Pierre's 80% victory in Crowfoot by-election embarrasses Liberal Media!
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Summary
Pierre Polyev easily won the Battle River-Crowfoot by-election, but the media and the liberal media did their best to delegitimize his victory. In this episode, Wyatt talks about what went wrong with the media's coverage of the election, and why he thinks it was a big mistake.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. So last night, Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Federal
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Conservative Party, easily won the Battle River Crowfoot by-election, and I would say that he
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less beat his other 213 opponents, and more so beat the liberal media, because the liberal media
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was heavily propagandizing against Pierre Polyev in this by-election, trying to push his margin
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of victory down enough that they could then start spinning a narrative in the aftermath of the
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by-election that maybe he's not going to win his leadership review. Maybe he's really unpopular
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and Canadians just want him to go away, because if even in Battle River Crowfoot he only wins with
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55% of the vote or something like that, do people in the rest of Canada want him? And it turns out
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Polyev basically got the exact same percentage of the vote that Damian Couric got, the Conservative
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MP who stood down so that Polyev could take the seat. Damian Couric in the general election got 82%
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of the vote, and Polyev in this by-election got a little bit more than 80%. It's like 80.2, 80.4%,
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which is a very good result, because by-elections can be kind of wonky. Sometimes, you know, default
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voters don't show up, and when I see default, if 82% of the people voted Conservative in the last
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election, you can be assured that most of the default voters are Conservative, whereas if you're
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voting Green or Liberal or NDP in a riding like Battle River Crowfoot, you're probably pretty
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hardcore for that party and very likely to show up in a by-election. But the Conservatives worked
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hard, got their people out, and ensured that there was not going to be this stupid idea that Polyev is
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on his way out because he only got 68% of the vote in Battle River Crowfoot. I want to go over some of
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what the media was doing in this election because it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing for them
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to be pushing this candidate, Bonnie Critchley, who obviously was complete astroturf, somebody who
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probably wouldn't have run unless they knew they were going to get a bunch of media attention.
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Maybe she was going to put her name on the ballot anyways, although her reasoning never made sense
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because she says, oh, we need a strong local voice. Well, pretty much all the other candidates,
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except for the longest ballot committee people, were local candidates. She could have backed one
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of those. I think what the Liberals both in the Liberal Party and the media wanted was for a
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seemingly independent centrist to push instead of Pierre Polyev in order to try and get this
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groundswell of anti-Polyev support behind somebody who isn't as obvious as a literal Liberal candidate
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trying to hurt Pierre Polyev. But before we get more into it, I do just want to remind you guys,
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hey, if you like the show, make sure to drop a like on the video, subscribe if you are not yet
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a subscriber. We are trying to hit 100,000 subscribers by mid-December of this year,
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and leave a comment on what you thought of the by-election and all of the media coverage if you
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even bothered watching a lot of it, although I have covered a little bit of what they've been saying
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up to this point. I'm going to start off with this tweet, though, from Brian Lilly from the
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Toronto Star. He says, I mean, looks to me like Polyev won. Pretty sure some Liberals will still
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call this as a loss. As of this count, Bonnie Critchley didn't get over 10%, despite clear
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instructions from CBC and many other MSM outlets, for people to go and back her. Or Darcy Spadey
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below 5%. And Darcy Spadey is the Liberal candidate. And it doesn't surprise me that he got less than 5%
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of the vote. The Liberals did much better in the actual 25 general election. I think they got like
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more like 9 or 10%. Although again, Damien Couric won by 82%. So there wasn't a lot of vote left over
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for anyone else. But Bonnie Critchley ended up getting 9.9% of the vote. I believe that this is all
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of the results we're probably going to see come in. There might be some mail-in ballots or whatever that
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will adjust the results a little bit, but not my much. And I guarantee you, would you think Bonnie
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Critchley, if she got the normal amount of attention that a normal candidate in a by-election
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gets, do you think that she would be near 10% of the vote? No, not a chance. If she was not getting
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the obsessive coverage by the media, she would get 1%, maybe. Maybe if she tried hard. Most of the
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time, people actually in this writing were probably very turned off by any independent candidates because
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of the longest ballot committee signing up like 205 of the candidates on the ballot. And so when I
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see Bonnie, so when I see Bonnie Critchley getting 10%, I'm not thinking, oh, it must just be because
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people like her. I'm thinking it's because probably she got millions of dollars in free advertising
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in the sense that she was on every show. If you paid a publicity firm to try and help raise your
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name recognition by getting social media influencers, YouTube channels and TV networks and newspapers to
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cover you, that would probably cost a million dollars to get that many stories on that many papers
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and that many appearances on podcasts and on television shows. It was absolutely ridiculous.
