Was Ford's pointless snap election meant to hurt Poilievre？ (Ontario polling analysis)
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about the polling numbers and why Doug Ford decided to run for re-election. I also discuss the reasons behind his decision to call an early election, and how it ties into his feud with the federal Conservative Party of Canada.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and I am back with another Ontario provincial election update.
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I first want to start off talking about the movement in the polls, and then I want to talk
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about the motivations of Doug Ford for calling this provincial election, because I suspect much
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of it actually has to do with his ire for the federal conservatives more than his actual desire
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to win another term early. That is also playing into it, but there has always been a long-time
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frenemies-type relationship between the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and the Federal
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Conservative Party of Canada. Anyways, first, let's start out with the polling, but guys, remember,
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like this video, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment on what you've been thinking about the
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Ontario provincial election. Has this been an entire practice in futility, or does this election
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actually matter? Since we last talked, this is what the polling had looked like. Actually, I'm going
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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
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tracking poll that Main Street Research had been putting out, the PC party was around 32%, the Ontario
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Liberals, 24, and the Ontario NDP, 19. You'll notice that there was a lot of undecideds early along.
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On day 1, there was 16%. On day 2, there was 17%. Day 3, there was 19%. But we see a consistent
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rise for the PCs, the Liberals struggling in the low 20s, and the NDP contracting quite heavily from 19%
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down to 16%. And then we had the hot mic moment for Doug Ford, where he said that he 100% wanted Donald
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Trump to win the presidential election, but then Donald Trump betrayed them by threatening the trade war
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and all this stuff, which is a lie on multiple fronts. He literally endorsed Tim Walz as the
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Democratic vice presidential candidate. He obviously is more of a Democrat than he is a Republican if he
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was a governor in the United States. But Doug Ford wants to signal that he's actually quite right-wing,
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don't you know, even though all of his policy achievements, quote-unquote, have to do with him
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partnering with the federal Trudeau Liberals to subsidize favored industries. He has crazy high
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taxes. He's undermined parental rights. He's passed new DEI programs. It's awful. By the way, guys,
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please vote if you're in the Ontario, the province of Ontario. Please vote for the new blue party of
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Ontario. In fact, I will link their website down below on all the ridings that they still need
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candidates in. It's just about a dozen or so. If you live in that riding and you think you can be
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a candidate there, guys, sign up. There's like a little bit more than a day left to get your
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paperwork in to be a candidate. You basically just print it off, get 25 signatures, and you're the
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new blue candidate. Just get in contact with them. I'll have their email below. I think it's like
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info at newblueontario.ca. It'll be there. Check it out. Make sure you vote for them. But then
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after this hot mic moment, we see this is when Doug Ford was riding high. This poll was technically
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taking the day after the hot mic moment. But the new cycle in Canada tends to be pretty slow,
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and it usually takes a day or two for people to kind of catch up with what had occurred.
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And so on day seven, we have the Ontario PCs at 38%, Liberals at 25%, and the NDP floundering all the
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way down at 14%. A lot of people were consolidating early on with Doug Ford under the excuse that the
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trade war justified Ford needing a big new mandate, and he's the Protect Ontario guy, so we need him
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on our side. I'm going to get to later how he's pivoting on the Protect Ontario platform and starting
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to name other countries that he has to protect Ontario from since the US-Canada sort of angle
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doesn't work as well now. But on day seven, he's at 38%. And on day eight, he crashes down to 32%,
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and the undecided spike from 14% to 22%. And then the Liberals basically still contract a little bit
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more as well, and the NDP jumps a bit. Again, that's to be expected. Day-to-day polling is not going to
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look the same. You're not going to have radical shifts for no reason. If a big shift happens, it's
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probably for a news-related reason. But, you know, one or two points up and down, that's pretty
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standard. Day nine, we have the Ontario PCs further fall from 32 to 30. We have the Liberals gain a
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point. We have the NDP actually gain several points going from 15 to 19, but those undecideds remain
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high. Now, let's jump closer to today. We'll do day 13, which was the yesterday's or two days ago's
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tracking poll, and day 14, which was yesterday. So on day 13, we see that the PCs have recovered
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from this bad day nine polling. They are now at 35%, but the Liberals have stabilized themselves as the
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sort of number two party in Ontario that they're in a horse race with the Ford PCs. So on day 13,
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it's 35%, PC, 28 Liberals, 16 NDP, and we see those undecideds continuing to shrink. Obviously,
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we also have the Greens at five and other at four. Other would probably be bigger if you actually
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included the new blue party of Ontario. Whenever Leger does and they don't poll the province all
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that often, usually new blue is at two or three percent, and that is with not much coverage of
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them, which is pretty decent. But let's go to day 14 now. Day 14, we have the PCs rising again from 35
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to 37 here. The Ontario Liberals gaining another point, and the NDP contracting. The NDP has just
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been having a heck of a time trying to gain any traction. But probably in the coming days, I'm
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going to go away from the undecided polls, because getting later in the campaign, if you're not decided
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at all, or you're not leaning, I'll probably include the leaning poll, which removes people
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from the undecided category if they admit that, yeah, but I'm leaning towards this party. Because
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late in the campaign, if you're undecided, it probably means you're not voting. So what we have
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here is 37 to 29 with the Liberals, as you can see, just eight points behind the Conservatives.
