The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - December 21, 2025


Liberals FALL in latest polls - Conservatives win on key issues!


Episode Stats

Length

25 minutes

Words per Minute

177.18027

Word Count

4,538

Sentence Count

266

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

In this episode, we discuss the swing between the Conservatives and Liberals from their last poll to their current poll, as well as how the Tories are doing on the major issues, and which issues are ranking highest for Canadians.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Ahoy, everyone. Wyatt Claypool here, back again to break down some Canadian national polling numbers.
00:00:06.620 Today on the show, we're going to be breaking down a few different subjects.
00:00:10.920 We're going to start off with the swing between the Conservatives and the Liberals across four pollsters from their last poll to their current poll.
00:00:19.420 And then I want to talk about some issue polling, how the Conservatives are doing compared to the Liberals on the different major issues for Canadians, as well as which issues are ranking highest for Canadians right now.
00:00:32.720 Spoiler alert, the Liberals are losing their Trump issue very, very hard now.
00:00:37.760 Like, previously, I was blowing the whistle on the fact that Carney needs to find a new issue to run on, because Trump and his administration and abacus data's polling had fallen to like 34% when around election time it was nearly 50% of people would place it in their top three.
00:00:55.420 Now it's way further down than even just 34% at this point.
00:00:59.800 But before we start breaking down these different subjects, I just want to remind you guys, if you like the show, make sure to leave a like on this video, subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber,
00:01:10.180 and if you want to help support the channel, you can join the membership for the channel.
00:01:13.820 Helps make the channel more sustainable for me and makes me less reliant on YouTube's algorithm.
00:01:19.320 But now, let's get right into it, and we will start off with the most boring swing on this board, which comes from Abacus Data.
00:01:27.880 And this is what I mean when I say that Abacus Data is kind of a boring pollster, or not boring, so I mean conservative pollster.
00:01:35.240 They tend to have boring numbers week to week, and that's not a bad thing.
00:01:39.520 They just don't tend to change very much, since they have a very good polling methodology that doesn't end up oversampling one group more one week and then another group the next week.
00:01:49.280 When a pollster has their numbers going way up and way down week to week, you know that there's a problem with their sampling, because people don't change their opinions that much.
00:01:58.760 So Abacus Data is a very conservative pollster.
00:02:01.980 And from their last poll to this most recent poll, they have literally not budged an inch.
00:02:07.420 They have the liberals and the conservatives still both at 41%.
00:02:11.980 I am just including this one here, just for the sake of completion, to show you I'm not leaving anything out here.
00:02:18.620 There are some pollsters not showing the conservatives are making gains, so that is a completely neutral move since the last Abacus Data poll.
00:02:27.220 But then we will go to Ipsos.
00:02:29.900 Ipsos is kind of interesting.
00:02:31.560 It's not like Palace and Main Street that we'll be getting into in a bit.
00:02:34.300 The conservatives are not gaining on the liberals exactly, but the liberals are shrinking towards the conservatives.
00:02:41.860 In fact, since Ipsos' last poll, which I believe was over like a month ago, maybe even two months ago, the liberals have actually lost three points and fallen to 40%.
00:02:53.200 And the conservatives lost points too, but they only fell to 37%, meaning that this poll, despite both parties losing support, is still a plus one swing towards the conservatives.
00:03:08.180 Because, of course, a swing is just the difference between the two parties.
00:03:13.060 How are these parties basically shifting away towards each other?
00:03:17.880 So that's a plus one swing for the conservatives, regardless of the fact that they did lose a little bit of support here.
00:03:25.020 But now let's get to Main Street research.
00:03:28.160 This one is very interesting.
00:03:30.540 We had previously talked about the Main Street poll in a previous video.
00:03:35.080 The liberals fell in this poll from 44% as of like a month and a half ago or so, maybe two months ago.
