Liberals running from a 2026 Election! Carney is on thin ice!
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about why a new election is likely to happen in 2026, and why the Liberal Party is so terrified of it occurring. I also talk about the growing number of Canadians who are calling for a new federal election.
Transcript
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Ahoy everyone, Wyatt Claypool here back again to break down some Canadian national polling numbers.
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Today I want to talk about why it is very likely that we are going to see a new federal election
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in 2026 and why Mark Carney's Liberal Party is so terrified of a new election occurring.
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This is not like when Pierre Polyev first became the Conservative leader in 2022 where both the
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NDP and the Liberals were trying to duck a new election at all costs, even though Jagmeet
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Singh's NDP would have benefited. We are in a very different environment here in 2025 going into
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2026. Pretty much all of the parties smell blood in the water, including the Liberals. They're just
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kind of timid about having a new election because their polling is not very strong right now. Yes,
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the Liberals could still win a new election if one took place. They are one of the top two parties
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so obviously they always have a chance to win, but I don't think Mark Carney really wants to roll
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the dice on this one. That's why he's trying to poach more MPs to cross the floor and join his
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government. But even in that scenario, where a couple of more Conservatives or an NDP crosses the
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floor and joins Mark Carney's team, we would still be likely to have an election because the entire
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opposition would just try and throw as much sand in the gears of government as possible and make
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Mark Carney's life absolutely insufferable if he ends up getting a majority through effective,
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you know, sleazy, fraudulent behavior. Maybe legal behavior, but deeply sleazy, driving people with,
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you know, powerful positions they can have, you know, higher salaries in those positions,
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maybe a bigger re-election fund. I don't know what he is offering these MPs crossing the floor,
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but obviously people are leaving for non-ideological reasons. Maybe they were never
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Conservatives in the first place, maybe Chris Dontremont and Michael Ma were always complete
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weaklings. At the very least, I don't think it's because they agree with the Liberal agenda so much
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that they're leaving, it's something else that's motivating it. But we'll get to talking more about
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the details in just a second here. First, I just quickly want to do a shameless plug for the membership
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that's totally fine. Like, share, subscribe, do all that great stuff and you're already doing a lot
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for me. But today, what we're going to be breaking down is voter enthusiasm among each of the different
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parties for a new election. Because this tells us how likely the parties are going to push for a new
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election to happen. I want to go through all of the other parties and then we'll go back to the
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liberals because the liberal number is quite telling. If they smelled a majority, it would be
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a different result than what we are going to see here. But before we get into those numbers,
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I just want to show that it's starting to be picked up by the media that the liberals are not
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in a super comfortable position right now. This is coming from the National Post, an article by Tristan
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Hopper, and it says, as the year ends, the conservatives are polling better than at any point since the
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election. Absolutely. And although their average right now in the polls is not higher than during
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the, or it's not higher than the liberals, they're still closer to the liberals than in the April
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federal election. And that's really all the conservatives need. Remember, the conservatives
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did not lose by hundreds of thousands of votes across the country. They only lost by a margin of 8,000
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votes in the closest ridings. And the liberals ended up with like 169 seats on election day, 168,
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something like that. I think they ended up flipping terrible on a couple days later or so. Even that
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one still has to be litigated because the liberals only won by a single vote. And there was a bunch of
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just absolute screw ups by Elections Canada that makes it kind of illegitimate just to take that result
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as if it's not completely arbitrary based on which direction Elections Canada screwed up a bunch of
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mail-in ballots in. I don't have any updates on that story. Hopefully more will come out. I absolutely
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hope the Bloc Québécois keeps pushing that through the court system because it's ridiculous. A judge is
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just going to let the liberals win by one vote when Elections Canada screwed up on multiple mail-in ballots,
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probably from areas of the riding that are more likely to vote Bloc Québécois than liberal. But another
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story for another day there. We're going to be going through what each of the parties feel right now
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in terms of do they want a new election? And I was actually kind of surprised by the results here.
