The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Doug Ford's early Ontario election could backfire on PCs! (Polling analysis)

00:00:00.000 I'm about to show you the Ontario provincial polling projections and then I'm going to say

00:00:05.620 something that you might think is quite absurd. But here are what the current numbers in Ontario

00:00:11.180 look like according to 338 Canada when it comes to popular vote and seat projections. 338 Canada

00:00:18.620 is projecting that on average between all the polls the Ontario PC party would get 42%,

00:00:24.720 Liberals 26 with their weird target looking logo. The NDP would get 21, the Greens would get 7,

00:00:31.400 and of course there would be other parties also getting votes. They show the PCs would get 88

00:00:36.460 seats, the NDP 20, Liberals 13, Greens 2, and then of course we have Bobbi Ann Brady being able to hold

00:00:43.020 on to her one independent seat around the area that actually Leslie Lewis is the federal MP. It's 0.98

00:00:48.740 that kind of same Haldemar Norfolk area. But I'm about to say Doug Ford is actually in serious

00:00:56.020 trouble in this provincial election and he deserves to be in serious trouble. The man is holding a

00:01:01.960 provincial election a year and a half early for basically no reason because he knows as soon as

00:01:08.600 pure poly becomes the Prime Minister of Canada, the standards for what a Conservative should be

00:01:14.140 are going to go up and he is going to look like a complete hack. In fact, Doug Ford, in calling this

00:01:20.860 election early, has just given the Bloc Québécois and the NDP especially a great excuse not to have

00:01:28.080 a federal election until October. Jagmeet Singh was on the hook to try and call an early election

00:01:34.520 because he had promised to as soon as Parliament was back in session and he's been given a little bit

00:01:40.160 of reprieve because of the Liberal leadership race. Maybe he can give Carney or Freeland or whoever

00:01:44.940 becomes the new Liberal leader a couple of weeks to get their foothold or, you know, get their bearings

00:01:50.120 and then he can call an election. But now that Doug Ford is calling an Ontario election, guess what

00:01:55.600 Jagmeet Singh can say? Oh, there's voter fatigue. You know, 40% of the population of Canada just went

00:02:01.600 through an election like a week ago. So we got to wait a few more months. Our staffers in Ontario are

00:02:07.540 exhausted because they were helping on Merit Stiles' NDP campaign. That's what Jagmeet Singh can now do

00:02:13.680 because Doug Ford wants an election. Why? Because Trump or something. Literally for no reason. The real

00:02:20.680 reason is because he's not a conservative and he wants his election in before Polyev is in so people

00:02:26.320 don't compare him to a man who's actually cutting taxes and spending and standing up against DEI and

00:02:33.020 gender theory because Doug Ford stands up against none of that. He has extremely high taxes, high

00:02:38.780 regulations. He runs a subsidy economy where he subsidizes the same projects that the federal

00:02:44.940 Liberals do. They literally funded the cricket factory alongside the Trudeau Liberals. They celebrated

00:02:51.160 it opening. But even though the projections currently look like this and Ford looks unbeatable,

00:02:57.420 the problem is that by having this early election, Doug Ford is suffering from the same problem that

00:03:04.580 Justin Trudeau did in 2021. You would be considered insane to think at the start of the 2021 federal

00:03:11.800 election that there was a chance for Justin Trudeau to lose. He was polling like eight, ten points above

00:03:19.280 Aaron O'Toole. And Aaron O'Toole was a terrible conservative leader. The problem is people resent you

00:03:25.780 holding an election that you didn't need to hold. Trudeau had only been in like two years into his

00:03:32.300 second term and then wanted another election because he thought that COVID was boosting his

00:03:36.860 popularity enough to win back his majority. He won a few more seats back, but basically nothing changed.

00:03:43.460 And this is the current Main Street poll. I criticize their federal polling in here because I think that

00:03:48.800 mixing federal polling into provincial polling doesn't really work. It throws off the results a bit.

