Election simulation show clear path to Conservatives beating Liberals!
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about why I think the Conservatives have a better chance of winning the election than I initially thought. I explain why, and how the data points to a potential Conservative majority in the upcoming election. I also talk about how the Conservative vote is becoming increasingly concentrated in key areas of the country that the party needs to win.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. I have some very interesting information to share with you guys
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today that actually makes me far more hopeful that the Conservatives can win this federal
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election. Previously, I knew there was a path to victory for the Conservatives, but I assumed it
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was far more narrow than I do today. There's a general theory in Canadian politics that's
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generally true, that if the Conservatives want to beat the Liberals, they usually have to win
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the popular vote by two to three points to at least get a minority government, and to win a
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majority, they have to win by five, six, or even seven points because of the differences in efficiency
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between the Conservative vote and the Liberal vote. It's not unfair, it's just that when you're the
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Conservatives and you win massive landslide victories in ridings like Battle River Crowfoot,
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obviously that doesn't really mean anything in areas in the GTA or in southwestern Ontario. You
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have to win a riding to win a riding, and the Liberals have always been better at winning very
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marginal victories in the GTA where they're picking up ridings with 35-37% of the vote, whereas the
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average Conservative riding is one with like 52% of the vote, which means that when they win the
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popular vote, it might actually mean they're just doing extremely well in Alberta and Saskatchewan
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and elsewhere they're underperforming. But the 338 Canada simulator basically suggests that in this
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election, it may be the Conservative Party with the far more efficient vote compared to the Liberals.
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The Liberals may be just running up the score in downtown Toronto and Montreal and in certain areas
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of Vancouver and Victoria, but overall, they're actually having a lot of their vote recede in key
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ridings that they need in the GTA, southwestern Ontario, Manitoba, Calgary, Vancouver, the mainland
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area outside of downtown Vancouver. Their vote, in effect, is actually becoming more concentrated
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in areas that they were already going to win. So I want to take you guys through the simulator.
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It's extremely interesting information, but before I get into it, guys, just a reminder to like this
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video if you've been enjoying my federal election coverage. Subscribe to the channel if you've been
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videos and you're not yet a subscriber and you want me to pop up in your feed more often and leave a
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comment about what you think. I will be putting a link to the 338 simulator pinned at the top of the
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comments so you guys can play around with the numbers. Tell me what you think the most likely outcome is
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going to be from your perspective. But now, let's get into it. So this thing is basically only allowing you to
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slide the scales for each of the party votes based on what the general projections of 338 say the
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realistic range is. Now, I think it is still overestimating the Liberals because remember that
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right now, the 338 projections are including pollsters like ECOS Research that has the Liberals
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16 points ahead and I think there's that new one MQD or whatever out of Quebec that has them also
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similarly 13 points ahead. Guys, this is not a plus 13 election for any party. The Liberals or the
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Conservatives, if I see them more than eight points leading in a poll or even five points, frankly,
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I'm like, I discount that pollster because this is a knife fight election. This is not an election
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where someone's going to somehow win by 10 to 15 points unless someone just pulls their pants down
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and falls on their face on the debate stage. Although with Mark Carney, maybe that's not too
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much of a, you know, that's not a small chance of happening considering how bad of a debater he is.
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So right now, this is just the default settings for the simulator. This is just based on what 338
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thinks is going to happen based on all the polls aggregated together. So they have the Liberals at 43.7%,
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Conservatives at 37.5, NDP at 8.6, Greens at 2, Block at 5.8, and PPC at 1.5. They have an asterisk next to
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the total vote share because they note that all of the major parties, basically everything outside of
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parties that are only putting up 30 candidates or independents, all their vote in the 2021 election
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added up to 99.1% of the vote, the rest of it being independents or even smaller parties.
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I, right off the bat, I'm just going to say I suspect that this election, all the other independents
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and all the other sort of small-time parties are not going to get more than maybe 0.4 or 0.5% of the vote.
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This is a very divided election where it is clearly a horse race between the Liberals and the Conservatives
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in the vast majority of the country. And unlike Aaron O'Toole, Pierre Paulyov hasn't really done
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anything to tick off Conservatives. So right now, based on the default settings, they're projecting
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a Liberal majority of 196 to 121 for the Conservatives. So obviously that is a Liberal
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majority, 197 to 121. They're showing the NDP just keeping eight of their seats, the Greens getting
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one, and the Block, Quebec, Hawaii getting 16. The PPC gets zero because the PPC always gets zero.