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I was assuming that the entire left would not actually want to see a new election. We'll start
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off with other, which is kind of just non-voters, people who just don't really care about having a
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new election. I think I also have to add PPC here. I guess I can also do that. I'll just do that right
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below, even though it's only like, I don't know, like 2% of the population at most. It's probably
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still less than 1%. But right now, with other, so non-voters or people who just don't like any of
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the options, this group wants an election by a margin of negative 25. So people who are non-voters
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or don't like any of the other options are not likely to want an election. In fact, extremely not
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likely to want an election. The thing is, though, that that's kind of what you'd expect. They're
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mostly people who don't really care about elections that much anyways, since they don't have a party
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they particularly like. But now we're going to go through some of the other parties. I want to be
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respectful of the PPC a little bit, and at least grab a purple pen for them. We'll start from the
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smallest to the largest right here. So the PPC for a new election are a plus 33%. Plus 33 want an election
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from the PPC's ranks. After that, you have the Green Party, which this surprised me. Ooh, that's the
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green one I want to get rid of. I keep grabbing the green one. It's out of ink. Sorry for my ramshackle
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show here, guys. The greens were shocking to me. The greens are not only a positive, but they are a
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plus 31%. I assume you guys know what this means in terms of like, if it's a negative, there are far
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more people who don't want it than want it. If it's a positive, there are far more people who want it
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than don't want it. And this is a poll of like 1900 people, 1500 people from Ipsos. So it's a good
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sample size here. So we have other negative 25. We have Green plus 31, PPC plus 33. Let's go to the
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NDP next, who I actually believe scored below the Bloc Québécois when it came to the national vote.
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But regardless, they're also smaller when it comes to seats. The NDP, another surprise, not as much as
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the greens, but they are a plus 13% for wanting a new election. Now this is wildly different than
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Jagmeet Singh's extremely timid leadership of the NDP. The NDP may have not been able to win the last
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election when Polyev was still up by, you know, 14, 17, 20 points in the polls, but he was higher than he
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used to be. In many of the polls, he was over 20%. And in the last election, I think they got like 16 or
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so. He would have picked up a large swath of seats if he had allowed pure Polyev to trigger a new
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election. But he kept defending the liberals in this vain attempt to try and make sure the
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conservatives didn't win, which just made the NDP completely irrelevant, which is why they only have
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seven seats right now. But it looks like those who are remaining as NDP voters tend to be far more
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aggressive in wanting to take the liberals out, probably feeling betrayed by them. The liberals did not
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allow them to have official party status. They've been completely ignored most of the time in
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parliament. Carney kind of just aggressively attempts to push whatever he wants through and then badgers
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people into a voting for it. This is why Carney actually kind of wants a new election too. At the
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same time, he's also scared of it. Carney does not like working with other parties at all. He is used
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to just bulldozing anything he wants through and letting other people deal with the messy details.
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Him having to negotiate with other parties really gets under his skin. But now let's get to the
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Bloc Québécois. This is less of a shock, but it's a pretty high margin of Bloc voters who want a new
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election. They are a plus 26 percent prospect right now when it comes to voters enthusiastic for a new
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election. That one doesn't need to be explained too much. The Bloc wants seats back from the liberals.
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Carney has supposedly betrayed Quebec in his most recent budget. As an Albertan, I would just
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disagree. I think Quebec tends to get a lot of what it wants, but at least in the Bloc's mind,
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they have been shortchanging Quebec, and that's why we need a new election. Mark Carney can't be
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trusted. And he said multiple times now, Yves-Francois Blanchet, the Bloc Québécois leader, that he is going
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to push for a new election or he's not going to support anything this government's doing. He did not vote
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for the budget at all. In fact, no Bloc Québécois MP voted for the budget or even abstained, so they
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didn't even put up with the games that the other parties were doing to try and make sure the budget
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still passed by having a few people abstain. I don't blame the other parties for having people abstain.
