Smith UCP wrecks new Separatist Party in Alberta byelection!
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Summary
In this episode, I break down the results of the three by-elections that took place in Alberta on May 9th and 10th. I discuss what I think the results say about the current political landscape in Alberta and what they don't say about it.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. Last night we had three provincial by-elections take place
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in Alberta and today I want to break down for you guys what I think they indicate about the
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current political landscape in Alberta and what they also don't indicate because I think there
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are a lot of negative things proven in these by-elections specifically around the separatist
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movement and its actual political power. But first I want to start off in Edmonton. Two out of the
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three by-election ridings were in Edmonton. That would be Edmonton-Ellersley and Edmonton-Strathcona.
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Let's start in Edmonton-Strathcona because it's not very exciting. Nahid Nenshi easily was elected
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as the new MLA for Edmonton-Strathcona. That's all that is to be said because it is one of the most
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firm NDP ridings in the entire province, if not the most NDP riding in the entire province.
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Even back in the day when the Alberta NDP would only win two seats in an election, one of them
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would be Edmonton-Strathcona. So again, nothing ever changes. And speaking of nothing ever changing,
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Edmonton-Ellersley was a riding I genuinely thought the UCP had a chance of winning.
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Did it tighten up compared to the 2023 provincial election result? Yeah, but it's still such a
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margin between the NDP and the UCP. It almost didn't matter. The UCP obviously invested a lot
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of resources into the riding. And so I think the improvement really just demonstrates that it's a
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by-election and by-elections have slightly different results than a normal general election.
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Usually in Edmonton-Ellersley, the NDP would be able to get 61%. That's what they got last time.
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And I think it's what they also got in 2019. This election, they got 50%. UCP got like 36, 37%.
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Republican Party of Alberta got like three and a half. You know, Liberal Party got like one and a
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half or two. It wasn't really much of a result that would tell us anything. Basically,
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Naheed Denchie and the NDP probably still own Edmonton. Now we probably need to see a by-election
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take place somewhere like Calgary to get a real reading on if anything has changed in a swing part
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of the province. The general story about Alberta is that the UCP or whatever the Conservative Party is
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owns the rural area and the NDP owns Edmonton and then Calgary is a battleground. Yeah, I guess
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Edmonton has become a little less NDP, but that still means they're winning the entire city.
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But now, without further ado, let's get into the stuff that's actually interesting. And that
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is Olds Didsbury Three Hills. This is a rural riding. And although I just said the rural
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ridings are basically owned by the Conservative Party, as has been alluded to in the previous
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riding, there was another party that's not usually on the political landscape that ended up running
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in this provincial by-election. And that is the Republican Party of Alberta. It ran in all three
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by-elections, but outside of Olds Didsbury Three Hills, they didn't really have good results. They
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had 3.4% in Ellerslie. Strathcona, they literally had 0.7%. I don't really blame them. It's not like
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they were going to win that one or even put it in a great showing because even the Conservatives don't
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put a good showing in that riding. Literally, Nenshi won it with 81% of the vote. So nobody looked good
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there. But they put all of their eggs mostly in the basket of Olds Didsbury Three Hills,
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which maybe we will start calling ODTH. And ODTH, how did they do? Well, I would characterize this
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as disappointing. I'm about to show the data on screen. I just want to remind you guys,
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especially if you live in Alberta, make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel if you're
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not a subscriber, leave a comment on what you think, and actually scroll down and click on my website
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in the comments section below, WyattClaypool.com, if you want to join my organizing list to be made
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aware of good Conservative candidates in nomination races federally, provincially, or even leadership
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races around the country. But here in ODTH were the results. We had the UCP's candidate, Tara Sawyer,
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get 9,363 votes, 61.12%. We had the new Democratic candidate get 19.98%, effectively 20%. And the
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Republican Party candidate, who was also the leader of the party, Cameron Davies, got 17.66%.