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And you can be very sure that the liberals were probably even pushing their volunteers to go out
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help out Bonnie because again, she was a good front to try and undermine Polyev's margin of victory.
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Again, Polyev was never going to lose, but if he fell below a certain percentage of the vote,
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like he only got 62%, they would be spinning hard right now in the media that Polyev was on his last
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legs as leader because, oh my goodness, it's a 20-point drop-off for Polyev in Battle River Crowfoot
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compared to what Damian Couric got. But look at this when I go on and search up Bonnie Critchley
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on YouTube, and I made a specific search, Bonnie Critchley, CBC, just so I could get more of the
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liberal results so you can see. But look at all of this coverage, 105,000 views on this interview with
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Bonnie Critchley from CBC's Power and Politics. This CBC video about the local election heavily
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focuses on Bonnie Critchley, as you can see, because they put her sign in the thumbnail, 179,000 views.
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They do coverage of the debate where they highlight Bonnie Critchley heavily in it disproportionately to
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everyone else, 25,000 views. You know, a lot of the Osho with Laura Babcock, the lady who needs to take
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her lithium, 11,000 views on that one. You have real talk with Ryan Jesperson who had her on, and there
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was people who came on just to talk about Bonnie Critchley and Pierre Polyev. You have the Rational
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National, 128,000 views, talking about Bonnie Critchley, and it says he doesn't know Jack.
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Pierre Polyev gets roasted by Independent Challenger. And let's be clear, you know who doesn't know Jack?
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Bonnie Critchley. Because do you know what she was predicting when she was going on these podcasts?
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She was saying that, well, if Polyev does beat me, he's going to get 50 to 60 percent of the vote only.
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No, he got way more than that. In fact, he got 80.4 percent of the vote. I don't think that
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Bonnie Critchley really knows her neighbors that well politically. If she actually thought that
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Polyev was going to have a big drop-off in his voting margin, there was this idea that, oh,
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she's centrist. Or even at certain times, she didn't even call herself center-right. She wasn't.
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She has the politics of downtown Edmonton, of, you know, Calgary, Buffalo, very default liberal
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opinions. She is somebody who clearly watches a lot of legacy media herself and has very simplistic
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lefty views on a lot of issues. She called Danielle Smith a traitor. She said, oh,
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our riding's being sold out by Damien Couric for stepping down and letting the leader have the seat.
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Does she have a problem when William Lyon Mackenzie King did that twice when he was prime minister,
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having to jump over to safe seats after losing other ones in order to get back into parliament?
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It's just a kind of fact of the parliamentary system that things work better when the leader
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is able to be on the floor of the House of Commons with his caucus. And so you're not being
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sold out. You're getting, in fact, oftentimes when you are the leader in the leader's riding,
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they tend to treat you better because, well, you know, it looks really bad to have stories out
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there where the leader's office is not actually, is ignoring their constituents. So maybe the leader
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can't get on phone calls with local constituents, but you will have somebody answer your email and
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take a call with you and write down some notes and pass it on to somebody to deal with it in
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parliament. But again, the coverage here was breathless. It just kept going on and on. Lots of
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people, you know, there was conservatives covering her and talking about, you know, reacting to the
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overblown media coverage. But a lot of this was just the media, was just the media pumping her up.
