The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - August 23, 2024


New polls show BC Conservatives beating David Eby's NDP!


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

198.71811

Word Count

2,656

Sentence Count

134


Summary

The BC Conservatives have now polled ahead of the BC NDP in two polls, which is a big deal for the Tories. I talk about why this is happening and why the Tories are actually ahead in the polls on Vancouver Island.


Transcript

00:00:00.320 Hey everyone, I am not in Canada to do the latest polling update for the British Columbia
00:00:05.820 provincial election, so I am doing this video sitting on a stump in a park in Kyoto, Japan,
00:00:12.180 but let's just jump right into what has happened recently, and that is the BC Conservatives
00:00:18.260 have polled ahead of the BC NDP in not just one poll, not just the Main Street poll, but
00:00:24.020 in two polls now.
00:00:25.000 The BC Conservatives are ahead three points in the latest Main Street research poll, and
00:00:30.000 they're ahead by one point in the latest Polara poll.
00:00:33.020 I even predicted this was going to happen on X, where I said that as soon as we saw Main
00:00:38.320 Street research saying that the Conservatives are leading by three points, that you're going
00:00:43.420 to see a lot more of the pollsters start to come out and say that, yeah, actually the
00:00:47.860 Conservatives are leading by one, leading by two, a lot of the companies are going to rework
00:00:52.020 their methodologies to be able to find the hidden Conservative voter.
00:00:56.360 Because the thing that's happening in this upcoming BC election is I think that the voter
00:01:02.300 turnout is going to look very different than it did back in 2020.
00:01:06.340 I don't just mean in terms of the percentage of people who are going to be coming out, I
00:01:10.300 think it might be the same, if not maybe a little bit lower, simply because there's a
00:01:15.020 lot of apathetic voters, luckily for the Conservatives, those apathetic voters are mostly picking BC,
00:01:21.520 NDP and United in the polls.
00:01:24.960 But the turnout is going to be different because I think the people who are going to turn out
00:01:28.920 are going to be very different.
00:01:29.980 I think there are going to be a lot of what we call low propensity voters actually showing
00:01:34.780 up.
00:01:35.780 People who in previous elections hadn't shown up to vote because, you know, it's BC Liberals
00:01:40.740 versus the NDP, who really cares, it's the, you know, two parties I don't really like.
00:01:46.680 And now a lot of voters suddenly have an option that they do like that they can support in
00:01:51.380 the BC Conservatives.
00:01:53.200 So I think what we're going to have happen is we're going to have people who hadn't voted
00:01:57.080 in two election cycles turning out and a lot of the people who are currently being polled,
00:02:01.860 who even they are leaning Conservative, they're less likely to show up.
00:02:06.600 So this is a big deal for the Conservatives.
00:02:09.460 We're not just ahead by three points in the Main Street Research poll.
00:02:13.660 It was 39 Conservative to 36 NDP and the Polara poll was 41 Conservative to 40 NDP.
00:02:22.260 That's already good enough for the Conservatives to secure a majority if we just throw those
00:02:26.860 numbers into a model.
00:02:29.080 But I think what actually is going to happen is that the Conservatives are going to be able
00:02:32.600 to overperform their polling by two to three points simply because their people are going
00:02:37.720 to show up and the NDP are not, as well as a lot of people who you just are not going
00:02:41.980 to be able to poll are going to show up.
00:02:44.420 That's been a problem with a lot of polling in the past decade or two is that online polls,
00:02:50.720 especially, tend to get young professionals in urban core areas answering your polls.
00:02:56.820 You don't get the farmers.
00:02:57.920 You don't get plumbers, people who work in trade, small business owners.
00:03:02.120 They're not the people who take online polls in the middle of the day or live call polls
00:03:07.160 where you're going to have to take 15 minutes to answer all their questions.
00:03:11.120 You know, you're a plumber.
00:03:12.200 You're not going to do that.
00:03:13.480 You're running a restaurant.
00:03:14.520 You're not going to pick up the phone and do this in the middle of the day.