00:03:42.100 They are at 41.3% in the latest Main Street poll, and the conservatives went up from 39.7% up to 42.3%.
00:03:56.380 That is a massive swing there.
00:03:59.140 I actually need to calculate that just so I get it right.
00:04:01.380 But that is, in fact, a swing of 5.3%.
00:04:12.580 Because the liberals fell by 2.6% and the conservatives went up by like 6.7% or so.
00:04:18.580 I think I'm getting those numbers wrong.
00:04:20.360 But this is a plus 5.6% swing for the conservatives, which obviously Polyev would be very, very happy with.
00:04:31.380 Being a bit messy over here.
00:04:32.780 Hopefully that doesn't bother you guys too much.
00:04:35.200 And then Palestina, this is a milder one, but it is still significant here.
00:04:40.260 We had the liberals fall by half a point down to 40.9% and the conservatives had gone up by 0.8% up to 37.7%.
00:04:52.380 And that means that is an overall swing of 1.3% for the conservatives since the last Pal as a data poll, which is not too shabby at all if you are the conservatives.
00:05:09.240 And now, again, we go back to the news of the day, which is the liberals trying to acquire a majority by just having conservatives cross the floor.
00:05:19.540 And considering here we have had a neutral poll and then we have had three polls that show the conservatives making a gain on the liberals.
00:05:28.220 Well, yeah, the liberals are going to be nervous thinking about actually having to run in a new election because they're not doing that well considering they are currently the incumbent government very early into their term when they should be racking up popularity points.
00:05:44.220 Because early into an administration, you're obviously going to be doing your most popular policies first.
00:05:51.180 You're going to be pushing those ones in the House of Commons, making yourself seem more popular simply by doing the easy crowd-pleasing stuff first.
00:06:02.100 The problem is, Carney didn't really promise much.
00:06:04.860 And what he did promise he has not achieved because I'm not sure if you guys have noticed or not, we do not currently have a trade agreement signed with the United States.
00:06:14.860 So, yeah, and that is exactly why you're seeing a shift back towards conservatives.
00:06:19.320 Less a shift towards the conservatives, more so the conservatives across most of the pollsters have mostly just been maintaining either high 30s, 38, 39 percent, or even low 40s, 41, 42.
00:06:32.320 Now, the liberals generally have the same polling, but again, why are they neck and neck with a party that they just beat in the last federal election and they are currently in the driver's seat to push forward policy to make themselves more popular?
00:06:47.320 The thing is, the liberals are pretty underwhelming to a lot of Canadians, especially what I call business liberals, people who maybe are more socially liberal, but if the economy gets bad enough, they'll go vote for the conservatives.
00:06:59.680 A lot of business liberals came back after they were really ticked off with Justin Trudeau and voted for Carney because he's the businessman, he's the economist, he's the former governor of the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England.
00:07:11.600 And then when he delivers a tax cut that maybe saves the average family, you know, 400 and 500 bucks.
00:07:18.460 And then also, what else was he doing? You know, blowing out the budget, not getting a trade deal signed, having billions and billions of dollars flood into the United States away from Canada.
00:07:31.960 So much capital has left Canada and gone to the United States. Those people are not going to say, well, give them some time.
00:07:37.980 They were promised a lot and those people are going to swing pretty fast away from the liberals because prior to Carney taking over for Trudeau, they were pretty dead set on not voting liberal.
00:07:47.480 So they're not going to say, we'll give it another few years. They're already mad now.
00:07:52.200 And that's why Carney has not seen a big bump since the election. He is still neck and neck with Polyev.
00:07:58.360 But now I'm going to clear the board here and then I want to take you guys into some of the issue polling because this is where I actually think it really gets interesting.
00:08:06.860 We're going to start off with what issues Canadians care most about and then we will get into on which issues, which party they trust more on.
00:08:14.440 But let me clear this and then we will go through that. I think you will find it entertaining.
00:08:20.360 Now, sorry if this kind of looks quick and dirty here. I can't actually put everything on the chart on the screen or on my whiteboard here.
