The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Was Ford's pointless snap election meant to hurt Poilievre？ (Ontario polling analysis)

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and I am back with another Ontario provincial election update.

00:00:07.220 I first want to start off talking about the movement in the polls, and then I want to talk

00:00:12.200 about the motivations of Doug Ford for calling this provincial election, because I suspect much

00:00:18.300 of it actually has to do with his ire for the federal conservatives more than his actual desire

00:00:24.200 to win another term early. That is also playing into it, but there has always been a long-time

00:00:30.240 frenemies-type relationship between the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and the Federal

00:00:36.000 Conservative Party of Canada. Anyways, first, let's start out with the polling, but guys, remember,

00:00:42.840 like this video, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment on what you've been thinking about the

00:00:47.720 Ontario provincial election. Has this been an entire practice in futility, or does this election

00:00:53.240 actually matter? Since we last talked, this is what the polling had looked like. Actually, I'm going

00:00:58.680 to start off with day 1, 2, and 3, then we'll go 7, 8, 9, and then days 13 and 14. So on day 1 of the

00:01:06.840 tracking poll that Main Street Research had been putting out, the PC party was around 32%, the Ontario

00:01:13.400 Liberals, 24, and the Ontario NDP, 19. You'll notice that there was a lot of undecideds early along.

00:01:20.180 On day 1, there was 16%. On day 2, there was 17%. Day 3, there was 19%. But we see a consistent

00:01:27.680 rise for the PCs, the Liberals struggling in the low 20s, and the NDP contracting quite heavily from 19%

00:01:36.780 down to 16%. And then we had the hot mic moment for Doug Ford, where he said that he 100% wanted Donald

00:01:44.340 Trump to win the presidential election, but then Donald Trump betrayed them by threatening the trade war

00:01:49.620 and all this stuff, which is a lie on multiple fronts. He literally endorsed Tim Walz as the

00:01:55.360 Democratic vice presidential candidate. He obviously is more of a Democrat than he is a Republican if he

00:02:01.160 was a governor in the United States. But Doug Ford wants to signal that he's actually quite right-wing,

00:02:07.380 don't you know, even though all of his policy achievements, quote-unquote, have to do with him

00:02:12.620 partnering with the federal Trudeau Liberals to subsidize favored industries. He has crazy high

00:02:18.360 taxes. He's undermined parental rights. He's passed new DEI programs. It's awful. By the way, guys,

00:02:25.120 please vote if you're in the Ontario, the province of Ontario. Please vote for the new blue party of

00:02:30.860 Ontario. In fact, I will link their website down below on all the ridings that they still need

00:02:36.200 candidates in. It's just about a dozen or so. If you live in that riding and you think you can be

00:02:41.680 a candidate there, guys, sign up. There's like a little bit more than a day left to get your

00:02:46.140 paperwork in to be a candidate. You basically just print it off, get 25 signatures, and you're the

00:02:50.580 new blue candidate. Just get in contact with them. I'll have their email below. I think it's like

00:02:55.040 info at newblueontario.ca. It'll be there. Check it out. Make sure you vote for them. But then

00:03:02.200 after this hot mic moment, we see this is when Doug Ford was riding high. This poll was technically

00:03:08.660 taking the day after the hot mic moment. But the new cycle in Canada tends to be pretty slow,

00:03:13.620 and it usually takes a day or two for people to kind of catch up with what had occurred.

00:03:18.220 And so on day seven, we have the Ontario PCs at 38%, Liberals at 25%, and the NDP floundering all the

00:03:26.200 way down at 14%. A lot of people were consolidating early on with Doug Ford under the excuse that the

00:03:33.200 trade war justified Ford needing a big new mandate, and he's the Protect Ontario guy, so we need him

00:03:39.920 on our side. I'm going to get to later how he's pivoting on the Protect Ontario platform and starting

00:03:45.440 to name other countries that he has to protect Ontario from since the US-Canada sort of angle

00:03:51.740 doesn't work as well now. But on day seven, he's at 38%. And on day eight, he crashes down to 32%,

00:03:58.100 and the undecided spike from 14% to 22%. And then the Liberals basically still contract a little bit

00:04:07.320 more as well, and the NDP jumps a bit. Again, that's to be expected. Day-to-day polling is not going to

00:04:13.820 look the same. You're not going to have radical shifts for no reason. If a big shift happens, it's

00:04:18.460 probably for a news-related reason. But, you know, one or two points up and down, that's pretty

00:04:24.540 standard. Day nine, we have the Ontario PCs further fall from 32 to 30. We have the Liberals gain a

