in November.
00:00:42.760They haven't polled this race since November, and Abacus tends to be pretty accurate with where people are at.
00:00:49.020They are usually very, very accurate in federal and provincial elections being within just a few points of the real result.
00:00:55.180And back in November, Abacus had this race with David Eby's NDP with 44%, and John Rustad's Conservatives having 26%, Falcons United at 17%, and Furstenot's Greens at 9%.
00:01:08.760Now, jumping forward, David Coletto and Abacus have it with the BC NDP with 40%, the Conservatives 34%, United 13%, and BC Greens at 10%.
00:01:21.120Now, this is a pretty massive jump, obviously, considering that, again, it was just in November, that it was an 18-point lead for the BC NDP.
00:01:31.060And now that lead is down to just six points, with obviously all the momentum going in favor of the BC Conservatives.
00:01:38.740This was also way back when the BC Conservatives did not have a lot of money on hand, and naturally now they are going to be getting way more donations in and being able to campaign way easier.
00:01:49.100So they've made most of these gains with all of the sort of, you know, barriers coming against them.
00:01:55.600They had money barriers, name recognition barriers, and they've smashed through most of those.
00:02:00.080And now they're getting to the point where they can just easily pick up voters from being able to, one, be seen as a credible party who can beat David Eby, having enough money to actually be able to do a province-wide campaign.
00:02:12.700And then the third thing is just all of the policy issues are going against David Eby.
00:02:18.160But even more interestingly is when we go down to the demographics of who is voting for each party.
00:02:24.180Now, this is the regionals. It demonstrates that, yes, as everyone knows, the BC Conservatives do really well in the interior and the north, and generally in metro Vancouver.
00:02:34.080And then in Vancouver Island, the BC NDP tend to do better there, just as the Greens also do better.
00:02:39.080None of this is a surprise, and this is kind of what people expect.
00:02:42.080Vancouver and Vancouver Island are the NDP strongholds, and then all the rural suburban areas are where the Conservatives tend to do well.
00:02:50.280And then when we go down further to the actual age demographics, you will see that the BC Conservatives are actually the young party right now.
00:02:59.460They're winning both 18 to 29-year-olds as well as 30 to 44.
00:03:03.640Now, the thing is this, what I find it's telling, and why I believe that this is demonstrating why David Eby is going to lose this next election,
00:03:12.220is that this shows that on social media, the BC Conservatives are reaching a lot of young people and flipping them quite easily.
00:03:19.660Those are demographics that usually you expect the BC NDP to be winning.
00:03:23.600They tend to win progressive young people, but young people are going for the Conservatives.
00:03:27.380And then older voters, since they watch more legacy media, you're less likely to be watching YouTube or being on Twitter or Facebook all the time if you're in that 60-plus demographic.
00:03:38.640Although I know a lot of you in the demographic watch my show.
00:03:42.720But this is demonstrating that the people that the BC Conservatives can reach now on social media with not a lot of spending tend to like them.
00:03:51.580And now as the provincial election heats up and the media start focusing on the race more and the BC Conservatives are able to get to more doors,
00:03:59.880they're going to start flipping older voters.
00:04:02.180So what they've basically done is proven that they can actually win the more difficult demographic to reach, which are the youth.
00:04:08.420And so once they actually go into full-scale campaign mode, the BC Conservatives are going to start flipping a lot of older voters.
00:04:16.080These are voters who crime, taxes, just the lack of jobs, drugs are the biggest thing for.
00:04:24.000The youth are mostly affordability issues.
00:04:28.120And the BC Conservatives are cleaning up on those issues that usually it's considered that the left has the advantage with the youth
00:04:33.820because pushing things like rent control and rent subsidies is usually fairly appealing for the youth who don't know as much about the damage that rent control and subsidies do on a market.
00:04:45.260And then when the BC Conservatives can reach older voters with their policies on drugs, crime, you know, SOGI 1, 2, 3, and whatnot,
00:04:53.260that's when they're going to start winning those people as they get closer to the election.
00:04:57.540And I want to peel through a little bit more of this poll, but really, obviously the NDP are still ahead.