00:08:28.740 It's just a little bit too cluttered with it all. I will quickly, before we start writing anything down, show you what the Abacus data chart looks like.
00:08:35.920 This is how they display it. And Abacus, I think, does a really good job of this, where they allow people to pick multiple top issues.
00:08:43.260 Because let's be honest, most people, you can't boil them down to a single issue. People should be allowed to pick up to three.
00:08:49.880 And again, this is a conservative pollster, not an ideology. The guy who runs it, David Coletto, I believe is more of a center-left guy.
00:08:57.680 But the whole point is that their methodology and the way they do things tends to make for more consistent numbers over time.
00:09:03.780 An Abacus data number from today is more likely to look the same next week when they do new polling than another pollster.
00:09:11.700 That's not because they're manipulating anything. They just make sure to have a very consistent sample, depending on what people vote for last election, gender, all that stuff.
00:09:20.660 But let's go through what Canadians' top issues are when they are allowed to pick three of them.
00:09:27.100 So I'll just start from the top here. I'll use a slightly different color just for the sake of it, just so everything doesn't blend in with each other.
00:09:34.960 Obviously, at the top here, we have the cost of... Why do I have it C-O-S? It should be C-O-L.
00:09:43.380 Guys, I'm really stupid. We have the cost of living.
00:09:48.500 Cost of living is naturally an issue that bothers pretty much everyone.
00:09:52.360 So this one gets 62% with Canadians. That's how many people care about it.
00:09:58.440 Health care comes second with 40%.
00:10:02.080 Growth, economic growth, and jobs. We have that one at 34%.
00:10:09.860 Housing and home ownership ranks at 25%.
00:10:16.940 Immigration, 24%.
00:10:19.940 Trump and the United States is 24%.
00:10:24.200 And spending, yeah, government spending is at 20%.
00:10:29.420 Sorry, I was looking at the chart here, and the numbers and the bars are actually slightly offset of each other,
00:10:33.700 so I was having to really stare at those.
00:10:35.900 This is massively good for the Conservatives, because I need to talk about this U.S. Trump number,
00:10:42.160 and the fact that it's gotten so low is the story here.
00:10:46.120 This, a few weeks ago, with abacus data, just a few weeks ago, was 34%.
00:10:53.960 Now, the Liberals really need Trump to be a big issue in Canadians' mind,
00:11:00.300 because they won the election in April, when the Trump issue, when you selected three issues,
00:11:05.540 was around 40% or 45%.
00:11:07.620 If people were told to pick their top two issues, it was above 50%.
00:11:11.600 That not only was one of people's top three issues commonly,
00:11:15.880 it was oftentimes people's top two or even top issue.
00:11:19.780 And that's why the Conservatives had a hard time, because if the Liberals get to run against Trump,
00:11:25.220 well, it means that the Conservatives have to run away from Trump in a certain sense.
00:11:28.920 Now, I don't think they actually have to do it.
00:11:30.560 I thought the Conservatives should have been running a campaign
00:11:32.680 where they presented Mark Carney as this pathetic, limp negotiator
00:11:37.960 who's going to get absolutely clobbered by Donald Trump.
00:11:40.760 I would have done it that way.
00:11:41.920 They did it a different way of being like, oh, look, Trump's endorsing him.
00:11:46.200 That's a fine angle.
00:11:47.680 But add in the reason why, I would have kept playing advertisements on loop
00:11:52.420 of basically saying Trump, like showing Mark Carney bumbling all over himself in a press conference,
00:11:57.720 and then cut to Donald Trump saying, yeah, of course, I want to work with the Liberals.
00:12:01.160 Cuts back to Mark Carney.
00:12:02.280 And then you cut to Trump.
00:12:05.380 Oh, yeah, I could get along famously with Mark Carney.
00:12:07.880 That would be great.
00:12:09.040 That would have been good.
00:12:09.820 But they didn't go for that angle exactly.
00:12:11.700 And I felt like they were trying to basically prove, no, no, no, we're also anti-Trump.
00:12:15.440 You don't have to be pro or anti.
00:12:17.140 Just be nothing.
00:12:18.100 Basically say we're better at negotiating with them,
00:12:20.000 and the Liberals are going to give away the House because they don't know what they're doing.
00:12:23.540 A lot of these other things, the things that are way up are health care.
00:12:27.340 Health care is actually massively up.
00:12:29.720 This used to be in the 30s, if not the high 20s, and that one is going up,