00:04:32.700 point. We have the NDP actually gain several points going from 15 to 19, but those undecideds remain

00:04:38.760 high. Now, let's jump closer to today. We'll do day 13, which was the yesterday's or two days ago's

00:04:46.740 tracking poll, and day 14, which was yesterday. So on day 13, we see that the PCs have recovered

00:04:52.680 from this bad day nine polling. They are now at 35%, but the Liberals have stabilized themselves as the

00:05:00.560 sort of number two party in Ontario that they're in a horse race with the Ford PCs. So on day 13,

00:05:06.720 it's 35%, PC, 28 Liberals, 16 NDP, and we see those undecideds continuing to shrink. Obviously,

00:05:14.360 we also have the Greens at five and other at four. Other would probably be bigger if you actually

00:05:20.480 included the new blue party of Ontario. Whenever Leger does and they don't poll the province all

00:05:25.320 that often, usually new blue is at two or three percent, and that is with not much coverage of

00:05:30.900 them, which is pretty decent. But let's go to day 14 now. Day 14, we have the PCs rising again from 35

00:05:38.260 to 37 here. The Ontario Liberals gaining another point, and the NDP contracting. The NDP has just

00:05:46.000 been having a heck of a time trying to gain any traction. But probably in the coming days, I'm

00:05:51.580 going to go away from the undecided polls, because getting later in the campaign, if you're not decided

00:05:57.820 at all, or you're not leaning, I'll probably include the leaning poll, which removes people

00:06:03.520 from the undecided category if they admit that, yeah, but I'm leaning towards this party. Because

00:06:08.800 late in the campaign, if you're undecided, it probably means you're not voting. So what we have

00:06:12.920 here is 37 to 29 with the Liberals, as you can see, just eight points behind the Conservatives.

00:06:19.760 When you do the leaning, the PC party is more ahead than the pure undecided poll. But the problem

00:06:26.920 for Doug Ford is that, I would argue, he is one bad debate performance away from this being a real

00:06:33.300 race. In fact, before I get to the video I want to talk about on X, on Doug Ford's social media

00:06:40.960 account, I want to jump to the dashboard of the Ontario election that Main Street has. They do

00:06:47.180 really great resources. I know some people criticize Main Street because they've been slightly off in the

00:06:52.620 popular vote in the past. In BC, yes, they were like a couple points off the popular vote. But they

00:06:58.400 actually had the seat count more correct than others. Every pollster was having a problem with

00:07:02.440 that election because it was hard to see where the new Conservative Party vote was going to come from

00:07:07.460 because they only got 2% in the last election. They had nothing to go on. So it would have been

00:07:11.860 difficult to suspect that independent candidates were going to have as big of an effect on the ability

00:07:17.800 for BC Conservatives to win seats, as well as the big spike in support in Surrey that was hard to

00:07:24.300 pick up on because South Asian Canadians tend to be very unlikely to take polls. But here is the

00:07:30.980 current seat projections. And we do see that the Ontario PCs have a 93% chance of winning a majority

00:07:36.680 government. 84 seats, which is in fact one seat better than they did in 2022. But the thing I would

00:07:43.320 caution PC supporters here on is that when you actually look at what is making up their current

00:07:49.460 seat count, you have a lot of PC leaning seats, some toss ups, which basically means it's a 50-50.

00:07:56.900 There's a lot of PC leaning seats here, about 15 of them that they're relying on for this big majority.

00:08:02.140 And then there are likely PC seats, which means that it's probably a good 60 to 70% chance that they

00:08:07.640 win those seats. The problem for Ford is if in a debate he fumbles, that's when you can have an

00:08:15.480 entire political career really come into question, of a scandal breaks. If there is some sort of,

00:08:21.080 you know, corruption scandal, something gets uncovered, that's what can take a lead like this

00:08:26.460 down to nothing. Same thing happened in Saskatchewan. If the Saskatchewan party had a big scandal in the

00:08:32.280 last week, good chance the NDP party ends up winning that provincial election. And like BC was a true

00:08:39.980 toss up. But there's a lot of elections where unless you're at 100% likelihood of winning, if anything

00:08:46.300 happens, your 94% chance of getting a majority and your 5% of a minority could flip and it could be an end

00:08:53.000 up being a chance of a 30% or 40% chance of just winning a minority for somebody like Doug Ford. I know

00:09:00.140 other polls are showing the Ford government at like 47%. I just frankly don't believe those. The mood in

00:09:07.080 Ontario is not extremely pro Ford. People tolerate Ford. In fact, a lot of federal conservatives do not