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When you do the leaning, the PC party is more ahead than the pure undecided poll. But the problem
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for Doug Ford is that, I would argue, he is one bad debate performance away from this being a real
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race. In fact, before I get to the video I want to talk about on X, on Doug Ford's social media
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account, I want to jump to the dashboard of the Ontario election that Main Street has. They do
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really great resources. I know some people criticize Main Street because they've been slightly off in the
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popular vote in the past. In BC, yes, they were like a couple points off the popular vote. But they
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actually had the seat count more correct than others. Every pollster was having a problem with
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that election because it was hard to see where the new Conservative Party vote was going to come from
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because they only got 2% in the last election. They had nothing to go on. So it would have been
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difficult to suspect that independent candidates were going to have as big of an effect on the ability
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for BC Conservatives to win seats, as well as the big spike in support in Surrey that was hard to
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pick up on because South Asian Canadians tend to be very unlikely to take polls. But here is the
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current seat projections. And we do see that the Ontario PCs have a 93% chance of winning a majority
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government. 84 seats, which is in fact one seat better than they did in 2022. But the thing I would
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caution PC supporters here on is that when you actually look at what is making up their current
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seat count, you have a lot of PC leaning seats, some toss ups, which basically means it's a 50-50.
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There's a lot of PC leaning seats here, about 15 of them that they're relying on for this big majority.
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And then there are likely PC seats, which means that it's probably a good 60 to 70% chance that they
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win those seats. The problem for Ford is if in a debate he fumbles, that's when you can have an
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entire political career really come into question, of a scandal breaks. If there is some sort of,
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you know, corruption scandal, something gets uncovered, that's what can take a lead like this
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down to nothing. Same thing happened in Saskatchewan. If the Saskatchewan party had a big scandal in the
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last week, good chance the NDP party ends up winning that provincial election. And like BC was a true
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toss up. But there's a lot of elections where unless you're at 100% likelihood of winning, if anything
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happens, your 94% chance of getting a majority and your 5% of a minority could flip and it could be an end
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up being a chance of a 30% or 40% chance of just winning a minority for somebody like Doug Ford. I know
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other polls are showing the Ford government at like 47%. I just frankly don't believe those. The mood in
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Ontario is not extremely pro Ford. People tolerate Ford. In fact, a lot of federal conservatives do not
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like him. When I go over the charts of who's voting PC, the PC voter base, other than they have a strong
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appeal with men, they have a very liberal-esque type voting coalition. Because the Liberal Party of
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Canada, although you wouldn't expect it because it's a left-wing party or a lefty party, it's gone
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full left-wing, I would say, in the last few years. But because the Liberals are a left-wing party, the
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stereotype, it's a lot of college students voting for them, young, millennial women type people like
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that. That's in fact the NDP's voting coalition. The Liberal voting coalition, both federally and
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provincially, has always been older pensioners. Obviously, that doesn't apply to you guys because you're all
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conservatives, but that is the disproportionate voter base. Obviously, I disproportionately should
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be likely to vote NDP, but I'm a conservative because things have shifted quite a bit. But Ford's
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government basically wins on pensioner votes. They do not have good support with middle-aged people.