00:12:34.060 which is actually good for the NDP because that's an issue that they fight strongly with the Liberals on.
00:12:40.500 But cost of living is up by a little bit.
00:12:43.300 Housing is up.
00:12:44.720 Immigration is significantly up.
00:12:46.640 A few weeks ago, immigration would have been at 18%, and now it is at 24%.
00:12:51.600 And spending is also up.
00:12:54.140 It's at 20% of people putting it in their top three.
00:12:57.040 This is kind of an esoteric issue in a lot of ways, saying, oh, I have a problem with spending in government.
00:13:04.540 You know, I'd hope everyone would care about it and want a smaller government.
00:13:07.420 But usually this one's around, like, 12%, 14%.
00:13:10.880 Right below that would have been crime and some of the other issues.
00:13:13.540 And you'd wonder, like, how do people not care about crime?
00:13:16.860 It's one of those things, if you live in a safe neighborhood, you can very easily put it out of your mind that crime even exists.
00:13:22.240 But if you live, like, downtown Winnipeg or Edmonton or you live in the GTA, yeah, you're more likely to put crime up there.
00:13:30.240 But if you live in a small town where there's not a high crime rate, it doesn't even factor in in your top three.
00:13:36.040 I wish more people cared about it.
00:13:37.680 It's just not what most people care.
00:13:39.580 But now I want to go back and then race this board and go take you guys through the different issues and who Canadians trust the most on those particular issues.
00:13:49.940 Because this is where it gets interesting.
00:13:52.260 Because, yes, the Liberals do rank higher than the Conservatives on many of these issues.
00:13:57.760 At the same time, their margins of, like, their victory margins on some of these issues are far smaller than the margins that the Conservatives win other issues on.
00:14:07.280 Again, that's a bit confusing.
00:14:09.620 That's a little bit of a confusing way of putting it.
00:14:11.380 But you will get what I mean when I come back here in just a second.
00:14:15.620 So we're just going to start off with these select issues on the board.
00:14:19.700 And I may race them and bring a few others on.
00:14:21.720 I want to talk about, like, immigration.
00:14:23.920 But we're going to go through what Canadians, who Canadians think are the better party on these different issues.
00:14:29.880 Because, again, this is demonstrating a big problem when it comes, like, for the Liberal government.
00:14:35.400 On the cost of living, you know, the biggest issue in the country right now, the Conservatives are leading on this one with 42% of people thinking that they are best fit to handle this issue.
00:14:50.060 And the Liberals are at a paltry 29%.
00:14:55.560 The Conservatives are literally leading them on the biggest issue in Canada by plus 13%.
00:15:03.320 Now, maybe that's a little unfair to the Liberals because the NDP had 9%.
00:15:07.900 And maybe some of those NDP idealists may say the NDP is the best, but they'll settle for the Liberals.
00:15:14.300 But still, even if you took 9% out of the Conservatives' lead and just gave 9% to the Liberals,
00:15:19.880 they would still be underwater by four points.
00:15:22.360 And some of those NDP people are, in fact, voting for them.
00:15:25.560 When we go to the economic growth and jobs, this is one that the Liberals do, in fact, lead on.
00:15:31.540 They are at 44% on basically economic growth and jobs.
00:15:37.160 It's kind of a little contradictory that people support the Conservatives on cost of living.
00:15:41.680 But on economic growth and jobs, they think the Liberals are better.
00:15:44.820 But this is kind of the irrationality of a lot of voters.
00:15:47.280 But again, notice that the Liberals are only leading here by, maybe I'll switch to using the actual color of the party leading instead of black.
00:15:56.120 Forgive me there, guys.
00:15:57.880 The Liberals are only leading on that one by three points compared to the Conservatives leading by 13 points on the cost of living.
00:16:05.540 And again, COL, cost of living, is a bigger issue than just general economic growth.
00:16:10.860 Now, let's go to the health care system.
00:16:14.260 The Liberals do lead on this one, but it's not as much as you would think again.
00:16:18.300 They have a 33% on this issue.
00:16:21.700 The Conservatives only have 25.
00:16:24.960 So that is an 8% lead for the Liberals, which I will be marking down in a second here.
00:16:30.080 But I do want to note on an issue like this, this is why it's a great issue for the NDP to have rising up in what Canadians prioritize.