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Now, I consider this to be a big disappointment for the Republican Party. And I'm going to get to some
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people who disagree with me on this particular issue saying it was their first run at it, you got
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to give them some, you know, give them some slack, they tried their best. And that's great. That's a
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great first election result. The problem for the Republican Party, this isn't some like, new concept
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of a party coming out of nowhere and getting 17%. Everyone's like, whoa, who are these guys? It's not
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like you had something named like New West Alberta or whatever. And it's not a separatist party, but
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it's like, you know, some libertarian party, maybe it's some sort of, you know, working like a trade
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union type blue collar conservatives or whatever, and they start doing really well, or it's a rural
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interest party. That would be a really good result. The problem is that this party is saying that we're
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going to capture the separatist sentiment, and we are going to maybe not drive like ride it into
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office, but we're going to get close. We're going to maybe come in a close second. We're going to
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give the UCP a run for their money. We're going to freak them out. I really don't think Danielle
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Smith is freaked out by the Republican Party today. Because to get third place in ODTH is not very good.
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This is one of the most rural, this is one of the most conservative ridings in the province. And yeah,
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they ended up taking a bunch of the vote from the UCP. The UCP lost 14 points compared to how they did
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in 2023. But that still only means the Republicans got 17.66 and came behind the NDP, who barely tried
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in this area. Like, yeah, they had door knockers and whatnot, because it's not like they're going to
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send their door knockers up into Edmonton. This is a riding close to Calgary, a bunch of their Calgary
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people may have come out to try and do a half decent showing. But still, as a party that's saying
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that because the separatist movement is more than 50% popular in some of these ridings, we should
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have an easy time connecting with voters. And what we saw is that people who maybe have separatist
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sympathies are still sticking generally with the UCP. They maybe will vote yes in a separatist referendum
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or an independence referendum. I know some people don't like the word separatist. It really doesn't
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matter. Either one of them pretty much means the same thing. I'm not trying to be derogatory.
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But a lot of people will vote yes on a separatist referendum, but they're not going to risk the
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government for a separatist MLA who can't do anything. It's not like a separatist MLA can just
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push forward a piece of legislation saying we're leaving. They would still need to do a petition
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and then have a referendum vote on the specific thing that they petitioned for. You still have
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to do it the old-fashioned way. There's no way of taking the government and then having a premier
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saying, if they're a Republican premier, saying we're leaving. And I think the way that the party
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ran in this election wasn't good. Why did they pick the color red? I know it's the Republican Party
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color down south. It's confusing. People look at it and they think it's a liberal party sign. I talked
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about this with Candice Malcolm on her show on Juno News. I'll actually link that in the description
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below and pinned at the top of the comments as well. I think it was a fun discussion, so you guys
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might like it. But again, it was just that the party almost didn't feel like it was attempting to win
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in many ways. And now I just want to bring up something I was seeing from, or first I'm going to
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show up a map of the riding, and then I want to go to someone who disagreed with me on this particular
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issue. Someone I actually respect a lot, but I just want to show what their disagreement was
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because I think it's a good argument to tackle on this issue. So Kalem here, who did a really good
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job posting this map of the riding, poll by poll, they show the riding results, 61%, 20%, 18%, and Wild Rose
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had won. I don't even know what the Wild Rose Loyalty Coalition is anymore. It's still Paul Hinman's
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vehicle. If you guys aren't in Alberta, you won't even know who Paul Hinman is. Not a shot against him,
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but this is very deep political lore in Alberta now. But in this riding, and naturally they did,
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but the UCP won 61% of the vote. What I think is concerning for the Republican Party is you think
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that this party would be at least popular in the super deep rural areas, but not really. Even in some
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of these deep rural areas, I'm not even sure if these ones are slightly lighter blue because maybe
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they have some small towns that are a little bit more NDP-ish. Maybe there's some more people,
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more retirees who live in those areas. Or I don't know if it's like acreages where people are voting
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for the Republicans. My point is that for the Republican Party to demonstrate that it has real
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staying power, I think, I'm not even saying they have to win a riding or climb close to the riding.
