The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - December 14, 2023


Is the Conservative Party slumping in the polls？

Topics
polling slump
Hosted by
Wyatt Claypool
Mentioned
Polyev Justin Trudeau Jagmeet Singh Maritimes Maritimer Wyatt Chris Green
Liberals exposed for faking support for Liberal Speaker Did India sabotage a Conservative leadership candidate？

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

189.63

Word count

1,979

Sentence count

99

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about why I don't think the Tories are slipping in the polls, and why I think Justin Trudeau's Liberals are actually gaining ground on the Tories. I also talk about what the polling actually says about the current political cycle, and what it really means about the direction of the election.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.040 Hey guys, it's Wyatt here, and today I want to talk about polling yet again.
00:00:04.780 I know I made a polling video just a couple days ago, but there's a lot of hoopla going on about this new Abacus data poll that came out
00:00:12.240 that's supposedly showing pure Polyev's Conservative Party slipping in the polls and Justin Trudeau's liberals potentially able to make a comeback.
00:00:20.280 I'll explain why I don't think this is what is really going on,
00:00:24.080 and what the actual polls are probably indicating about the current political cycle that we're in.
00:00:30.380 But first, I just want to quickly get to what the actual top line numbers are.
00:00:34.820 So the Abacus data poll that came out, hosted on 338, shows that the Conservatives are currently at 37%,
00:00:41.900 liberals are at 27%, NDP's at 19%, and frankly, the Bloc and the Greens don't really matter that much.
00:00:47.720 They're pretty much going to win as many seats as they won last time.
00:00:50.080 But this shows that the Conservatives have lost about 5%, and the liberals have gained about 4% in the polls
00:00:56.440 based on what they were polling at in the last Abacus data poll.
00:01:00.680 The reason why I don't think that this is very concerning from the perspective of a Conservative myself,
00:01:05.940 I'm actually running in the Calgary Signal Hill Conservative nomination.
00:01:08.720 If you live out there, definitely buy a Conservative membership, support me, shameless plug.
00:01:12.580 But I don't think this is actually indicative of a real polling slump for the Conservatives,
00:01:16.600 because I think that the Conservatives' lead over the past five or six months has been a bit overstated.
00:01:23.160 I think that Polyev caught a big wind of momentum, and since then, he's been polling super, super well.
00:01:29.780 And that over the last month, I think the legacy media has finally opened up on the Conservatives
00:01:34.840 the way that we were always expecting them to.
00:01:37.000 The legacy media obviously relies heavily on Liberal subsidies, Liberal government subsidies,
00:01:42.420 so that they were naturally eventually going to just start hitting the Conservative Party on unfair grounds,
00:01:48.740 just reprinting every single Liberal attack on peer poly of the Conservatives.
00:01:52.400 And really what this polling, in my mind, is showing is that despite all the unfair attacks,
00:01:57.660 the Conservatives are going to maintain a pretty healthy lead.
00:02:00.460 Ten points is easily still in majority territory,
00:02:03.120 and I don't think that anyone really believed that the Liberals and the NDP were going to finish
00:02:08.560 anywhere close to each other in a real election.
00:02:12.680 It wasn't going to happen, especially just based on fundraising numbers alone.
00:02:16.520 The Liberals and fundraising numbers are about double the NDP.
00:02:20.980 They're both not going to end up at 22% on election day,
00:02:24.760 especially with Jagmeet Singh still leading the NDP.
00:02:27.920 I know Justin Trudeau is incompetent,
00:02:29.720 but Jagmeet Singh has no ability to actually grow his base based on the very fringe political positions he takes.
00:02:36.420 Justin Trudeau definitely is fringe in the political positions he takes,
00:02:39.320 but he's at least subtle about it comparatively.
00:02:42.660 Really, I think this was more of a correction towards what we're more likely to see around a real 2025 election.
00:02:49.880 A 10-point lead for the Conservatives is what we can likely expect.
00:02:53.160 Maybe 12 or 13 is what we might get on election day if Justin Trudeau fumbles,
00:02:57.940 if Justin Trudeau somehow performs quite well before an election.
00:03:01.620 Maybe the Liberals tighten up to about 6- to 8-point lead for the Conservatives.
