The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - December 14, 2023


Is the Conservative Party slumping in the polls？


Episode Stats

Length

10 minutes

Words per Minute

189.62599

Word Count

1,979

Sentence Count

99

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

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

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,
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.
00:09:13.240 It's a stupid slap suit, you know, a strategic litigation against public participation,
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,
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.