Singh's NDP got FEWER votes than Quebec Separatist BQ!
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Summary
Wyatt Claypool talks about the embarrassing result for the federal NDP in the election, and what it means for the rest of the major parties in Canada's election system. He also talks about why the party needs a new leader, and why Jagmeet Singh is the worst.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. I think we all assumed it couldn't get any more embarrassing
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for the federal NDP than it was on election night on April 28th. As a quick recap, the NDP had their
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leader Jagmeet Singh come in a distant third place in his home riding a Burnaby Centre. He then
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shortly resigned after that because of course he had to at that point. And the party fell from
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around 18.5% of the vote in 2021 to just getting about 6.7%. But it didn't seem all that bad. At
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least they still came third place in terms of the popular vote. Not in seats, but in terms of the
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popular vote, they came third. Well, as Elections Canada has been consolidating results and counting
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special ballots, they have fallen into fourth place in terms of the popular vote. Chase Zaba has put
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this into a nice format right here, and it shows that now the Liberals have around 8.5 million votes,
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Conservatives 8.1 million. Bloc has 1,236,000, and the NDP has 1,234,000. Now, maybe if you don't
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understand Canadian politics, you don't know why this is so embarrassing, but a little bit of an
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overview, if you don't know yet. The Bloc Québécois, a Quebec separatist party, only runs in Quebec.
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The New Democrats ran in every single riding minus one. In fact, both the Conservatives and the
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Liberals also had missed a single riding for getting a candidate in, so they all were running basically
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full slates minus one. And the NDP, having a name on effectively every single ballot across the
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country, brought in fewer votes than the Bloc. That should be impossible. But they made it happen
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because they're a party that stopped representing anything. I am amazed by the fact that they even
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ran Jagmeet Singh a third time. Even in his leadership review, it should have been obvious this
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isn't the right guy. In October of 2023, he only received 81% of the vote in a leadership confidence
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vote. That is not very good in what is a very collectivistic party. The thing with the Conservatives
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is there's a lot of factions to the Conservative Party, both the Federal Conservative Party as well
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as a different Provincial Conservative Party. You have your Social Conservatives, you have your
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Fiscal Libertarians, you have your Red Tories, and then you have people who joined the party because of
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niche pet issues that matter to them, whether it's the gun people, whether it's people who are there
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for like farming issues, or people there because of something to do with, you know, oil and gas, or
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like, what is it, fishing, fisheries. There's a lot of people in Newfoundland who really care about those,
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and that's why they're actually part of the Conservative Party. The thing is, the NDP is just a
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progressive trade unionist party. There's really not that much diversity. There is like the private
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union side, and there is the public union side, and then I guess there's like the Hamas activist side,
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but everything is far more homogenous in the NDP. Getting only 18% support in a party where there's a
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lot of pressure to just be in favor of whatever HQ says is absolutely embarrassing. Again, Conservatives
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tend to be used to rebelling against their leaders once they don't like the direction, and in fact, in 2019,
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they got rid of Andrew Scheer, or I guess the year after, they got rid of Andrew Scheer, and then
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in 2021, they quickly got rid of Aaron O'Toole because both of those leaders failed. Even Stephen
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Harper stepped down after 2015, despite the fact that he had won in the past. Well, it's because
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Conservatives tend to require more of their leaders than simply doing a little bit better than last
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time. It looks like Pierre Polyev is going to stay on because you could say that it really wasn't his
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fault that the Conservative Party lost. Yes, there's mitigating circumstance in the election, there's
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Donald Trump, there's the fact that Trudeau stepped down, but the main issue for the Conservatives is that
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there are very incompetent people like Jenny Burns at the top of HQ who were telling candidates to do all
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the wrong things and were running very poor messaging. Polyev was a net positive, many people in HQ were
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net negative, so I do hope that they get replaced, but somehow Jagmeet got to go three times, and now his
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party gets fewer votes running in 342 ridings than the Bloc got running in 79 ridings. The per capita
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metrics on this are utterly abysmal. Like, the Bloc mostly held on to all of its votes, minus 65,000.