00:03:17.160 But if you work for the government in Victoria, if you work in, you know, downtown Vancouver
00:03:22.080 in some office job, especially for the government, you've got a ton of time on your hands to do
00:03:27.020 stuff like this.
00:03:27.780 This is actually the problem we've been having on Vancouver Island itself.
00:03:31.840 Some polls show the NDP absolutely smashing it in Vancouver Island.
00:03:36.320 I don't believe that.
00:03:37.300 It's not because the polls are lying.
00:03:39.280 It's because they're not being careful in how they're pulling it.
00:03:41.820 So the poll is telling you exactly, like, it's telling you technically correct information,
00:03:48.000 but they're not being specific enough about what it's telling you.
00:03:50.580 It's mostly just saying that Victoria is very NDP.
00:03:53.080 When you actually expand the polls out and you pull Victoria and the island, you balance
00:03:57.800 those samples a little bit better, that they don't just get mixed together and it looks
00:04:01.780 like the NDP are doing really well because your sample is two-thirds Victoria, the Conservatives
00:04:06.500 are actually ahead on Vancouver Island.
00:04:09.340 That's what the Main Street Research Poll shows and that's what the Polara Poll shows.
00:04:13.160 The Polara Poll, I believe, they're, like, basically tied up or down just one or two points
00:04:17.580 from the NDP, which would be a Conservative victory in terms of being able to mine out
00:04:23.180 three, four, maybe even five seats on the island.
00:04:26.460 Ease is off pressure to not have to win all of Surrey, to not have to win all of Richmond,
00:04:32.020 even though I do believe the Conservatives are going to have a really big turnout in Surrey.
00:04:37.180 Surrey, all the seats there are currently considered NDP.
00:04:40.460 If you actually look at the 338 polling website, it's all NDP.
00:04:44.640 They only give, like, a 2%, 3% chance for the Conservatives to win those seats.
00:04:48.900 Those seats, though, when you actually look at the Conservative campaigns out there, they're
00:04:52.380 massive, very well organized.
00:04:54.540 I know many of the candidates, Zeeshan for the Conservatives, in his riding, I forget which
00:04:59.240 Surrey riding it, and he's already door-knocked the entire riding.
00:05:02.340 He's already door-knocking it again.
00:05:03.740 So they've gotten to the doors well before their BC NDP or their United opponents, and
00:05:10.400 so that's also going to be a big factor in this election is who's working harder.
00:05:14.120 The BC Conservatives do not have a lot of money, but you guys still should donate.
00:05:17.940 I am going to link in the description below the Abbotsford South EDA.
00:05:21.200 If you donate there, especially if you're in the Fraser Valley, what we're going to do
00:05:24.580 is Bruce Bandman's riding.
00:05:26.000 We're going to collect up enough money so that we can win that race.
00:05:28.920 I'm currently on vacation from being his campaign manager, but we're going to collect
00:05:32.820 up enough money to be able to win that race, and then we're going to be packaging up other
00:05:37.160 bits of money and then sending out to ridings that do need it.
00:05:40.820 But the Surrey ridings, it's demonstrating that you don't need that much cash to be able
00:05:45.480 to win an election.
00:05:46.140 You just basically got to get to the doors first.
00:05:48.480 Money in politics actually doesn't matter all that much.
00:05:51.260 You shouldn't underestimate it.
00:05:53.120 You know, money does pay for more volunteers.
00:05:55.300 It pays for more phone calls.
00:05:56.900 It pays for more advertisements.
00:05:58.520 That's all great.
00:05:59.660 But if people don't want to vote for you, they're not going to vote for you.
00:06:03.160 And that has been the life lesson that Kevin Falcon has been learning as the BC United leader.
00:06:10.300 It doesn't matter if you dump millions of dollars on an ad campaign showing Kevin Falcon walking
00:06:14.720 around the pier trying to look confident and professional.
00:06:17.720 Nobody likes United.
00:06:18.820 Nobody liked the BC Liberals in the last decade of their lives.
00:06:22.660 And so people aren't voting for them.
00:06:24.180 It's just simple as that.
00:06:25.340 It doesn't matter what they do.
00:06:27.380 They're not going to make a comeback.