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Yes, they win men, which means that he is actually in fact stealing a lot of the Ontario Liberal support
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because then the Liberals are winning older women, which means Bonnie Crombie doesn't really have much
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room to grow. Federal Conservatives don't vote in provincial elections. That's why whenever we see
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an Ontario provincial poll, whenever Kudo Maggie includes a federal question, it actually shows the
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federal Liberals winning by like three or four points over the federal Conservatives. I'm just going
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to say right up front, I don't believe that. I do not believe the federal Liberals are actually
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leading the Conservatives in Ontario. I even have good evidence that they're not leading the
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Ontario, the federal Conservatives in Ontario using Main Street's own polling data. Because Main Street,
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when they've done a purely federal only poll, it's just a national poll and they have the same sample
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size in Ontario that they do provincially. They poll 950 people provincially and federally. When it's a
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federal only poll, the Conservatives are leading by like six or seven or eight points. When you do a
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provincial poll, suddenly the Liberals are leading by four or five points. And I suspect it's because a
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federal Conservative picks up the phone. They hear it's a provincial election poll. Oh my goodness,
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I couldn't care less. And they hang up. Because Ford is a Liberal effectively. He goes on on every
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single subsidy program with the Liberals. He literally celebrated, his Minister of Economic
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Development celebrated the cricket factory, the factory that produced crickets for human consumption.
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They celebrated that. They have passed DEI programs. They have gotten rid of any sort of parental
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rights legislation that they were promising back in 2018. They're complete hacks. They in fact voted
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for an NDP bill to put critical race theory teaching in schools. These people are nuts. Again,
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please vote for the new blue party. Run for the new blue party if you're in one of these ridings that
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still needs a candidate. Places like Willowdale, they need a candidate. Some of the Toronto ridings
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probably won't end up with candidates. It's just hard to get people to run for a really conservative
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party in Toronto. It's just a hard area to get signatures as well because everyone lives in
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towers. But my goodness, also the new blue party, it's not like the PPC where it's trying to be
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hyper-pure and you're not good enough for us so we're starting our own party. The new blue party
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basically agrees 90% with the federal Conservatives. It is a very mainstream federal Conservative-esque
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provincial party. And this is where I'm going to get to what is Doug Ford's motivation to call this
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election? Because he's flip-flopping around trying to find a reason why he even called it. Here's a
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video he recently put up now trying to pivot on his Protect Ontario slogan to say actually we need to
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protect Ontario from China. And I actually kind of agree that yeah, Canada needs to protect its trade
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from China because China is a hostile force and we should be trying to divest ourselves from that
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and trading with other East Asian countries, trading with India more, trading with Cambodia,
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Vietnam, the Philippines. I'm perfectly fine with that. If they produce goods way cheaper than we
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could ever produce them, there's no point in us not buying it from them. But the problem here is Doug
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Ford is justifying basically blaming China for his own bad domestic policy. Does China dump a lot of
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cheap goods into Canada that's probably just trying to like them trying to get artificial control over a
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market? Yeah, somewhat. I don't want to trade with them more for national security reasons, not because
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they're cheating us. They're not really cheating us. In fact, products in some cases can be produced
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cheaper in, again, places like Vietnam. The problem right now in Ontario is taxes are too high, that there's
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no reason to really produce anything in Ontario other than our dollars so cheap that Americans will
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sometimes get part of a car to be built in Ontario, like chassis get built in Ontario, and then they get
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finished in Detroit. That happens, but it's the domestic taxes. But now this is Ford's new line.
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China is playing by its own rules. It's flooding markets, hijacking supply chains, undercutting our
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workers, and threatening our industries. I'll tell you right now, Ontario isn't going to sit back and
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let it happen. We will always stand up for our workers. We will do whatever it takes to protect
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Ontario, their families, the workers, the businesses and communities.
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Is he going to cut taxes? This is like Justin Trudeau exactly saying, we're going to do whatever
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it takes to fight back against the Americans, dollar for dollar tariffs, all this stuff. And he's like,
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how about you cut taxes? No. And even Ford, again, he wants to do some sort of retaliatory measures
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against the U.S. because Trump is instituting these tariffs, 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum
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products, not just from Canada, but from everywhere outside of the U.S. Do you know what we should do
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in this case? Cut taxes to that entire industry, an industry-specific tax cut of like 35%, 40%,
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I would say 50%, slash taxes to that industry so that our products can be lowered in price so that
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If Canada and the U.S. want to win, if we want to protect our workers and their paychecks,
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The real reason that Doug Ford wants this election, it's twofold.
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One, the Ford PCs hate the federal conservatives because the federal conservatives outside of when
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O'Toole was the leader are actually conservative. And Doug Ford resents that. He already resents being
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compared to his brother, Rob Ford, who was a real conservative, probably the best conservative
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politician that Ontario has ever had, even if he was just the mayor of Toronto. That guy was a fiscal
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hawk. He is kind of like Elon Musk and his Doge team, where it doesn't matter how small the wasteful
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spending is, he would cut it. Because if he cuts thousands of little instances of $50,000 here,
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$100,000 here, a couple million there, he was able to actually reduce the taxes and fees
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to Toronto taxpayers. He was very good. And now with Pierre Polyev likely to become the prime
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minister of Canada, yes, the liberals are surging. I think it's more of a red mirage than anything.