00:16:37.720 Because even though they're a party that only has about 8% or 9% of the vote, they score 18% when it comes to health care.
00:16:46.440 A lot of nurses are like notoriously NDP voters because they are the health care party.
00:16:52.060 And I don't blame nurses when you're doing a very difficult job.
00:16:55.740 You will tend to just use stereotypes to determine who you're going to support in an election.
00:17:00.200 And the NDP really does throw themselves at nurses as like the one party that really cares about, you know, health care.
00:17:08.360 Now let's go to an actual good issue for the Liberals.
00:17:10.980 But again, you will notice why I'm saying that, why I was talking about this issue a little differently before.
00:17:17.880 On Trump in the United States, the Liberals score 55%.
00:17:22.880 So that is an overwhelming large group of people who think they are the best to take on Donald Trump in the United States.
00:17:29.860 The Conservatives only got 30%.
00:17:32.520 So that is a plus 25 rating on that poll.
00:17:37.360 But remember, that is a great number for the Liberals.
00:17:40.720 But the issue itself has fallen in how many Canadians actually care about it.
00:17:45.520 And by the way, you can go check the video when we last did, like, a breakdown of the issues and who Canadians trust more.
00:17:53.500 The Liberals were actually at 62%.
00:17:55.400 And I think the Conservatives were like 26% or something like that.
00:17:58.860 So even then, on this issue that's a big issue for the Liberals, they have still fallen in Canadians' countenance of how good they are with it.
00:18:07.100 But let's go to the opposite version of that issue, which is crime, where we have the Conservatives absolutely slaughtering the Liberals on this one, with 51% of people trusting them the most.
00:18:19.900 Not as high as the Liberals on Trump, but the Liberals are also lower when it comes to crime at only 27%, meaning that, what is that, 3%, 20%, 24%, plus 24% lead for the Conservatives when it comes to crime.
00:18:36.480 Okay, now, again, crime isn't the biggest rating issue for a lot of people.
00:18:42.440 But in select parts of the country, Richmond, the GTA, Winnipeg, if you're really good on crime, that is going to give you benefits.
00:18:50.600 Oftentimes, you will see issues where people wonder, like, well, you know, it's niche, who cares?
00:18:56.580 Well, it might be a niche issue where not even 1% of Canadians care about it.
00:19:01.060 But if you're in the particular place that it matters, like with forestry or fishing or certain farming issues, it pays massive dividends to be on the right side of it.
00:19:10.420 But overall, the Liberals, where they are leading, like on the economy, they're leading with, like, a plus 3, or on healthcare, they lead with a plus 8.
00:19:18.160 But cost of living, Conservatives lead with plus 13, and on crime, they lead with plus 24.
00:19:22.820 Now, I'm just going to do a rough sort of scrubbing of the board here, so that we can talk about a few different issues, one of them being migration.
00:19:34.380 I still want to write down immigration, so I'm calling it migration.
00:19:37.960 Migration has become a massive issue for Canadians, considering back in the day, this would be like a single-digit type of polling issue for Canadians.
00:19:46.820 Not many people would really care about it that much.
00:19:50.940 And right now, on immigration, if I can find it on our chart here, yeah, on immigration, the Conservatives are literally rated at 59%.
00:20:02.760 59% of people trust the Conservatives the most to handle immigration.
00:20:07.640 The Liberals are only at 18% on that issue, which, if you can do the math, means that that is a plus 41% issue for the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:20:22.640 This is why it was a fantastic pivot after the election for Kalev to go away from just saying that they want marginally lower immigration rates than the Liberals,
00:20:32.680 to going full into saying that, no, we need net negative migration, which I think is an extremely reasonable policy.
00:20:40.460 It allows you to still bring people in who have great skills that the country needs.
00:20:44.780 At the same time, it's saying, but the outflow of TFWs, the outflow of people on student visas, the outflow of criminal or permanent residents and people exploiting the social service system,
00:20:55.580 more of those people have to be leaving than new people coming in.
00:20:59.080 We just can't handle it at this point.
00:21:01.800 And then I wanted to bring in one more issue, and this is kind of a problem for Mark Carney.