00:06:29.140 Yeah, some polls are showing them at 12.
00:06:30.740 That's better than nine.
00:06:32.200 But it's the same polls that have been showing them at nine keep showing them at nine.
00:06:35.940 The same polls that show them at 12 keep showing them at 12.
00:06:39.040 You have a lot of United folks on social media who what they do is they take one poll where
00:06:45.360 they weren't doing so well from a different polling firm.
00:06:47.660 And then they compare it to another polling firm's poll that shows them up.
00:06:51.520 Even though if you just follow that singular polling firm's history, it has basically just
00:06:56.560 been showing them going down and then flatlining.
00:06:58.920 There's no movement.
00:07:00.420 BC United even embarrassingly tried to post a fake poll where they basically polled nobody.
00:07:05.700 They only polled like people over the age of 65.
00:07:08.700 And even that poll only put them at 15%.
00:07:11.520 And they pretended like this was a big coup.
00:07:14.280 And in the rankings of who was in second place, they actually put themselves in second place,
00:07:19.160 even though their own polls still revealed that they're like nine, ten points behind the
00:07:23.240 BC Conservatives.
00:07:24.000 Because it's, it's been silly.
00:07:25.980 It's been extremely silly.
00:07:28.120 But I think the election is really coming down to a referendum.
00:07:31.660 Do you like David Eby and the BC NDP's performance?
00:07:35.580 Or do you want like a rational adult in office in the form of John Rustad?
00:07:40.360 It's not an election where anything but the NDP and the Conservatives matter.
00:07:44.400 I'm not even afraid of vote splitting.
00:07:45.660 Frankly, United's helping the BC Conservatives because all the nervous people who voted at
00:07:50.800 Corrigan or their federal Liberals who voted Liberal provincially in the last election
00:07:56.040 who aren't willing to vote Conservative, at least they can vote United.
00:07:58.780 Because I feel like if United just went away, a bunch of people would migrate back over to
00:08:03.300 the NDP because of the two-horse race mentality and, you know, I hate Conservatives, so I'm going
00:08:07.900 to go vote for my further destruction in the BC NDP.
00:08:12.260 But anyways, I think that at this point, do the NDP have a path back into office?
00:08:20.380 Maybe.
00:08:21.100 I'm never going to say that, oh, it's definitely a lock for the Conservatives.
00:08:24.260 I think that if I was putting in a ballpark terms, I think 70% chance that the Conservatives
00:08:30.500 win, 30% chance that the NDP win or it's a tie and the Greens basically are the deciding vote.
00:08:38.080 But it's just that in all elections, you need a narrative to run on.
00:08:42.560 And the BC NDP don't have a narrative.
00:08:44.620 Their narrative is keep our failing, terrible government in office because the alternative
00:08:49.960 could be, like, not even worse, but, like, extreme or radical.
00:08:55.320 It's like, the problem is the government currently in office is so extreme, you can't scare people
00:09:00.000 with a good time saying that the Conservatives are going to get rid of your drug programs,
00:09:04.100 SOGI-123, they're going to cut taxes, all this stuff.
00:09:07.040 That sounds fantastic to people in British Columbia right now.
00:09:10.020 So, like, and the Conservatives got to run on a change narrative.
00:09:13.160 Change narratives are very powerful.
00:09:14.660 What are you thinking as a BC NDP voter?
00:09:17.220 You're going to patronically go show up and keep the NDP around for another four years?
00:09:21.640 Like, for what?
00:09:22.280 For what?
00:09:22.920 Who cares?
00:09:23.680 They're not doing anything good.
00:09:25.080 Yeah, I'm going to work hard.
00:09:26.140 I'm going to be driving home after a hard day's work and decide to pull over the car so
00:09:30.800 I can pull a lever for David Eby.
00:09:32.900 That's not a voter that exists.
00:09:34.880 The blue-collar vote that John Horgan is able to attract in 2020 is all gone for the NDP at
00:09:39.560 this point, so David Eby's having to reconstruct a party from the heap that he's, like, he's
00:09:46.460 turned it into, and all he's done is just double down on progressive voters, and progressive
00:09:52.040 voters are maybe 15%, 20% of the electorate in BC, and the ND, and sorry, the Greens have