00:05:04.760The online polls tend to shift a little bit slower because the IVR polls are when you get a phone call and it's a robo-voice
00:05:10.920and it tells you to select different numbers for different parties.
00:05:14.500Those tend to reach the voters who are most engaged, which is why you have a lot of those polls leaning a little bit more BC Conservative.
00:05:22.640And these online polls are showing the BC NDP ahead.
00:05:28.860I don't know why I can't talk, but they're showing the BC NDP ahead because online polls tend to be a little bit more broad.
00:05:35.040So yes, if the election was held to date, the NDP would win.
00:05:38.200But even if just half of the swing occurred in this next poll, the BC Conservatives would be at least tied or ahead.
00:05:45.320Because in this last poll in November, the BC NDP were ahead 18 points and it was effectively a 12-point swing between the Conservatives and the NDP.
00:05:56.220The Conservatives gained eight points and the BC NDP lost four points, which is a 12-point swing.
00:06:02.320If a six-point swing simply happened between the NDP and the Conservatives, they would be tied.
00:06:07.360And that would tend to advantage the BC Conservatives, who are going to have a way easier time convincing their voters to go out and vote for real change, rather than the NDP, who are going to have to either fearmonger against their Conservative opponents to get their base out, or they're just going to have to make the pitch that maybe you should show up and keep us in power, like our policies will start working if you give us another four years.
00:06:31.500But that's a losing narrative. Stephen Harper's Conservatives were leading into the 2015 election.
00:06:37.340And I don't want to compare Harper to Eby. Obviously, Harper is a far better leader than Eby has ever been.
00:06:44.520But Harper went into that election leading in the polls, but he ended up losing to the Liberals, who actually were never leading during that entire election, because the Conservatives' narrative was, vote us in because we're decently competent.
00:06:57.020The BC NDP don't even have the narrative that they're competent.
00:06:59.980They only have the narrative that you should come out and support and maintain the progressive dream that we're trying to create in BC here.
00:07:07.500Come and vote for BC NDP utopia that has not arrived yet, but if we double all the spending on all these crazy programs, it will eventually arrive.
00:07:15.860That is a terrible pitch, because you're not voting to do something big.
00:07:21.020People like to show up to do something big, whether it's change the government or it's reject a radical opposition.
00:07:27.040That's what happened in 2011. You had very opportunistic Liberal Party politicians like Michael Ignatieff trying to take the prime ministership away from Stephen Harper, and they were very uninspiring figures.
00:07:38.320And so voters basically showed up to reject them.
00:07:43.680Yes, John Rostead doesn't have a very high approval rating, but that's just because people don't really know who he is still,
00:07:48.420just demonstrating the fact that the BC Conservatives have only recently started to gain enough money to be able to openly market themselves more widely.
00:07:56.840So what the BC NDP are either going to have to do is fearmonger against the Conservatives to drive people out, but people aren't scared of the BC Conservatives' agenda.
00:08:04.480It's all about reversing terrible things the NDP are doing.
00:08:07.460That's something that actually appeals to people.
00:08:09.100And asking people just to come out to simply maintain EB's government because we're doing good things doesn't work when other polls show that like 78% of people on a lot of the major issues of this election think the current government is doing a poor job on drugs, SOGI, on taxes, affordability issues in general, housing.
00:08:42.560They just need the donut around Vancouver proper, and then they need to be able to win some of the more northern Vancouver and southern Vancouver Island seats away from Victoria.
00:08:53.800Anyways, that should be it for me today, guys.
00:08:56.660If you live in BC, make sure you donate to the BC Conservatives.
00:09:11.160All they have is consulting donor money to make themselves seem bigger than they really are.
00:09:15.660I could see that party being sub-8% by the time the election rolls around.
00:09:20.340So make sure, donate to your local BC Conservative EDA, and I will put a link in the description below for the BC Conservatives' donation page.
00:09:28.680Make sure you donate, make sure that they have the funding to be able to fight the NDP, because if you don't donate, don't expect other people to donate.
00:09:36.200Anyways, and then also, if you don't live in BC, you can donate to my legal fund, but, you know, I pitched that enough.
00:09:42.480I almost get tired of explaining the legal case.
00:09:44.480But if you want to donate to the show, you can through the Give, Send, Go link in the description.