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We did not need a Christmas election. That would have benefited the liberals because every party
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involved in triggering a Christmas election looks like the Grinch party and a lot of people are just not
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going to turn out for them. But now let's get to the conservatives. Now, I'm not surprised that
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conservatives like myself want an election, but I'm surprised that they actually outpace even the PPC
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here. The conservatives want a new election by a margin of plus 56. This basically means the amount
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of conservatives who don't want a new election might be around like 25, you know, 30 or so. It's
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just a massive margin for conservatives wanting a new election. Pure Polyev, after he clears his
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leadership review in January, probably getting really good grades, will have a lot of new momentum going
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into a new election. And remember, the only reason the NDP also don't want an election this second
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is because they are without a leader, because they're currently going through a leadership race,
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which I predict Heather McPherson is going to win. I think that she's going to be kind of like the
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default choice as the one person who actually is a currently sitting MP. And the good thing is she's
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probably going to claw more votes away from the Liberal Party than the conservatives, because although
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she pretends to be somewhat in favor of oil and gas because she's an Edmonton area NDP MP, at the same
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time, she mostly has appeal with social progressives, urban voters, and people who are on the Green
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Left, who currently Mark Carney is alienating with his Memorandum of Understanding with Alberta, which
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ironically will probably not result in any pipelines. So Carney is somehow both ticking off business
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liberals and the Green Left at the same time. But now let's get to the unveiling of what liberals want.
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So the liberals, unsurprisingly, are a negative. They do not want a new election,
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because even though maybe the liberals would like to have a majority, liberals feel like they won,
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and an election is an unnecessary risk to what they had just voted in. The liberals, though,
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are not just a negative, they are a negative 58%. So if a new election gets triggered, not only are the
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liberals not polling that well right now compared to how they did on election day relative to the
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conservatives, but their own supporters would probably be fairly unmotivated to even show up
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and vote. They just gave Mark Carney a new government. What are you talking about? You already broke it.
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You need us to vote for it again. It doesn't matter if it's conservatives who trigger the election. A lot
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of voters feel like, well, we just voted you in. How did it all fall apart? How did you not create a
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coalition government with the NDP or the bloc? How did you screw this up so badly?
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And yes, the liberals could technically get a majority government if they get a couple more
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people to cross the floor. The problem is it will be a bare majority or only a majority of one extra
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MP. And if they do that, all the parties, the bets will be off. All of the parties will basically start
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trying to gum up the gears of government as much as possible, slow everything to a halt, have endless
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amendments, endless motion votes, endless everything all the time, and make sure that Mark Carney can barely
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operate. Because there's kind of like a decorum that exists in parliament, where this is what I
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call, this is what's called pairing. And it's just one example of how the opposition is usually trying
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to be nice to the government. And it's kind of a vice versa thing. If a liberal MP needs to go to a
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dental appointment, and they have to go back to their home riding where their dentist lives, and
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they'll be gone for a few days, a conservative or an NDP will typically agree that they are going to
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sit out the next vote in order to allow that person to like know it. So the balance of power is not
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thrown off by someone just simply needing to go for a checkup or some other preplanned thing that
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they cannot miss. If the liberals basically cheat their way into a majority by getting floor crossers,
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the decorum is going out the window. And Mark Carney is going to have a harder time than ever to
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actually get anything done, because he's going to have to hold his own MPs hostage in the House of
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Commons, making sure they are there to vote for absolutely everything. Nobody can go home. And
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the opposition will be making sure to put up votes every five seconds to make sure nothing gets done
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in a day. And overall, the total right now for Canadians wanting a new election is quite good.
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The total, in fact, obviously, it's not going to be massive. But it is, I will use,
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we'll use a different color, we'll use this dark green, just for variety sake. Right now,
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we have, oh, that's a terrible 10. What the heck? Well, now I know why I don't use that one.