00:09:59.140 half of them, so him just doubling down harder and harder, hoping that he can get these people
00:10:03.800 to really turn out, best case scenario gets him into the mid-30s, I think, in terms of
00:10:08.220 actual election day vote.
00:10:09.780 If he tries to moderate a bit, maybe he can crawl up to, like, 36%, 37%, 38%, but people
00:10:15.980 know they're not moderates, and that's kind of the problem for David Eby.
00:10:18.540 He is very much a radical, he's very defined.
00:10:21.340 John Rustad is very undefined as the conservative leader, and that's actually helped him out
00:10:24.920 a lot, that he's not somebody with a history of doing anything that anyone would be concerned
00:10:30.040 about.
00:10:30.360 He's a blank slate, and I don't mean that in terms of personality, but he's just somebody
00:10:34.260 who is more so just representing the change people want.
00:10:38.340 People just want anything but David Eby, they just want a guy who seems like a rational
00:10:42.780 adult again, and that's why people are being attracted to the conservatives.
00:10:47.160 It's the change narrative, want to get rid of David Eby, and then the actual excitement
00:10:51.400 at being able to, like, reverse all these policies and put in place somebody who's not constantly
00:10:58.540 harping on about activist issues, because David Eby is an activist premier, he is a protester
00:11:04.260 in the premier's office, every issue, his approach to it is, like, an activist's approach.
00:11:10.120 Like, you know, drug deaths are up, oh, we should just put more money into safe supply,
00:11:14.500 we should just decriminalize harder.
00:11:17.520 You know, crime in the streets, just sanction the police more, stop arresting people.
00:11:22.960 If we stop arresting people, the crime goes down.
00:11:25.560 If we just disconnect the phone line from the police department, and they stop receiving
00:11:30.000 calls in about crimes, well, then there's no more crime, because we've stopped taking
00:11:33.980 in reports.
00:11:34.840 That's actually their approach, it's insane.
00:11:37.660 Anyways, but that should be it for me today, guys.
00:11:40.380 Go check out the polls online, I can't really post the details in such a video like this,
00:11:44.580 but it's really good.
00:11:46.040 Again, Main Street, the conservatives are up three, Polara, the conservatives are up one.
00:11:50.160 I think that the NDP was still in trouble, even if the conservatives never actually led in
00:11:54.700 the polls on election day, simply because turnout's going to help the conservatives a lot.
00:11:58.640 The conservatives also have the support they need where it's needed.
00:12:02.380 They basically own the Fraser Valley at this point.
00:12:04.840 They're going to get four or five points in, or four or five seats in Vancouver Island.
00:12:09.780 I think we have a good shot at winning a large portion of the Metro Vancouver donut.
00:12:14.380 I think we can take half or more than half the Surrey seats.
00:12:17.260 Richmond, I think we get 100% of it.
00:12:19.020 And, you know, a lot of the donut ridings around Vancouver, Vancouver Langara, I think
00:12:23.900 are a lock.
00:12:24.840 And in fact, we could actually win David Eby's seat.
00:12:27.880 Vancouver Point Grey is not a safe seat.
00:12:30.280 Even right now, before these polls came out, David Eby was only given a 75% shot of winning
00:12:35.600 the seat.
00:12:35.960 And that's a default, more center-right, you know, BC liberal center-right type of riding.
00:12:40.780 So he's not even in friendly territory.
00:12:43.080 He just happened to beat Christy Clark back in 2013 because of how unpopular she had become.
00:12:47.960 Um, anyways, guys, that should be it for me today.
00:12:51.820 Have a good one.
00:12:52.880 You know, donate to the BC Conservatives.
00:12:54.960 There's a link in the description below.
00:12:56.260 And if you want to support my show, you can donate to the Gibson Goat Legal Fund down there
00:13:00.360 as well.
00:13:00.840 We are being sued by a Chinese billionaire for defamation that in more than two and a
00:13:05.420 half years of this case going on, costing me over $32,000 in legal fees, he hasn't even
00:13:10.300 submitted any actual evidence that we said or did anything wrong.
00:13:14.420 He is simply dragging it out because Alberta does not have anti-slap legislation that allows
00:13:18.980 us to end such a ridiculous defamation case early.