00:09:14.160 like him. When I go over the charts of who's voting PC, the PC voter base, other than they have a strong

00:09:21.640 appeal with men, they have a very liberal-esque type voting coalition. Because the Liberal Party of

00:09:28.320 Canada, although you wouldn't expect it because it's a left-wing party or a lefty party, it's gone

00:09:33.520 full left-wing, I would say, in the last few years. But because the Liberals are a left-wing party, the

00:09:38.000 stereotype, it's a lot of college students voting for them, young, millennial women type people like 1.00

00:09:43.660 that. That's in fact the NDP's voting coalition. The Liberal voting coalition, both federally and

00:09:49.580 provincially, has always been older pensioners. Obviously, that doesn't apply to you guys because you're all

00:09:55.400 conservatives, but that is the disproportionate voter base. Obviously, I disproportionately should 1.00

00:10:00.940 be likely to vote NDP, but I'm a conservative because things have shifted quite a bit. But Ford's

00:10:06.240 government basically wins on pensioner votes. They do not have good support with middle-aged people.

00:10:11.800 Yes, they win men, which means that he is actually in fact stealing a lot of the Ontario Liberal support

00:10:16.520 because then the Liberals are winning older women, which means Bonnie Crombie doesn't really have much 1.00

00:10:22.380 room to grow. Federal Conservatives don't vote in provincial elections. That's why whenever we see

00:10:28.720 an Ontario provincial poll, whenever Kudo Maggie includes a federal question, it actually shows the

00:10:35.780 federal Liberals winning by like three or four points over the federal Conservatives. I'm just going

00:10:40.980 to say right up front, I don't believe that. I do not believe the federal Liberals are actually

00:10:45.920 leading the Conservatives in Ontario. I even have good evidence that they're not leading the

00:10:50.440 Ontario, the federal Conservatives in Ontario using Main Street's own polling data. Because Main Street,

00:10:56.660 when they've done a purely federal only poll, it's just a national poll and they have the same sample

00:11:02.140 size in Ontario that they do provincially. They poll 950 people provincially and federally. When it's a

00:11:08.120 federal only poll, the Conservatives are leading by like six or seven or eight points. When you do a

00:11:13.000 provincial poll, suddenly the Liberals are leading by four or five points. And I suspect it's because a

00:11:17.720 federal Conservative picks up the phone. They hear it's a provincial election poll. Oh my goodness,

00:11:22.360 I couldn't care less. And they hang up. Because Ford is a Liberal effectively. He goes on on every

00:11:28.180 single subsidy program with the Liberals. He literally celebrated, his Minister of Economic

00:11:32.520 Development celebrated the cricket factory, the factory that produced crickets for human consumption.

00:11:38.940 They celebrated that. They have passed DEI programs. They have gotten rid of any sort of parental

00:11:44.200 rights legislation that they were promising back in 2018. They're complete hacks. They in fact voted

00:11:50.840 for an NDP bill to put critical race theory teaching in schools. These people are nuts. Again, 1.00

00:11:58.600 please vote for the new blue party. Run for the new blue party if you're in one of these ridings that

00:12:03.020 still needs a candidate. Places like Willowdale, they need a candidate. Some of the Toronto ridings

00:12:08.280 probably won't end up with candidates. It's just hard to get people to run for a really conservative

00:12:12.600 party in Toronto. It's just a hard area to get signatures as well because everyone lives in

00:12:18.260 towers. But my goodness, also the new blue party, it's not like the PPC where it's trying to be

00:12:25.640 hyper-pure and you're not good enough for us so we're starting our own party. The new blue party

00:12:30.620 basically agrees 90% with the federal Conservatives. It is a very mainstream federal Conservative-esque

00:12:37.780 provincial party. And this is where I'm going to get to what is Doug Ford's motivation to call this

00:12:42.920 election? Because he's flip-flopping around trying to find a reason why he even called it. Here's a

00:12:48.460 video he recently put up now trying to pivot on his Protect Ontario slogan to say actually we need to

00:12:54.840 protect Ontario from China. And I actually kind of agree that yeah, Canada needs to protect its trade

00:13:01.360 from China because China is a hostile force and we should be trying to divest ourselves from that 0.99

00:13:06.660 and trading with other East Asian countries, trading with India more, trading with Cambodia,

00:13:11.840 Vietnam, the Philippines. I'm perfectly fine with that. If they produce goods way cheaper than we 0.99

00:13:17.080 could ever produce them, there's no point in us not buying it from them. But the problem here is Doug

00:13:22.320 Ford is justifying basically blaming China for his own bad domestic policy. Does China dump a lot of