00:03:06.520 But the fact still remains, the Liberals are in government,
00:03:10.120 have the potential to control policy and, you know, actually serve the needs of Canadians,
00:03:15.760 and they're 10 points down.
00:03:17.420 That is the real story here.
00:03:18.760 And if I look at the regionals, the Liberals are still suffering really bad in certain key regions.
00:03:24.160 They're behind 9 points in Ontario,
00:03:26.160 a place where they actually need to be winning in order to hold on to a minority or majority government.
00:03:31.620 They're doing very poorly in Atlantic Canada.
00:03:34.480 That really demonstrates that they've alienated social conservatives in the Maritimes
00:03:39.040 because fundamentally a Maritime voter is a socially conservative, fiscally liberal voter.
00:03:44.300 It's kind of the inverse of, like, the typical kind of GTA conservative voter.
00:03:49.480 The GTA voter is fiscally conservative but very socially liberal on a lot of issues.
00:03:53.640 It's overstated how socially liberal they are often in my mind.
00:03:57.260 But Maritimers tend to be – and I've talked to Maritimers.
00:04:01.120 Chris from the Great Canadian Bagel podcast confirms as a Maritimer himself,
00:04:06.340 people are much more community-oriented in the Maritimes.
00:04:09.700 But because a lot of lagging industries, they're more reliant on government subsidies.
00:04:14.800 But BC, Conservatives are still ahead by quite a margin.
00:04:17.820 They're 10 points ahead of the NDP who are in second.
00:04:21.120 Obviously, Conservatives are still doing well in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba.
00:04:25.020 And really, I think all this new poll shows from Abacus is that the Liberals have tightened it up
00:04:30.860 and gotten back into second place in Quebec.
00:04:33.680 The Conservatives' victory path was never going to be through Quebec.
00:04:36.720 I think we're still slated as the party to pick up a few seats.
00:04:40.480 And that's really all we need to do in Quebec.
00:04:43.400 If anything, also, the bloc's numbers are still pretty healthy.
00:04:46.360 They're still a number one.
00:04:47.900 And that means that they'll probably end up just stealing more liberal seats
00:04:51.260 or maintaining what they have and blocking the Liberals from making any gains out there.
00:04:55.700 And the reason why I also think that this poll is not actually demonstrating any significant change
00:05:01.240 is look at Justin Trudeau's approval ratings.
00:05:03.760 Pretty much have not changed at all.
00:05:05.120 Maybe his disapproval has fallen by a point, but his approval has also fallen by a point.
00:05:09.780 And then when you look at this other poll, I think it's quite demonstrative of what's going on.
00:05:14.600 The people wanting Justin Trudeau re-elected has basically maintained at only 16%.
00:05:20.840 People wanting a change in government but not thinking there's another good option is at 32,
00:05:25.220 pretty much the same as it was several months ago.
00:05:27.800 And the people who want Justin Trudeau gone and thinks there's great options out there, still at 52.
00:05:32.260 That's actually up since June.
00:05:34.960 Really, what this probably showed was for an entire month, the media went after the conservatives
00:05:39.760 for supposedly voting against Ukraine, for supposedly voting against vulnerable groups
00:05:45.040 during this marathon voting session.
00:05:47.100 And there's been a lot of unfair attacks on Polyev over the Rainbow Bridge car explosion
00:05:53.540 where Polyev said it might be a terrorist attack based on media reports.
00:05:57.140 And the media pretended like he was the one who originated the story about it potentially being a terrorist attack,
00:06:02.940 even though he was basing it off media reporting.
00:06:05.580 And all the legacy media companies trying to shame Polyev had reported it as a potential terrorist attack themselves.
00:06:11.380 So nobody was to blame at all.
00:06:14.020 And he didn't look bad.
00:06:15.100 But the media pressed in him so hard that there was eventually going to be kind of a scared moderate voter
00:06:21.620 who can go liberal or conservative, who's going to then start selecting liberal in these polls
00:06:26.480 based off momentary shock that the media is trying to project about,
00:06:30.280 oh, pure Polyev being irresponsible or pure Polyev not being pro-Ukraine
00:06:33.900 or pure Polyev being radical on this or that.
00:06:36.100 When in just about a week or two's time, most people are going to kind of go back to how they were feeling beforehand,
00:06:43.940 you can make anyone vote pretty much any way.