00:03:53.800 But this is what their federal poll showed. And this is also what liaison strategies and other

00:03:58.320 ones are showing. Yes, campaign research is showing that the PCs could win 100 seats. They could win

00:04:04.320 even more seats than 338 is projecting. The problem is, is campaign research is run by Nick Kuvalis,

00:04:10.700 who is the personal pollster for Doug Ford. Of course, he is going to put out numbers that try and

00:04:15.860 basically intimidate all other opponents from even competing. And just don't spend your money on this

00:04:21.880 election because we're going to win anyways. So I wouldn't trust Nick Kuvalis as far as I can throw

00:04:26.120 him. But the current projections with undecideds added in show the four PCs getting 31% of the vote,

00:04:33.780 24% going a liberal, 20% going for the NDP, you have 5% for the greens, they're probably only going to be

00:04:41.640 able to hold on to the two seats they currently have. And then other is 6%, which would include the

00:04:46.720 new blue party. Guys, if you live in Ontario, consider voting for the new blue party. It's an actual

00:04:53.760 conservative party. And it's not like a purity testing party where Ford didn't do everything

00:04:58.780 perfectly. Ergo, you should vote for us. They basically are saying Ford didn't achieve anything

00:05:04.220 he promised in the 2018 platform. Ergo, we are starting to try and achieve what the PC party

00:05:10.000 originally promised. So check out the new blue party website. I linked it in the description below

00:05:14.880 and pinned it to the top, the comments. Consider running for them if they don't have a candidate

00:05:19.760 in your area. Great election experience. But this poll does show that a lot of the undecideds

00:05:25.880 might be leaning PC, which is good for the Ontario PCs. They go from having 31% support up to having

00:05:34.360 34%. The liberals gain a little bit. Yes, the Ontario PCs might even be able to win a majority

00:05:40.620 with a lot of vote splitting between the NDP and the liberals. I'm going to go down just to

00:05:47.000 removing all undecideds. The last one was with leaning voters added in where would people who

00:05:52.440 if you twisted their arm, who would they vote for? They would move over to the conservatives.

00:05:56.960 The conservatives only have a 7% lead in this poll. That is not very good because all this is where I

00:06:03.540 don't believe campaign research at all when they show the PCs having a 20-point lead. This is Doug

00:06:10.160 Ford. This is not Pierre Polyev in Ontario. Pierre Polyev is popular. He has a net approval rate. He has

00:06:16.680 a net high, like a net positive approval rating across Canada. Maybe it's net negative in Ontario by a bit

00:06:22.760 because Toronto is there and you get a lot of metropolitan liberals who hate Polyev and they will

00:06:27.320 always say that they hate his guts, which hurts his ability to be popular. It's not like Alberta.

00:06:31.660 But Doug Ford has a terrible approval rating in Ontario because he's not very conservative. So

00:06:38.620 the conservative base doesn't know what to think about him. The federal conservatives really don't

00:06:42.520 like him because he's been propping up the liberals. Again, Christia Freeland calls Doug Ford her

00:06:49.140 therapist and she refers to Christia Freeland as one of his good friends because he's liberal. He likes

00:06:55.720 retail politics. The way that Doug Ford does politics is he takes taxpayer money and he gives it to

00:07:01.200 specific industries and invest in specific regions where he wants to win votes. Northern Ontario

00:07:07.300 couldn't care less because he assumes he's just going to win those ridings. He couldn't care less

00:07:11.220 about a lot of regions where he assumes that people won't stop voting PC and then he just dumps money

00:07:16.320 into swing ridings where it would be tight with the NDP or the liberals who try and win people over

00:07:21.760 because of, hey, if we're not in, you might not get those car subsidies. You might not get those EV

00:07:26.540 subsidies, even though they're effectively fake jobs. They're private sector, but they're basically

00:07:32.040 public sector because the only reason those car companies, those EV factories are even there

00:07:37.500 is because both Ford and the federal liberals are funding them to be there. It's completely ridiculous. 0.90

00:07:44.320 So, and this is not even just the worst of it. Yes, Ford is only at 36%. The liberals are at 29. 0.83

00:07:50.760 Again, I don't trust campaign research showing that the liberals are doing as bad as they were with

00:07:56.340 Stephen Del Duca. Stephen Del Duca was a horrible leader, like one of the worst party leaders I've

00:08:02.380 ever seen in Canadian politics from my time following it. And I'm thinking even before I was like,

00:08:08.360 you know, born, I look back at elections back then. He's like Michael Ignatieff in terms of bad

00:08:14.440 for the Liberal Party of Ontario. Bonnie Crombie actually has a brand. Bad politician, but she's 1.00

00:08:21.100 bad in the same ways Doug Ford is bad. So how do you really even grade them? Plus, she hasn't been

00:08:26.220 the premier becoming unpopular since 2018, the way Doug Ford has. Legitimately, this is why I tell

00:08:33.200 people to vote New Blue. I cannot tell you a major difference in policy between Bonnie Crombie and Doug

00:08:39.280 Ford. It's impossible. Both of them are big government politicians. Both of them are in favor

00:08:45.060 of DEI. The Ford government just rolled out new DEI initiatives. They have not reformed the crazy

00:08:51.420 curriculum, the sex ed curriculum in Ontario that they promised to do in 2018, because that was

00:08:55.960 controversial. Both parties are like that. Both of them are supposedly against the carbon tax, but are

00:09:01.360 big fans of the industrial carbon tax. It's so weird looking at Ontario politics right now.