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We have Energy Media here, a lefty account. We have CTV News talking about her disproportionately in
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that news broadcast. She was on tons and tons of shows discussing, just like discussing the election,
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pumping her up as a big challenger. She's a threat to Polyev. I want to show you this one clip
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where on Ryan Jesperson's show, we had Max Fawcett on, and I want to talk a little bit more
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about Max Fawcett a bit later as well in an article he wrote. But they're talking about how Polyev
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could be, you know, at risk in this riding because of people like Bonnie Critchley. Check this out on
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Ryan Jesperson's show. It's an uphill climb to say the least. I don't think that Pierre Polyev is at any
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risk. And I want to respect the voters in that constituency. And obviously they can rally and,
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you know, maybe crazier things have happened, although that would be one of the craziest
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all-time upsets in Canadian history. But Polyev's not at risk of losing that by-election, I don't
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think. But do you actually think that he could be at risk of seeing his tenure as Conservative
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leader end before the next federal election? Yeah, absolutely. Really? Yeah. And I don't think
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that, I mean, you're right. I think the odds of Bonnie Critchley actually beating him are...
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Very slim. Very low. Very slim. Can we stop saying very slim and very low? Impossible. Impossible.
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She would have had 0.2% of the vote, 0.3% of the vote, like the PPC guy, if she didn't have all this
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media coverage. If she just got the normal coverage that the party candidates or the major candidates,
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ignoring all the longest ballot people who are obviously not serious. But if she got the normal
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coverage a candidate gets in a local election, you know, a news article, maybe one radio interview,
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she would have gotten nothing. It was only because of the breathless coverage of the mainstream media
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that she got anything. And then we're saying, oh, very slim. Very low chance of winning. No.
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Zero. She has zero chance of winning. You guys seem like clowns pretending like it's anything but zero.
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Well, I think the odds of her ending his political career are much higher. Really?
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Because, because if, let's just say he gets 55% of the vote or 60% of the vote, people are going to
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point out that that is 20% less than a backbench MP who had to step aside for him. If he can't do
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better than... He's saying people will point out. No, no. Max Fawcett will point out because he is a
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propagandist at the National Observer. He is somebody who is going to spin the narrative. And I'm going to get
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to an article he wrote about this. He was preemptively trying to spin the narrative that it could end
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Polyev in his own articles. He's not saying that people might say this. He's the one who's going to
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try and say it and make the claim. Even if Polyev only got 65% of the vote because the Conservatives
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put on a lazy campaign because we're just trying to get him back into Parliament. We don't want to
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spend too much money. It really wouldn't have been that big of a deal. But the thing is that
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it's just this artificial narrative that Polyev had to really push hard in the riding
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in order to avoid. And he did avoid it. Damian Couric in that riding, he is a loser. And that
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will be the frame that a lot of Conservatives look at it through. So if Bonnie Critchley
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can, you know, get a campaign where she gets 20-25% of the vote, that's ballgame for Polyev,
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I think. You know, the rumor, it's not going to happen right away, but the whispers are going
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to start, you know, people are going to start organizing behind the scenes, and he's going
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to have a real problem on his hands. Even on this podcast, Max Fawcett tempered himself a little
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bit because Ryan Jesperson was obviously skeptical about the idea that he could lose. And look at
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the actual headline. I posted about this, and I read the article. It is as ridiculous as the
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headline. It's not like he gets more realistic as you read on. Max Fawcett wrote this back on
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July 17th. It says, Pierre Pauly of safe seat isn't so safe after all. I like the guy who ran
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as a libertarian candidate in the riding, Michael Harris. But Max Fawcett seriously pointed to the
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presence of Bonnie Critchley, Michael Harris as a libertarian candidate, the PPC, and the fact that
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it was a high, it's a riding with a high rating for separatism, that that was going to be a big,
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you know, like that was going to be a big stumbling block for Pauly of, and there was a good chance he
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could be down just at 55% of the vote. You even had one of the guys from the Alberta Prosperity
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Project, an independence advocate, Jeffrey Rath, telling anyone who's a separatist not to vote for
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Pierre Pauly of in this by-election. And it turns out, as I have predicted, the separatist movement is
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not really all that strong overall. Yes, as an idea, a lot of people will say yes to it in a poll,
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and even that will only get them to about 35%. But Jeffrey Rath, somebody who's supposed to be
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respected in the movement, tried to gun at Pierre Pauly of, and utterly failed. Because guess what,
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it turns out federal politics is about federal public policy. And it's not an arena where separatists
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are going to have a strong, like, they're not going to have a strong effect on it, at least in Alberta,