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They need to show they can win a county. I can win this general poll area. This poll area,
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or the type of people who will vote for us, now we can kind of find ridings that are made
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out of poll areas that are a lot like that one. If you could do that, you could win. But there's
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no general place where their particular flavor of separatist messaging is popular. And I know the
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guy who runs the party, Cam Davies. He's a character. I like characters in politics. He's very
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much an eccentric, outgoing guy. I don't have a personal problem with him in any way. But the way that the
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party is being too niche about it, separatism is kind of a problem. When on your website, and I saw
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someone post this from the Wayback Machine, at one point, they were almost marketing themselves as
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sort of quasi-independence, quasi-51st state party. You're immediately taking the maybe 50, maybe even
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55% of people who support separatism in ODTH, and having them now divided because they maybe don't
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support 51st state stuff. Or maybe they don't want an independent Alberta that's going to be
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anti-monarchy. And I know the monarchy is not super popular in Alberta, but these are all things to
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consider because you're going to start slowly dividing people out of your potential voting base.
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All small parties have to contend with this. And I'm not anti-small party. I help out small parties.
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I currently work for a small party in British Columbia, 1 BC. We already have two MLAs because they
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crossed the floor and joined. You know, I like the new blue party in Ontario. I don't even care if
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they don't win, but they need to have a point to existing. And if this party is trying to get Alberta
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out of Canada, if they can't win an election, that's kind of a problem. And they don't exactly have
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decades and decades of time to develop this concept of a party. Because if the Conservatives take over
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federally, things are going to improve and people will lose interest. Separatism has to be like
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really hot and fast. It needs to be like, you know, you have a firebrand of a leader who can gather people,
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get them to vote for something, and then go for a referendum vote ASAP. I'm not exactly a pro-independence
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guy because, frankly, I think a lot of pro-independence stuff comes from a moment of exhaustion where
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people want to leave. But if they stick around for four years, everything might be better and they're happy
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they didn't leave. So I always think it's such a massive risk or potentially a reward that you may have
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wanted to hand back later. But yeah, this is a problem. They didn't win a single county. They
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didn't win a single poll area. And so let's now jump over to somebody who disagrees with me,
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somebody I respect. And that would be Marty up north. So I made a post about how I thought that
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this was not a good result. I said that, just bringing this up on screen, I said that I think
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if they really wanted to prove that they could basically be a real party that had real momentum,
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they needed 25%. They needed to take a quarter of this riding, win some polling stations, and that's
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how they're going to prove it. I think they got enough of a vote that their people are probably
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going to stick with them, but I don't think they're going to grow. So that was my point.
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And Marty up north said, you're totally misreading what happened and drawing the wrong conclusions.
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15,318 votes a voter is turned out for a by-election in a meaningless riding. That's a 42%
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voter turnout in a by-election, which is unheard of. He is right, that is high for a by-election.
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Especially considering the fact that everyone is suffering from election fatigue. Why the big
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turnout? Because Daniel Smith has her marching orders from Ottawa to stop the separatist movement
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at all costs. UCP threw a lot of resources in the riding. Now, I don't agree with that. Now,
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Danielle Smith is not pro-separatist. At the same time, she was the one who lowered the citizen's
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petition threshold to make it easier to get on the ballot because previously the petition threshold
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was absurdly high. It was like over 600,000 signatures you needed within 60 days. She lowered
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it to around 177,000, 176,000, which is far more reasonable. And it's still a tough lift still. It's not
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like anyone can just go do that. But Marty goes on to say, so did the NDP. They got as many
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votes yesterday as they did in the 2023 general election, which means they also mobilized everyone.
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Just look at the advanced polling numbers and special ballots. The fact that Cam Davies got
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16.7.6% of the vote is remarkable and definitely not a failure. There's absolutely an appetite for
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a separatist party. Rural Albertans, the real backbone of the province, understand what's happening.
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And he says, this should be a wake-up call for the Alberta separatist movement. Opposition to a
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referendum will be fierce, if not unsurmountable. The NDP, the unions, Ottawa, other provinces,
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immigrants, they're all against us. Now, I'm just going to end it there. My point about where I think
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Marty is wrong is to make excuses for the failure. If you're basically saying that your opposition
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simply mobilizing their voters to show up is always going to beat you, how are you going to win? Are you
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hoping? You can't win an election hoping that nobody else shows up. You have to win when your
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opponents are at their best. And it's not like the Republican Party didn't have the lead-up time for
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this election. They had a few months where they were marketing themselves. They knew that they were
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going to do this for a while. And I think that they did it a little bit too fly by night. They assumed
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that this was going to be a standard by-election where 20% of people, 15% of people are going to show up
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and you're going to make your numbers look really good by getting 2,000 people out, which would
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normally only bank you 15% of the vote in a riding, but it's going to get us 30% if not a lot of people
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show up. Don't hope for things like that. You've got to just win. And this is not at all unfair to
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say that you should at least come close to win or win. Because guess who, guys, do you want an example
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of a successful version of this? I'm not even having to go very far from this riding. In fact,
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I'm not going literally anywhere. In 1982, in February 17th, 1982, sorry, that scrolled up,
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we literally had Gordon Kessler from the Western Canada Concept Party in a by-election in Olds Didsbury,
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back when it was a smaller riding because, you know, lower populations of the province.