00:06:47.220 Obviously not very ideological people, but sort of moderate voters.
00:06:50.960 You could get them to vote Green, Conservative, PPC, NDP, you know, liberal
00:06:56.120 based on a momentary news cycle that makes it seem like a fantastic idea.
00:07:02.060 And that's basically what happened.
00:07:03.800 Again, I do agree that during an election cycle, this is what the polling is probably going to look like
00:07:08.600 because it's going to be constant, just propaganda shock stories to make people try and not vote Conservative in 2025.
00:07:15.600 But the polling trend overall is still very, sorry, I'm choking a bit here, still very good for the Conservatives.
00:07:22.660 Think about it.
00:07:23.100 In April of 22, when this whole chart starts, when pure Polyev was just running for the Conservative Party leadership, 0.52
00:07:29.680 the Conservatives and the Liberals are within two points, barely ahead.
00:07:32.540 Now, even with the supposed cooling of Liberal, of Conservative support, they're up at up 10.
00:07:38.100 And the general trend has still maintained since June that the Conservatives are very, very much heavily favoured for the, you know, to win the next election.
00:07:48.840 A lot of, a lot of people reading, people should have to, people need to understand,
00:07:53.620 polls are not literally what's going to happen in the election.
00:07:56.180 Polls basically demonstrate momentum.
00:07:58.020 That this recent poll showed that the Conservatives' momentum has slowed, but it's not that the Liberals have momentum.
00:08:04.520 It's just that every time a Conservative Party loses any support, it's naturally probably going to go to the Liberals.
00:08:10.680 And I think the fundraising numbers speak for themselves in terms of who has momentum.
00:08:15.160 The Conservatives for the last couple of years now have been over doubling the Liberals' fundraising numbers.
00:08:21.060 If the Liberals were at 27% support and that was a hard 27%, they wouldn't be this far behind in the fundraising.
00:08:29.840 They really only probably have a base of about 18% to 22%, and then by Election Day they can probably guilt or scare about another 5% or so into coming out and voting for them.
00:08:40.260 But I don't think it's unrealistic to think that the Conservatives are going to end up at 37% to 45% on Election Day,
00:08:47.700 just based on the fact that people are going to turn out mostly for affordability issues,
00:08:52.240 and the Liberals have not done anything to make Canadians come back to the fold on those.
00:08:57.960 Anyways, that should be it for me today.
00:08:59.920 I just want to quickly plug that I have a legal defense fund linked in the description of this video below.
00:09:06.280 I'm still being sued by a billionaire.
00:09:08.080 It's cost me over $25,000 to defend myself in the National Telegraph, but we are winning. 0.99
00:09:13.240 It's a stupid slap suit, you know, a strategic litigation against public participation, 0.97
00:09:18.680 basically a lawsuit to try and shut you up by trying to make you incur costs over a matter that you've done nothing wrong in, 1.00
00:09:24.820 but purely to intimidate you.
00:09:26.540 The questioning of me went very well.
00:09:28.300 The questioning of the guy suing me did not go so well for him,
00:09:30.860 but any donations you can make really do help just sort of alleviate the costs on myself
00:09:35.720 as someone who doesn't exactly have money growing on trees all around me.
00:09:39.720 Not even this nice Christmas tree back here.
00:09:41.900 I have checked it.
00:09:42.640 There's no money on it.
00:09:43.840 And then the other thing is just another reminder that I'm running for the Calgary Signal Hill Conservative Party nomination.
00:09:49.140 So if you're watching this video and you live in Calgary,
00:09:51.860 check if you live in Calgary Signal Hill.
00:09:53.600 It's on the west side of the city.
00:09:54.700 So go see if you have a current membership.
00:09:57.500 And if you live in that riding, make sure to vote for me number one on your ranked ballot.
00:10:01.060 We want real conservatives representing strong conservative ridings.
00:10:04.060 And I actually live in the riding and I am actually a consistent conservative.
00:10:07.840 Two things you don't think would be like, you know, unique while you're running a conservative nomination,
00:10:12.740 but you get a lot of opportunists, in my opinion, who are shaky in terms of the conservative principles,
00:10:18.320 but like the prospect of potentially getting a safe seat to represent.
00:10:21.980 But other than that, I hope everyone has a fantastic day and great Christmas season.