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maybe in Quebec. But in Alberta, too, this is the problem for the separatists. A lot of people
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involved in it naturally are people who have grown up in Alberta. The problem is this province has a
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heavy amount of people, is heavily populated by people from Nova Scotia, from Ontario, from Saskatchewan,
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from British Columbia. They moved here in their 20s, they moved here in their 30s, and they got an oil
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and gas job, or they worked at some other firm, they're in finance, and they moved to Calgary because
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there wasn't really enough of a, you know, a market in Regina or something like that. But that
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doesn't, but like, that doesn't mean people are then going to want to vote to leave, that they're
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from somewhere else, they kind of like, you know, the fact that they grew up in Ontario, and now they
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live in Alberta, and those are part of the same country. But now that's me going off in a bit of
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a rabbit hole on the separatism thing. But the, it was, it's embarrassing. I know I was wrong about
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Polyev not losing Carlton, but there was evidence out there. There was him winning the riding since
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2004. There was the fact that he's the leader, and maybe people like to vote for a leader, and
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I would say that in hindsight, the Polyev campaign team was just being very derelict in ignoring the
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riding. It's not Polyev's fault, he has to be on tour as leader, and his team should have probably
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moved him to another riding, because it was never that wide of a margin he ever won that riding by in
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the past, and they should have probably figured that out and moved him, or started hitting the
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door super early to counteract Bruce Fanjoy, who, despite not liking him, I would give him props,
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the fact that guy campaigned hard for two years straight, and then got rewarded for it. But this
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is not that situation. It's not being wrong about Carlton. This is like being wrong about the color
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of the sky, about two plus two equaling four, because they want to effectively trick people into
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thinking that Polyev was, you know, finished. That Bonnie Critchley is actually a real candidate
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to people on the ground like. No, she isn't. She probably wouldn't even be able to win a Calgary
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suburban riding as an NDP candidate. She's just not the type of person that most people probably want
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as a politician. Somebody with very, again, simplistic views, somebody who just kind of repeats
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opinions that they hear from the legacy media. I think that outside of the media shine, there wasn't that
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much going for her. She's a veteran. That's great. But her actual political understanding was fairly
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low. I just want to talk about this, because I do like now that people after the election, people are
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now trying to, like, criticize Polyev's team's tactics. This guy named Connor says, still insane
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to me that these signs are allowed. They're not labeled as authorized by any campaign. Is CPC HQ
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paying for them? The Polyev campaign? A third party? And they're mad because Polyev's team,
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and it's obviously Polyev's team, put up these signs saying voting instructions, right first and
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last name, and it says Pierre Polyev on it. It should be pretty obvious that this is a Pierre
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Polyev campaign sign. Do you know how I can figure it out? It says Pierre Polyev on it. But apparently
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we have to treat voters like they're stupid, and like they're going to think, oh, Elections Canada
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is telling me I have to vote for Pierre Polyev. It's obviously a Polyev sign, guys. I know you
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were counting on Polyev. Either some people legitimately thought he was going to lose.
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No, you know, the left who are acting like Bonnie Critchley was some sort of, Bonnie Critchley is some
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sort of, like, hometown hero or delusional. This is a big flop for the media. They don't have the
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propaganda, their power for propaganda is not nearly as good as people think. And so I think this is
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going to really help Polyev in the leadership review. I think he's easily going to pass it now.
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And I think that this is also putting the media on their heels. Right now, the news cycle is not very
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good for Mark Carney and the Liberal Party. They are doing just a bad job when it comes to the Air
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Canada situation. In many other areas of policy, they've either already broken promises, severely
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underperformed, not gotten a trade deal done. So Polyev, when he comes back to the House, is actually
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going to have a lot of energy. And I think right now, we're at the moment where the sort of liberal
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honeymoon is ending. The Air Canada situation did a lot to speed that process up. And now you're
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probably going to have a resurgence in popularity for pure Polyev. He was never even that unpopular.
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Even in the abacus data polls that I like to show, he still had a 3% net approval rating, or I think it
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was only 1%. But still, he's above water. And that was with him out of office with all this propaganda
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about how he could potentially lose or underperform in a by-election because people don't like him
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anymore. And it turns out that's not true. But anyways, that's it for me today, guys. Or not today.
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In this video, I will be back probably later today with another video. But thanks for watching. Make
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sure to like the video. Leave a comment. Subscribe if you are not yet a subscriber. And I will see you guys