00:21:06.760 I want to do, it doesn't really matter, I'll just do, I guess I can do it in both.
00:21:11.020 We can do environment.
00:21:14.780 Enviro, and then we'll do, like, climate.
00:21:26.580 Now, previously when I did this poll, and this is where the MOU was hurting the Liberals, the MOU was not going to build a pipeline.
00:21:33.900 So Mark Carney's not buying himself a lot of votes out in the Alberta area.
00:21:38.640 But he, but the thing is that, at the same time, business Liberals and a lot of other people don't really trust that he's going to build a pipeline because of all the excuse making he keeps making, and then giving all these vetoes to the government of British Columbia and to First Nations to kill a pipeline.
00:21:53.580 The problem is the MOU still hurt him with the Green left.
00:21:58.040 Previously, it was actually the Liberals who were leading on environment and climate change.
00:22:04.080 And you will not be shocked to hear on one of these.
00:22:06.320 In fact, the Green Party is now leading with 33% of people thinking they are best on the climate and 29% on the environment in general.
00:22:16.400 So, like, that's more like environmental stewardship, and this is the climate.
00:22:19.980 Now, conservative voters are not climate voters, so this almost does not matter at all.
00:22:24.900 But the Liberals on both of these issues are at 31%.
00:22:28.840 So I did this out of order.
00:22:30.420 They are leading the Greens on environment, but they're falling behind them on climate.
00:22:35.560 And I don't even need to show you the other numbers here.
00:22:37.900 You know, you get the Conservatives around, like, you know, 14%, 20% on one of these, and the NDPs around 10% and 8%.
00:22:45.220 But the problem is that even on these more niche issues that usually the Liberals rely on for a few extra votes over the Conservatives in certain select areas around the GTA,
00:22:55.640 there are certain people who are Green Liberals who will show up for the Liberals to stop those dirty pro-oil Conservatives.
00:23:03.400 But because Carney signed an MOU, the Greens are now beating him on that issue,
00:23:07.440 and they may no longer show up for Carney because he's a dirty pro-oil and gas Liberal,
00:23:12.680 although he's never actually going to build a pipeline, so Carney's facing the worst of both worlds.
00:23:18.040 He's the guy who's not going to build a pipeline.
00:23:20.160 At the same time, he is ticking off the Green Left, represented by people like Stephen Gilbeau,
00:23:24.920 who left his cabinet over the MOU, which, I'm going to remind you, again, I only said it five seconds ago,
00:23:30.740 is not actually going to result in a pipeline being built.
00:23:34.400 It's crazy talents in the Liberal world right now.
00:23:37.380 But overall, again, as you go through it, immigration, a really big issue for Canadians.
00:23:42.160 It's a 41% lead, a 13% lead on the cost of living, a massive lead, 24% on crime.
00:23:49.520 And yes, do the Liberals have leads?
00:23:51.740 Yeah, on the economy, they're leading by four.
00:23:54.000 On Trump, they're leading by a lot, but that issue has gone down from 50% as a top three issue for people on Election Day
00:24:01.160 to, you know, around June, it was 44, a month ago, it may have been 34, and now it's 24%.
00:24:06.760 It's just an issue that's falling off the map because you can't hype up the threat of the America for so long
00:24:13.040 until people say, okay, I know you're saying Trump's a bad guy and he's hurting us,
00:24:17.560 but what are you doing to actually build up the economy?
00:24:20.720 You gave us a tax cut of 1% under $50,000.
00:24:24.840 I am a little underwhelmed.
00:24:27.500 That's kind of the situation Carney's in.
00:24:29.560 He is perfectly triangulated away for everyone to hate him.
00:24:33.580 And even in Abacus Davis polling, I'm not going to bring this up on screen,
00:24:37.220 but when you actually look at his overall approval rating, it is starting to fall off overall.
00:24:42.380 The net impression of him back in April, or back in actually June, in his honeymoon,
00:24:47.240 was like 24%, plus 24% of Canadians liked him.
00:24:50.960 As of December, it's plus 10%.
00:24:54.160 But if you go off of Main Street Research's polling, they actually have him already underwater,
00:24:59.100 but it does look like Abacus data is slowly trending towards Carney being a more contentious figure
00:25:04.540 than post-election when he was seen as this big unifier.
00:25:09.220 But anyways, with that all being said, thank you guys for watching the show.
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