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But if the federal conservatives win and Pierre Polyev becomes the prime minister,
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Doug Ford looks like a complete hack in contrast. Because people naturally compare people to the
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best. And right now in Canada, you really can't compare Doug Ford to anyone. Yeah, I guess you could
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compare him to Blaine Higgs, but he's gone. You could compare him to Daniel Smith, but those are
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completely different worlds between Ontario and Alberta. And so I guess Scott Moe, but again,
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it's kind of hazy. It's a less well-known comparison to make between smaller Western provinces
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and the juggernaut of Ontario. But if Polyev becomes prime minister, and he starts cutting taxes
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and regulations and enforcing parental rights policies, which would actually require him to go after
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Ford for being a complete hack and not actually protecting Ontario children and parents himself,
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Doug Ford doesn't want them to win. That's why he's having this stupid early election. One,
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he wants to get his next term in before standards go up. And then two, he also wants to make it so
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that the next election is delayed, and it sucks momentum away from the federal conservatives.
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Because by having the election now, Jagmeet Singh and Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau have the perfect
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reason not to have an early election. Oh, there's Ontario voter fatigue right now. Oh, well, there's
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a trade war going on. There was just an election in Ontario. We need a couple of months to stabilize
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the country, and then we can have an election. Jagmeet Singh is already hedging, and the Ontario
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election is perfect fodder for him to hedge more on. This is Doug Ford simply trying to disrupt things.
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It was pretty famous in 2019 that because of certain scandals in his government, and Andrew Scheer
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didn't really want to go on the campaign trail with Doug Ford, that Doug Ford resents the conservatives
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heavily and doesn't actually like them at all. That is why he keeps partnering with the federal
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conservatives. He called Chrystia Freeland, called Doug Ford her therapist, and he called her one of
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his best friends. It's ridiculous. He praises Justin Trudeau on the economy and during COVID,
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and he was the lockdown king of the country. The only person worse than Doug Ford was probably
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Francois Legault in Quebec, but that's barely even part of Canada. That clip is going to come back to
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bite me one day, but I like making fun of Quebec every once in a while. I like you guys somewhat.
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Don't worry about it. But yeah, Doug Ford is simply disrupting things for his own political gain and to
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the detriment of the federal conservatives because, in fact, he actually likes the federal liberals around
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because his entire political career is based on just dumping taxpayer dollars into favored industries
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and favored regions to buy votes. Ford is basically a liberal and a retail politician turned into the
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worst sort of person. All he does is use his taxpayer money to win elections. He takes money and just gives
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people $200 checks right before the election. Isn't that a little bit sketchy? Feels like a bribe to me.
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In fact, Bonnie Crombie, who is not conservative, I'm not arguing that, she on certain issues is to
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the right of Doug Ford. I'm not saying she's even center right, but Doug Ford is so left on certain
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issues, Bonnie Crombie is in fact to his right. She criticizes some of the subsidies he makes as
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being obvious handouts to friends. She criticizes him for putting a box around John A. McDonald's
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statue on Queens Park and calls it unpatriotic. She's right. I don't like Bonnie Crombie, but that's
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just correct. It's ridiculous. She's even been calling out his drug practices because he's done
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nothing to shut down the injection sites and he's been in fact allowing more to be approved.
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She's actually called out his failed policies on crime, basically just blaming things on the federal
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government when he, with the OPP, actually does have enforcement powers and he's been sluggish on
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actually like addressing the issue of crime. Violent crime is like up 35% in Ontario since he took over.
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It's crazy. Anyways, that should be it for me today, guys. Again, reminder, please vote for the new blue
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party of Ontario. They might not have a candidate in your riding, in which case vote for basically any
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independent that's on the ballot. But if there is a new blue party of Ontario candidate, it doesn't
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matter if they can't win. Don't get sucked into the Stockholm syndrome argument that if we don't vote
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PC, the liberals could win. The PC party has to demonstrate it's different than the liberals and
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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
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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
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Canadian Alliance or the BC conservatives in the long run by them being able to get access to those
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funds. I don't like the per vote subsidy, but the Ontario PCs and the liberals and the NDP are going
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to take it. Why shouldn't the smaller party that's actually trying to combat corruption and bring
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conservatism back to Ontario take it too? Check the website for the new blue party. See what riding
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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.