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It annoys me, and maybe I'm just going to sidetrack here before I start adjusting with the meters here
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into what I think is a realistic election. I keep seeing PPC guys whine that they are not going to
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be included in the debate. Frankly, the Greens probably shouldn't be included in the debate
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either. But do you know why the PPC is not included in the debate? I know people are going to say it's
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because the Debate Commission changed the rules. Why did they change the rules? Because the rules
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didn't make any sense. Because the PPC, who got 5% of the vote last time, was just going to be able
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to, or was going to be allowed to be automatically on the debate stage, even though in this election,
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they actually missed an entire quarter of their country to have candidates in, and their support
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has fallen off a cliff. Do you really think just because the party got 5% of the vote, more than 4%
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last election, that they should automatically be on stage no matter where their support has shifted
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over time? Imagine the 2021 election if there was just something called the Anti-Lockdown Party of
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Canada. Maybe I would have cast a vote for it because I hated Aaron O'Toole and the Conservative
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Party that he was running. They were basically just, you know, 5% better than the Liberals, which made
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them not worth voting for. Let's say the Anti-Lockdown Party of Canada gets 8% of the vote.
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And then, next election, they're only around 0.1% of the vote, 0.5% in the averages, because
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obviously the purpose of the party has completely died off. Who even cares if they're running a
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candidate in every single riding? If there's no real prospect that any Canadian is going to
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seriously consider voting for them, why should they immediately automatically get a leader debate
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position when nobody is expecting them to even come close to winning a seat? That is the
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problem for the PPC. Doesn't matter what they got last election, they didn't come close to winning
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a seat in 2019, 2021, and they definitely aren't coming close in 2025, not even running a full slate
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of candidates this time. Anyway, so that's my PPC debate rant. I've wanted to make a standalone video
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on that for a while, but this will have to do a random rant in the middle of my simulator video.
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So I don't actually think the Liberals are going to be doing 43.7% in this election. I don't think
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they're going to be getting under 40% unless Carney's debate performance goes really bad. I think they're
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mostly going to be just, you know, getting a little bit over 40. There are a lot of people, as we have
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seen in other polls, people who voted Liberal in 2021 hate the Liberal Party right now. So I would find it
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very hard to believe that the Liberals would go from 32.5% of the vote in 2021 all the way up to
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effectively 44. I could see them getting more around 41.5%. Good, really good improvement for
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the Liberals, and they're mostly benefiting from the collapse of the NDP, but they're not going to be
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in the mid-40s from my personal perspective. Okay, now let's move on to the Conservative Party,
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because I'll say right off the bat, 37.4% feels very low for the Conservatives. Really, again,
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it's only this low because of pollsters like ECOS and, not Nanos as much, but ECOS and Angus Reid and
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MQD being mixed in that put the Conservatives sometimes all the way back at 33%. Does anyone
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seriously think that in this election, the Conservative Party of Canada is going to do worse,
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if not just around the same amount that O'Toole did when he was ticking off the Conservative base?
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Conservative base really likes Polyev, and we know this because when you poll 2021 Conservative voters,
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most of them, the vast, vast, vast majority, like above 90% of them are voting Conservative this time,
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whereas with the Liberals, it's only like 82% are still voting Liberal in this next election.
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The only reason the Liberals have still been gaining is just from savaging the NDP and the Greens' vote
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share, as well as the Bloc Québécois in Quebec. So I am going to just say off the bat, I think the
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Conservatives can get 40% in this election. I think based on good turnout, based on young,
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working class men who usually don't vote showing up, I think 40% is extremely achievable for the
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Conservatives. Now, don't get me wrong, I think the Conservatives can do better than 40%, but at this
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current moment, without the debate having occurred, without knowing how that's going to shake up the
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race, let's just assume baseline, with all the money the Conservatives have, 40% is like default, it's
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hard for them to underachieve that. Now, the NDP. So right now, we are at 99% of the vote allocated.
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I'm just going to also say, and the PPC is going to be at like 0.8. I don't see them doing anywhere
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close to what they did in 2021, and honestly, I don't see them even doing as well as in 2019.