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Gordon Kessler won 42.20% of the vote. So you beat the Social Credit Party, you got 28, the PCs,
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you got 25, New Democrats, you got 3%. It is doable. You can win. You can absolutely win. You just have
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to try. And someone could say, well, they only had to turn out 4,000 voters to win. Well, I'm going
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to remind people that Cameron Davies and the Republicans, in an era with much better technology,
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with an ability to reach people without even having to go to their homes, got 2,700 people out.
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Gordon Kessler got 4,000 people out in basically the same area. Is it a wider area? Yeah, but the
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population is bigger. So in general, your volunteer base should also be bigger. They need to figure out
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how to win the acreages. They need to figure out how to win a small town. If they're just going to
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assume that eventually there's going to be this big mass appeal, that there's going to be this big
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centering moment where everyone's going to come and just vote for them because they get sick of
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the government, you're wrong. Even Gordon Kessler couldn't hold on to it for very long. He didn't end
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up running in the general election. Someone else ran in the same riding. He went somewhere else.
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But this guy, Daryl M. Jadick, got down to only 25%. They lost a lot. And then Gordon Kessler ran in
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high woods and he got blown out of the water too. I think he came second place, but it was like a
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really distant second place. There is no replacing winning in electoral politics. And unless the option,
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the other option is just bad, there is no real reason to run a party if there's no horizon,
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there's no victory on the horizon. There's not even a concept of how we're going to get there.
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I don't think they know how they're going to get there. There's a reason why in Edmonton,
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Ellerslie, they only got 3.4% despite putting up some amount of effort to try and door knock those
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areas. There's just not much of an appeal. And even where there is an appeal, it's kind of limited.
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That's the problem. And the thing is, again, I'm not an independence guy, but if you want a really
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honest independence voice, Corey Morgan on his personal channel has been doing great work talking
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about what the separatist movement needs to be if they want to actually win. And he says,
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stop doing the party stuff, focus on a petition and focus on voting for independence. Stop trying
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to create parties where big personalities and egos clash on the concept and who's going to be the
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leader. Because guess what? A movement like this is going to succeed when there's no leader and
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you're just voting for independence. There's no independence with this guy as the king. There's
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no independence with this particular vision for how we're going to separate. Just say,
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we're going to separate. That's all the petition should basically say. Don't have all these other
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distractions around. Especially because, frankly, parties get money involved and then it becomes,
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well, who's on the board? Well, who's going to, you know, is the leader getting paid? Well,
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who's getting the contracts to run the advertising? Problem. Anyways. So that's it for this particular
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topic, guys. I think this demonstrates, one, the independence movement is just not nearly as popular
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as people think. Yes, there was a couple of polls that showed that it was 45 in favor of
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independence, only 55% against, which is pretty tight for that particular question. That came up
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from Leger, I believe. At the same time, you then have Abacus Data, which is a better pollster,
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in my opinion, and especially Janet Brown, who is easily the best pollster in Alberta and
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Saskatchewan. She showed independence support around 35%, 34. I think there needs to be a lot more
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marketing on this issue. Again, even if you won an independence referendum, if all the polling
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showed you only had 30% support and the only reason you win is because of low turnout, they're
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probably not going to honor that result. So don't hope for low turnout. Don't hope for easy mode in
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politics. Just win. Basically, just win. Focus on winning. Don't focus on hoping the other guys don't
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show up. And I think that's what the independence guys got caught with yesterday. They hoped other people
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didn't show up and their result was going to look better than it actually was. Anyways, so that's it