00:09:06.380 Um, here's the current approval ratings for Doug Ford, according to Main Street Research. I want

00:09:12.200 to move on to liaison strategies a bit later, but 18% are strongly in favor of them. That's not too bad.

00:09:18.020 25% somewhat, but then like the deeply unfavorable is 31% and somewhat unfavorable is 17%. Maybe this is

00:09:27.720 still a winning coalition since he has like technically above like 40% in terms of approval. But the problem

00:09:36.360 is, is that there's a lot of people in the somewhat favorable who are not going to show up because

00:09:41.300 the election was held early and they didn't want this election. Bonnie Crombie, in fact, has like

00:09:47.120 generally better approval ratings. It's not great, but people don't hate her in the same way. Here is

00:09:54.600 your opposition, because your opposition wants you to get out of office where your own voters are like,

00:10:01.260 we already have the majority. Why are we having an early election? This doesn't make sense at all.

00:10:08.520 But yes, and you can even tell that there's a lot of undecided people with this. But uh, yeah,

00:10:16.280 I guess some people in his base will say that this is a good thing or whatever, but I don't really

00:10:20.940 see this as being something that's going to help Ford out. You're going to get a lot of ticked off

00:10:25.080 people because the only, here's the thing, I'm going to show you the poll results, the detailed results

00:10:29.720 here. These are the breakdown of people who think it's a good idea. Obviously now that Ford has made

00:10:34.860 it clear he's holding the new election, there are going to be PC voters saying, oh, of course that's

00:10:39.800 a good idea. That's over, like that's 60% or so, but somewhat opposed is 12.6, strongly opposed is 10.6

00:10:48.920 in his base. And then the other parties, the strongly support to strongly oppose are all still anti-Ford

00:10:56.460 voters. So if anything, Ford has just taken a third of his own party and ticks them off hard.

00:11:02.140 People who didn't want an election at all, who probably already only somewhat like him. This

00:11:07.640 is not very good at all. This is bad politics. It's what you, it's, it's what people used to do in

00:11:14.400 like the nineties when you could kind of get away with it. Jean Chrétien would always hold early

00:11:18.520 elections when it advantaged him. But I think again, Justin Trudeau in 2021 has proven that this doesn't

00:11:25.760 really work anymore. This is what the overall polling looks like. You can tell it's kind of all

00:11:31.820 over the place at the moment. I'm so I'm bringing it up on screen from 338. So it really is, do you

00:11:37.300 trust liaison strategies in Main Street or do you trust Leger and campaign research? Leger, that's a

00:11:44.400 good result for them. 24%. Generally, Leger is pretty good. Campaign research, I wouldn't trust more than,

00:11:49.780 like farther than I can throw Nick Cuvales, which is not very far. Yeah, it's just not very good

00:11:55.680 looking poll results. I'm going to bring up specifically what liaison strategies had

00:12:00.260 because the thing is that they show a consistent downgrade. It's not like liaison has been trying

00:12:07.060 to mess with Ford and try and show that he's deeply unpopular and they've been doing this for a long

00:12:11.160 time. They had him back in January of 2025, early January at 41%. January 8th and 9th, rumors of an

00:12:21.360 early election start swirling. The liberals tick up a bit, conservatives tick down a bit. January 15th

00:12:26.920 to the 16th, liberals tick up a bit, conservatives tick up a bit. But then when it becomes clear a new

00:12:32.020 election is coming, jumps down from 41 to 39 and the liberals are at 33. Merit Stiles and the NDP are

00:12:38.140 absolutely crashing and burning right now because nobody cares who Merit Stiles is. She is basically 1.00

00:12:42.600 discount Andrea Horvath and even Andrea Horvath by the end of her tenure as NDP Ontario leader

00:12:48.620 was a discount version of Andrea Horvath. But yeah, I don't, I could see this being an election

00:12:54.800 where Ford may just keep stomping around Ontario like he's Godzilla and win 100 seats despite the

00:13:00.820 fact that a lot of people don't like him. Also, this could be an election where people are like,

00:13:05.440 yeah, this was a little bit too cute by half, Doug. We're not voting for you. We're not showing up.