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Polyev has basically done a lot of the things many of the people in the PPC wanted, and the only
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people who are really left voting for the PPC, some of them have good reasons, some of them really
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don't like certain positions the Conservative Party has currently taken. But the vast majority of people
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who voted PPC in previous elections have been satisfied with the move to the right that the
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Conservative Party has made, and many people who are left over are really just party insiders and
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purists who were repping the party in 2021, and it's almost become part of their personality to
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keep repping it. Okay, so I put them down at 0.8, and now only 98.4% of the vote is allocated. Again,
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I'll probably cut it off around 99.5 or 99.6. Now, let's move on to the Greens. The Greens are actually
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fielding fewer candidates than the PPC, but they do have two incumbents. Do I think they're going to
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be at 1.9? They had 2.3 last time. 1.9 is probably fine for them, because Elizabeth May and the leader
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of the party, her co-leader, are probably going to get enough attention to at least pump up their
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numbers in British Columbia and certain parts of Ontario in the southwest where their current seat
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is in Guelph. I'm just going to leave them at that. Maybe we can adjust that bit later. Now, the NDP.
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The NDP is truly the wild card of this election. That is why some pollsters, I don't really trust
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them too much. I even like the way that Main Street Research does its polls, but when they consistently
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have the NDP at like 6.4% or 5% sometimes or 7%, no, I'm actually going to show you something on screen
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that somebody commented at me on X as of just like an hour or two ago. This guy made the very incisive
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point that if you actually look at the NDP's track record over the past two decades, they have never
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done worse than 15.6% of the vote. Yes, Jack Layton was the leader back in 2004, but he didn't even have
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a seat in 2004. And so in 2004, 2006, 2008, they usually got from 15 to 18%. And even when Jagmeet
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Singh took over, he got 15.9 in 2019, and in 2021, he got 17.8. Now, is Jagmeet Singh going to do very
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well this election? Heck no, Jagmeet Singh is terrible at politics. He's not even exactly a
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stupid guy. He was a fairly, you know, well-acclaimed lawyer. The man is very highly educated, but he just
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has no instinct for politics. I think he's generally going to do fine on the debate stage, especially
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compared to Mark Carney and also doing better than him in the French debate because he in fact speaks
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much better French than Mark Carney. In fact, I actually think in a strange way, there is a
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capacity for Jagmeet Singh to be a breakout star of the debate. Is it because he has good ideas? No,
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it's just going to be that people haven't heard of him the entire time. And if Mark Carney underperforms,
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he is going to be seen as some sort of dark horse figure from the debate who said a lot of things that
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the media, you know, nodded at and thought was very intellectual when it's socialist nonsense. But again,
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if Carney ends up flopping, Jagmeet Singh, for many people on the left, it will look like a highly
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competent figure in comparison if you want more hard left politics. So let's get back to the chart.
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Do I think they're going to be going to be at 8.5%? No. Again, I think you're probably going to have
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these guys around 9, 9.5. I put them at 9.5. So we're at now 99.4% of the vote.
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And maybe let's put the Greens a little bit further down because of the lack of candidates
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compared to last time. Although last time, I think they even had fewer candidates.
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It's actually never mind. No, I'll put them back up. Let's put the NDP a little bit further down.
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Let's assume the pollsters are picking up on a dislike of them. But now I want to put the
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Bloc Québécois up a little bit more because again, I really don't see this being an election where the
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Bloc completely falls apart and loses all their seats outside of Montreal. When I say outside
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Montreal, they don't have any Montreal seats or outside the one they won in a by-election.
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By mean all their strength is outside Montreal. I don't see them losing all of that ground that
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they've been gaining over the past few elections. I think they're mostly going to hold on to what
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they have. So let's look at this. We're going to assume the Liberal Party of Canada is going to get
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41.5% of the vote, Conservatives 40, the NDP 9.2, the Greens 2, Bloc 6.1, and the PPC 0.8% of the
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vote. So in the previous average, they gave the Liberals 197 seats and the Conservatives 121.