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Goodness, that was horrible. We'll just use black, I guess. But it's right now, across the country,
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a plus two for a new election. That is pretty crazy, because I remember seeing some polls that
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were kind of asking people like a few months ago, what do you think about an early election?
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What do you think about December election? And this is what I mean, you do not want to be the
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Grinch Party stealing people's Christmas and forcing them to go into an election.
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Back like a month ago, when they were asking people about a December election, it was polling
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like AIDS. It was polling like the bubonic plague. It was like negative 27% of Canadians nationally
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wanted an election in December. But now that we're going into the new year, and the timeline's a little
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bit wider for people, it's now a plus two. So that's a big turnaround when you simply change
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the season. I know there are people out there saying the conservatives are hypocrites because
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Andrew Scheer and someone else hid behind the curtains to make sure that the liberals' budget
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passed. I'm like, yeah, because now the amount of people who want an election is a plus two,
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not a negative 27. Timing is everything in politics. We're never going to be able to change that.
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Yes, should everyone like us want to talk about politics all the time and always want to vote?
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Sure. But also, guys, we have to acknowledge we're freaks. We care about politics, which makes
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us freaks. Most people don't care, and they just care that you are disrupting their holidays.
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But if it's a spring 2026 election, and the liberals continue to fail to get anything substantial done,
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yeah, you're going to see that go up way more. At the same time, the liberal number is probably
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going to start going down, because you're going to find a lot more liberals are feeling a bit
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queasy about where the numbers are at. I'm not even kidding. If you go through all of the numbers
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right now for where the conservatives and liberals stand when it comes to the different pollsters,
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it's pretty much a tie across the board. I'll even bring up something on screen for you guys here.
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We're not going to put it on the whiteboard, but let's just put this on the screen so you get the
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point of where the averages are going. Are the liberals still ahead? Sure, but the chart I'm about
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to show you does, in fact, take into account all polls, not just the ones I trust. I do not trust
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ECOS. Oh, actually, in fact, the conservatives are currently leading. But even this one takes
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into account places like ECOS, which is run by Frank Graves. It's a trash pollster. As of December
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27th, the polling average was 38.4% conservative, 37.8% liberal, 15.8% NDP, greens 5.8%, and PPC 2.4%.
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You can see a big change over time there between the liberals and the conservatives. Or am I looking
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at the wrong chart here? No, oh no, that's British Columbia there. Ah, there we go, federal. No,
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the liberals are still leading. Okay, come on, give me federal. I'm messing this up, guys. I'm
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filling your minds with fake news. Can we find the full one here? Oh my goodness. Okay, well,
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we messed it up. I took you guys down to detour. That did not matter. But I believe my original
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prediction or my original assumption was right. Right now, the conservatives are like about a point
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behind the liberals federally. But remember, the conservative vote is more efficient than the
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liberal vote. Conservatives getting 1% less than the liberals in a national election would in fact
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beat the liberals when it comes to seats. And it went from a gap in the summer, like June, July,
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the liberals were running an average gap of like seven points over the conservatives. Now it's a
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point. And that point is going to keep getting smaller. And then the liberal conservatives are going
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to start opening up an average lead as the liberals, again, fail to get a trade deal done,
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fail to get a pipeline done. The economy starts slowing down even more. They just gave another
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$2.5 billion to Ukraine. Is it a loan that they eventually have to pay back? Sure. But I'd rather
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give them a loan while our deficit was not $78 billion already. I don't even mind some foreign aid.
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It's fine. But how about we just do some other smart things at the same time to offset the cost of
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supporting Ukraine? Like, you know, having a coherent economic, you know, like having a coherent
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economic growth agenda, rather than keeping taxes really high, and then just trying to inject money
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into the system. But anyways, that should be it for me today, guys. Thank you for watching. Hit the
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join button if you want to become a member of the channel. And I will see you guys all next time.