00:13:10.940 It's a low turnout election where he just loses a bunch of GTA seats. He loses any seats he has

00:13:16.220 in like the Hamilton, Mississauga area because voters were just ticked off, especially like

00:13:22.580 ethnic community voters are just going to be ticked off that Doug Ford is calling in our early

00:13:26.940 election because elections can be pretty exhausting in those areas where community leaders are like

00:13:32.400 trying to force you out to vote. I could see this just like backfiring on the Ford government

00:13:37.920 really, really hard. And frankly, they deserve it. They're not conservative at all. And now they're

00:13:43.240 taking the goodwill they do not have to have a year and a half early election, which is going to

00:13:48.620 be delaying the federal election because Singh can say, oh, all my staffers who are helping Merritt

00:13:53.280 Stiles are exhausted. Ontario voters have voter fatigue right now. We need to wait a while.

00:13:59.200 Annoying. Anyways, so that's it for me today, guys. If you're in Ontario, guys, again, check out the

00:14:05.960 New Blue Party. It's a very sensible conservative party. If you're a federal conservative,

00:14:11.240 basically New Blue Party is like the federal conservatives in Ontario. The federal conservatives

00:14:16.560 hate Doug Ford for a reason. He screwed them over in 2021. He has not been helpful since then. In fact,

00:14:23.200 he keeps bear hugging Justin Trudeau and congratulating the liberals on how great they've 1.00

00:14:27.900 been for Ontario workers because they've been subsidizing all these stupid fake jobs. 1.00

00:14:33.060 They're awful. Check out the New Blue Party. Consider running for them if they don't have a 1.00

00:14:36.780 candidate in their area. I'm going to try and fly out in Ontario to help the New Blue Party.

00:14:41.240 Really great people. They have EDAs in every single writing. Do not vote for the Ontario Party.

00:14:47.260 It's a fake party that I know from my experience is basically funded by PC insiders to confuse the

00:14:53.640 third party scene because Ontario Party didn't even post anything on social media since they since

00:14:59.780 like I think it was like late 2023. Last time they posted anything on social media was like September

00:15:05.560 of 2023. And then suddenly there's new election. They've popped back up to say, hey, we're the

00:15:10.740 anti-Ford people. Even though in 22, in the 22 provincial election, they literally never criticized

00:15:16.560 Doug Ford once. They never did because all they were meant to do was hold down the New Blue Party 0.74

00:15:21.820 and prevent them from getting support. I know this because I was involved in negotiations back in late

00:15:28.180 2021 between Ontario Party and New Blue. Ontario Party, despite the fact they keep putting up rhetoric

00:15:34.620 about how New Blue and them should combine, did not want to combine. They wanted a party where then

00:15:39.780 their leader, Derek Sloan, got to be the leader of the combined party. It was ridiculous. They were 0.97

00:15:44.420 disorganized. They at some point after the 22 election got deregistered because they didn't even do

00:15:50.020 their financial filings in time and then took them like another year to finally do it because they're not

00:15:55.220 real at all. They don't have EDAs anywhere. They might have like five, but it's not a party that

00:16:00.860 has a constitution. It's not a party with voting rights. It's like the PPC that is just whatever

00:16:05.980 the leader wants to. Ontario Party actually, or the New Blue Party of Ontario, actually has policy

00:16:11.500 conventions. They actually pass policies. I've heard people go to them and they say, yeah, some of the

00:16:16.920 stuff I won passed, some of it didn't, but it was completely fair and I got people's arguments.

00:16:21.340 It's an actual party like the Reform Party was back in 1988. They, in fact, did better than the Reform

00:16:27.300 Party did in their first election, despite the fact they had to also compete against the Populist

00:16:32.100 Party of Ontario, the Libertarians, and Ontario Party. They got 2.7% of the vote. Reform only got like

00:16:38.860 2.1% in its first election in 1988. Anyways, so that should be it for me today, guys. Again, subscribe to

00:16:47.460 the channel, like this video, do all that great stuff, leave a comment, and I'll see you guys later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 27, 2025

Doug Ford's early Ontario election could backfire on PCs! (Polling analysis)

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