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Now let's get the seat projections for the new mix that we've put in here. And now we get a tie ball
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game between the Liberals and the Conservatives of 153 to 153, with the NDP having 11 seats,
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the Bloc with 2, and the BQ with 25. Now reminder that this wouldn't even really be enough for Carney
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to have a functional minority if he demanded that he stay on as Prime Minister because he won the
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popular vote and has the same amount of seats as the Conservatives. But he wouldn't be able to get
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anything done because even with the NDP and the Greens, he is still short of a majority. And the
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Bloc Québécois have made their entire brand the fact they don't want the Liberals to be in power
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anymore. Because obviously, the Liberals are actually a massive threat to the Bloc's brand
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at this point. The Bloc has been having its vote taken away by the Liberals. So by working with the
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Liberals, they would just be doing the same thing that Jagmeet Singh had been doing since 2019,
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making themselves utterly irrelevant by capitulating to the party that's currently eating away at their
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support base. So 153 to 153. But let's say the Conservatives can do a little bit better than
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just 40% and the Liberals do a little bit worse. Let's bump it down to 41 to 40.5. Again, this is
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99.6% of the vote allocated around a realistic amount for all the major parties. What do we get
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coming out of this? We now have 160 for the Conservatives to 145 for the Liberals, 11 for the
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NDP still, one for the Greens, and 26 for the Bloc Québécois. Honestly, I actually might bump that
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up a little bit for the Greens because I actually assume their guy in Guelph will be able to hold
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onto a seat as well as Elizabeth May. And that gets us to 159 to 144. It actually takes one from
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the Conservatives there. So this is being pretty fair in my opinion. But yeah, I'm not trying to say
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like based on tinkering around because you've seen that I've had to put the Conservative bar up and
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the Liberal bar down. Again, I don't feel like I am wish casting here because I think the polls have
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been heavily leaning towards the Liberals in an unrealistic fashion. And this simulator is based
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on that aggregation out there and only giving you a range of a couple points up or down.
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Considering that this is giving the Conservatives very close to a majority
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with a actually trailing popular vote amount is really good news for the Conservatives. And again,
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I think these guys will actually be able to work with the Bloc Québécois if push comes to shove and
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Paulyev falls short of a majority by even 15 seats or so. You can have the Bloc work with them.
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Don't touch equalization. Don't touch a few other items. Cut taxes. Do some other basic stuff.
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And you can probably actually then translate that minority government in this election into a majority
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sometime in 2026 or 2027. This is what happened with Stephen Harper. He didn't need to win a majority
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in 2006 or 2008. He just basically needed to make the case that he was on the inside track of what
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Canadians wanted, was able to push through some of his legislation in those first two terms. And then
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once his opposition got too uppity, he could say, give me the full majority. And eventually Canadians
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did give it to him. So again, I assumed well before this, if the Conservatives even wanted a minority
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government, they would have to be beating the Liberals 43% or 41% to like 38 or 39. They would have to
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actually beat the Liberals by three points just to get a minority government. Now we see that the
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Conservatives could get a minority government with actually less of the vote than the Liberals have.
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Actually, let's just see if I can screw around. Can I actually get a Conservative majority out of this
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based on the current rates? Can we do this? Can we actually do it? I'm just very curious at this
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point. Let's say the PPC collapses all the way down to 0.5%. No, it's really hard at this point to
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actually come out with a get an outcome like that. But I'll link that down in the description below as
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well as pinned at the top of the comments. You guys can play around with that. I think, again, this is
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demonstrating that there has been a fundamental realignment in Canadian politics, that the
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Conservatives are obviously still going to be doing well in Alberta and Saskatchewan. And while they might
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actually drop a seat or two in those provinces, they may more than make up for it in southwestern
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Ontario, in certain parts of the GTA, in certain parts of Quebec, in Atlanta, Canada, and in British
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Columbia, in those working class neighborhoods, especially Winnipeg, a heavy union province and a
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heavy union city. The Conservatives have been getting all of the private sector labor unions endorsing
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them. I don't think any of them have actually endorsed the NDP or the Liberals outside of those
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white-collar public sector unions like QP and whatnot. So look up, guys. I think it's actually
00:20:09.960
very hopeful for the Conservatives right now. And again, we are talking about all this pre-debate.
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If Polyev can put Carney in a corner, he doesn't need to, again, pants the guy and push him off the stage.
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He just needs to basically demonstrate that this guy is kind of a bit of a slouch. He's not very
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confident. I can best him in a debate. Doesn't mean, again, he has to dunk on the guy, but if he can
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look more confident, more assertive, and like he has more definite plans that appeal to the base
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values of Canadians, he can absolutely start punching up two or three points in the polls and be in this
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winning position. And again, a winning position only requires the Conservatives to win like 155 seats,
00:20:49.980
157 seats, and have the Liberals come around like 140 or 137, something like that. So anyways,
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that should be it for this video today, guys. Hopefully you don't mind me sitting there playing
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around with charts and kind of talking about non-news items, but I always find the stats
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interesting, and I do know a bunch of you do find the stats interesting, similar to myself. So anyways,
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like the video, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment, let me know what you think the actual
00:21:18.040
percentage outcome is going to be between the Liberals and Conservatives on Election Day,