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The NDP lost 1,800,001 votes. They've lost, they only got 40% of the votes that they got last time.
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I know they went from 18.5% of the share just to 6.7. They got a few, their percentage of raw vote is
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a little bit better because, of course, turnout was better, and naturally some people turned out for
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the NDP in that higher turnout, but for the most part, the NDP vote went to other parties. And now
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in a second here, I want to show some stuff that's happened to the NDP since then. So now they have
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chosen a new interim leader from their caucus, and that would be Don Davies from, I believe,
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Vancouver Kingsway. Very longtime NDP MP. He's an old lawyer who used to represent Teamster unions.
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If anything, he's actually kind of the guy you'd assume the NDP would be running with. Not a
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particularly inspiring figure. You know, not exactly Jack Layton, probably not even Tom Mulcair,
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but better than hyper-progressive and pre-ning Jagmeet Singh, who really doesn't represent the
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type of voters that the party's always done very well with. The party used to do really well
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in places like Hamilton. They would win a lot of these working class ridings, especially when
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Jack Layton was around in 2011, and they held on to most of them in 2015. But now with Jagmeet Singh,
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it was like the party only appealed to people in progressive college towns, places where there
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was a lot of public sector workers, and that's kind of it. But even then, the liberals in this
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election had a better pull on the public sector unions, and the conservative had a better pull on
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the private sector unions. That's why the conservatives absolutely killed it in places like Windsor
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and places like Kitchener, South Hesper, those areas, they did really well where there was sort
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of working class types of people. But the funniest thing is, after they picked Don Davies, we had one
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of their other surviving MPs, by the way, there's only seven of them, who said to this post from Tom
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Parkins saying, Don Davies is new NDP interim leader, formerly a labor movement lawyer with the
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teamsters, now the MP for Vancouver Kingsway. Leah Proud Lakota, whose name is Leah Gazin, she, her,
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says, great finding out through the news, go quote team NDP. I don't know why she's upset. Leah Gazin,
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the MP for Winnipeg Center, she signed up for this. She signed up for the top-down party,
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the top-down collectivist party. Why does she get to dictate to them? She's enjoyed the way the NDP's
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operated for years at this point, apparently. And if she hasn't, well, it's kind of her fault for not
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speaking up. Leah Gazin, I made the joke a couple days ago, she must just be upset that they didn't
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pick Yahya Sinwar as the new leader of the party, because so many of the NDP MPs, including Leah Gazin
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and some of the other surviving NDP MPs like Heather McPherson, are more concerned with Gaza and
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Palestine than they are with their own constituencies. It was crazy how often you'd see
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these people wearing keffias in Parliament, completely disconnected from the day-to-day
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issues of Canadians. Didn't care about the drug crisis, didn't care about the cost of living
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crisis. If they did, it was insofar as that it gave them an excuse to try and spend more money on
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random programs rather than just giving people their own money back. Now, I just want to quickly
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highlight some other things regarding stuff that's happened. One, I got to read this post
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from Jagmeet Singh that I actually didn't see back during the election. I love how he said this.
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It's been an honor of my life to lead the NDP and to represent the people of Burnaby Central.
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Congratulations to Prime Minister Carney and to all those leaders on a hard-fought campaign.
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I know this night is disappointing for new Democrats. He says this despite the fact that days
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before the election, he says he's perfectly fine gutting the NDP so that the liberals can beat the
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conservatives. So why is he acting like this is a disappointment? This was effectively planned,
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at least by his own statements. It sounds like it was planned. And the idea that he was representing
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Burnaby Center is absolutely insane. There is nothing about the NDP that has been particularly
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grassroots about their campaigning. There's a reason why they had their base gutted by other parties
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because their people don't really represent the areas that they live in. They're activists and
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they represent activists before they represent anyone on a local level. That is what the liberals
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and the conservatives do well. Now, I am not a liberal. I am a conservative. So obviously I like
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the conservatives better. But the liberal party and the conservative party has always tried to
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emphasize having its MPs be local champions. I think that's gone down in recent years, which is a big
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black mark on both parties that it seems like people tend to represent party leadership than
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their own constituencies. But the NDP have always just been so in tune with the activist class that
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they have never actually ever considered whether or not somebody likes things that they're voting for
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or not in their local areas. They just happen to get elected because there are heavy union presidents
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in the area to help their campaigns. Not that a lot of people actually like them.