00:13:29.420 cheap goods into Canada that's probably just trying to like them trying to get artificial control over a 0.62

00:13:34.320 market? Yeah, somewhat. I don't want to trade with them more for national security reasons, not because

00:13:39.400 they're cheating us. They're not really cheating us. In fact, products in some cases can be produced

00:13:45.040 cheaper in, again, places like Vietnam. The problem right now in Ontario is taxes are too high, that there's

00:13:51.820 no reason to really produce anything in Ontario other than our dollars so cheap that Americans will 0.99

00:13:56.900 sometimes get part of a car to be built in Ontario, like chassis get built in Ontario, and then they get

00:14:02.640 finished in Detroit. That happens, but it's the domestic taxes. But now this is Ford's new line.

00:14:08.000 China is playing by its own rules. It's flooding markets, hijacking supply chains, undercutting our 0.99

00:14:14.760 workers, and threatening our industries. I'll tell you right now, Ontario isn't going to sit back and

00:14:21.180 let it happen. We will always stand up for our workers. We will do whatever it takes to protect

00:14:27.460 Ontario, their families, the workers, the businesses and communities.

00:14:31.660 Is he going to cut taxes? This is like Justin Trudeau exactly saying, we're going to do whatever

00:14:37.220 it takes to fight back against the Americans, dollar for dollar tariffs, all this stuff. And he's like,

00:14:41.320 how about you cut taxes? No. And even Ford, again, he wants to do some sort of retaliatory measures

00:14:47.580 against the U.S. because Trump is instituting these tariffs, 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum

00:14:54.240 products, not just from Canada, but from everywhere outside of the U.S. Do you know what we should do

00:14:59.080 in this case? Cut taxes to that entire industry, an industry-specific tax cut of like 35%, 40%,

00:15:08.060 I would say 50%, slash taxes to that industry so that our products can be lowered in price so that

00:15:14.100 Americans can keep buying it anyways.

00:15:16.440 If Canada and the U.S. want to win, if we want to protect our workers and their paychecks,

00:15:22.360 we need to fight together, not each other.

00:15:26.720 He's so tiring.

00:15:29.200 The real reason that Doug Ford wants this election, it's twofold.

00:15:33.020 One, the Ford PCs hate the federal conservatives because the federal conservatives outside of when

00:15:39.440 O'Toole was the leader are actually conservative. And Doug Ford resents that. He already resents being

00:15:45.020 compared to his brother, Rob Ford, who was a real conservative, probably the best conservative

00:15:50.360 politician that Ontario has ever had, even if he was just the mayor of Toronto. That guy was a fiscal

00:15:56.380 hawk. He is kind of like Elon Musk and his Doge team, where it doesn't matter how small the wasteful

00:16:02.440 spending is, he would cut it. Because if he cuts thousands of little instances of $50,000 here,

00:16:08.240 $100,000 here, a couple million there, he was able to actually reduce the taxes and fees

00:16:14.480 to Toronto taxpayers. He was very good. And now with Pierre Polyev likely to become the prime

00:16:20.940 minister of Canada, yes, the liberals are surging. I think it's more of a red mirage than anything.

00:16:25.940 But if the federal conservatives win and Pierre Polyev becomes the prime minister,

00:16:30.040 Doug Ford looks like a complete hack in contrast. Because people naturally compare people to the

00:16:35.880 best. And right now in Canada, you really can't compare Doug Ford to anyone. Yeah, I guess you could

00:16:41.300 compare him to Blaine Higgs, but he's gone. You could compare him to Daniel Smith, but those are

00:16:45.520 completely different worlds between Ontario and Alberta. And so I guess Scott Moe, but again,

00:16:51.840 it's kind of hazy. It's a less well-known comparison to make between smaller Western provinces

00:16:57.560 and the juggernaut of Ontario. But if Polyev becomes prime minister, and he starts cutting taxes

00:17:03.560 and regulations and enforcing parental rights policies, which would actually require him to go after

00:17:08.720 Ford for being a complete hack and not actually protecting Ontario children and parents himself,

00:17:14.480 Doug Ford doesn't want them to win. That's why he's having this stupid early election. One, 1.00

00:17:19.720 he wants to get his next term in before standards go up. And then two, he also wants to make it so

00:17:26.620 that the next election is delayed, and it sucks momentum away from the federal conservatives.

00:17:32.000 Because by having the election now, Jagmeet Singh and Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau have the perfect

00:17:37.200 reason not to have an early election. Oh, there's Ontario voter fatigue right now. Oh, well, there's

00:17:43.040 a trade war going on. There was just an election in Ontario. We need a couple of months to stabilize

00:17:47.980 the country, and then we can have an election. Jagmeet Singh is already hedging, and the Ontario

00:17:53.180 election is perfect fodder for him to hedge more on. This is Doug Ford simply trying to disrupt things.

00:17:59.960 It was pretty famous in 2019 that because of certain scandals in his government, and Andrew Scheer

00:18:06.040 didn't really want to go on the campaign trail with Doug Ford, that Doug Ford resents the conservatives

00:18:10.740 heavily and doesn't actually like them at all. That is why he keeps partnering with the federal

00:18:15.760 conservatives. He called Chrystia Freeland, called Doug Ford her therapist, and he called her one of

00:18:23.100 his best friends. It's ridiculous. He praises Justin Trudeau on the economy and during COVID, 0.98

00:18:31.100 and he was the lockdown king of the country. The only person worse than Doug Ford was probably

00:18:36.740 Francois Legault in Quebec, but that's barely even part of Canada. That clip is going to come back to

00:18:41.780 bite me one day, but I like making fun of Quebec every once in a while. I like you guys somewhat.

00:18:46.060 Don't worry about it. But yeah, Doug Ford is simply disrupting things for his own political gain and to

00:18:52.780 the detriment of the federal conservatives because, in fact, he actually likes the federal liberals around

00:18:58.240 because his entire political career is based on just dumping taxpayer dollars into favored industries

00:19:04.760 and favored regions to buy votes. Ford is basically a liberal and a retail politician turned into the

00:19:12.020 worst sort of person. All he does is use his taxpayer money to win elections. He takes money and just gives

00:19:18.460 people $200 checks right before the election. Isn't that a little bit sketchy? Feels like a bribe to me.

00:19:24.680 In fact, Bonnie Crombie, who is not conservative, I'm not arguing that, she on certain issues is to

00:19:32.080 the right of Doug Ford. I'm not saying she's even center right, but Doug Ford is so left on certain

00:19:37.600 issues, Bonnie Crombie is in fact to his right. She criticizes some of the subsidies he makes as 0.99

00:19:43.200 being obvious handouts to friends. She criticizes him for putting a box around John A. McDonald's

00:19:49.100 statue on Queens Park and calls it unpatriotic. She's right. I don't like Bonnie Crombie, but that's

00:19:55.600 just correct. It's ridiculous. She's even been calling out his drug practices because he's done 0.96

00:20:01.560 nothing to shut down the injection sites and he's been in fact allowing more to be approved.

00:20:06.100 She's actually called out his failed policies on crime, basically just blaming things on the federal

00:20:11.480 government when he, with the OPP, actually does have enforcement powers and he's been sluggish on

00:20:16.920 actually like addressing the issue of crime. Violent crime is like up 35% in Ontario since he took over.

00:20:23.600 It's crazy. Anyways, that should be it for me today, guys. Again, reminder, please vote for the new blue

00:20:30.840 party of Ontario. They might not have a candidate in your riding, in which case vote for basically any

00:20:36.100 independent that's on the ballot. But if there is a new blue party of Ontario candidate, it doesn't

00:20:41.260 matter if they can't win. Don't get sucked into the Stockholm syndrome argument that if we don't vote

00:20:47.660 PC, the liberals could win. The PC party has to demonstrate it's different than the liberals and

00:20:52.180 actually significantly conservative before you actually consider voting for them. New blue party

00:20:57.680 is basically the standard. It is like the federal conservatives. Give them a vote because there is a

00:21:02.920 per vote subsidy that they can win if they do better than 5% in the riding. So getting out and voting

00:21:08.300 actually does have the ability to build up a new alternative party like the reform party or the

00:21:14.440 Canadian Alliance or the BC conservatives in the long run by them being able to get access to those

00:21:20.700 funds. I don't like the per vote subsidy, but the Ontario PCs and the liberals and the NDP are going

00:21:26.360 to take it. Why shouldn't the smaller party that's actually trying to combat corruption and bring

00:21:30.840 conservatism back to Ontario take it too? Check the website for the new blue party. See what riding

00:21:36.020 still need a candidate. In the last 24 hours here, you could easily get the paperwork, get in contact

00:21:40.860 with the new blue party, get your 25 signatures and be on the ballot. Even if you can't campaign much,

00:21:46.240 you can be there as a dumping ground for people who actually care about conservatism.

00:21:50.800 Anyways, see you guys later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - February 12, 2025

Was Ford's pointless snap election meant to hurt Poilievre？ (Ontario polling analysis)

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