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But I got to say, the new NDP leader, as much as he's probably an improvement on Jagmeet Singh,
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is not falling that far from the tree here. So Don Davies, two days ago, says,
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on May 5th, we joined together to focus on the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women,
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girls, 2SLGBTQI plus people. Today we remember, we mourn, we commit to justice, safety, and support.
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Now, I have no problem with this tweet, other than the whole point of the day is missing and murdered
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women and indigenous women and girls. And then he just randomly just throws in 2SLGBTQ because they
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have to, because it's the NDP and you have to say it, even though it's actually kind of spitting on
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those who you're trying to represent, because you're just randomly jamming in a different identity
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politics issue into this whole thing. It's too, it's just dumb. Anyways, one other thing I want to show
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you here, because I think it is just an interesting stat, is how votes have shifted around Canada
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since the 2021 election. Now, there are very few places in Canada that votes have decreased for the
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Liberals since the last election, naturally since the Liberal Party or the NDP completely collapsed.
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This is all effectively Jagmeet Singh is doing on a macro level. So right here, this is where I'm going
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to be breaking this down in a future video, the kind of bright spots for the Conservatives. But in
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general, you can see the map is very red with the Liberals being up in the vote. But what you'll
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notice is places around Toronto and around Montreal, as well as in the Maritimes and Upper Quebec,
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have actually gotten more Conservative, which is actually good to see. Or at least they've become
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less Liberal, but they've naturally only, they've only become more Conservative because that's the only
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other party gaining votes here. This is actually a pretty good setup for the Conservatives. What
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you'll notice is that the places, like Toronto right here, the places where the Liberals have
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gained the most vote is these blood red little areas where the Liberals were already winning.
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The Conservatives, or the places that become less Liberal, are places that the Liberals used to win by
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not that many votes. Some of these places did go towards the Conservatives, like the Vons,
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like Richmond Hill, like Markham, those sorts of places. And there are some places that are on the
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verge of flipping, or places where the Liberals only gained a few votes because the NDP completely
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collapsed. The Liberals definitely gained a lot in this election, but when I do my breakdown in the
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future, I'm going to explain how they're not in a great position in terms of future elections. It's not
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like they're now going to win the next two elections because they did so well. Most of the
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ridings that the Liberals picked up, it was a riding where the Conservatives won it by five points last
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time, and now the Liberals won it by, you know, four to seven points. It's a swing. It's more than
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you would like to see, but it's not quite like the Conservative victories in certain places like
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Windsor West, where the Conservatives used to only get 18% of the vote there. They were not in the
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conversation to even win it. They hadn't actually won it since the 30s or the 50s, but they ended up
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having a massive swing of 45 points send them into office. So in a future video, whether it's
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tomorrow or the next day, I'm going to be doing a breakdown of a few Conservative flip ridings and
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Liberal flip ridings and demonstrate the difference in where the Liberals are doing well, where the
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Conservatives are doing well, and who's likely to have their results hold up better. Because in my
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opinion, it looks like the Conservatives are going to be able to hold on to the territory they have better
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than the Liberals can. Naturally, that's maybe like more of an obvious thing, because the Conservatives
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have won fewer ridings. And naturally, some of those are going to be stronger, the proportion of
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safe ridings. But even the new pickups that the Conservatives have are far more likely to stay
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Conservative than some of the pickups the Liberals got, like in Peterborough, like in South Surrey,
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White Rock, like in Carleton, like in places like, I think it's Cumberland, Colchester. Those are places
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where the Conservatives had won it by a wide margin previously, and now the Liberals have won it by
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a few points. Something that can easily flip back if the Liberal government's performance is not top
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notch. So anyways, that's it for me today, guys. Make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel,
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leave a comment, do all that fantastic stuff, and I will see you guys next time.