Western Standard - April 01, 2025


MAXIMUM MADNESS： Making sense of the wild polls in this election with ＊THE＊ expert


Episode Stats

Length

25 minutes

Words per Minute

155.6432

Word Count

3,933

Sentence Count

167

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Just a few months ago, Pierre Trudeau and his Conservative Party were on track to win potentially the biggest majority government in Canadian history, surpassing those of even Brian Mulroney and John Diefenbaker. But since replacing Justin Trudeau with Mark Carney, the Liberals have risen like Lazarus from the grave to first place in most polls. Are the polls telling the truth? And which of those polls is the most credible?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is who Rod Loyola praised, Fidel Castro, a brutal communist dictator.
00:00:10.620 Now, Loyola's jumping ship from the radical NDP to run federally for Mark Carney's liberals.
00:00:18.960 Mark Carney, embracing hard-left radicals who celebrate anti-capitalist tyranny.
00:00:25.020 Which leads the critical mass to surpass the imbalance of the capitalists to the oppressed working class.
00:00:31.160 If this is Carney's team, imagine his Canada.
00:00:55.020 The polls are drunk right now.
00:01:03.120 Just a few months ago,
00:01:04.560 Pierre Polyev and his Conservative Party
00:01:06.220 were on track to win
00:01:07.280 potentially the biggest majority government
00:01:09.580 in Canadian history,
00:01:11.240 surpassing those of even Brian Mulroney
00:01:13.360 and John Diefenbaker.
00:01:15.120 But since swapping out Justin Trudeau for Mark Carney,
00:01:18.260 the Liberals have risen like Lazarus from the grave
00:01:21.220 to first place in most polls.
00:01:23.560 Are those polls telling the truth?
00:01:25.020 which of those polls is most credible? How would those polls break down on a riding-by-riding level
00:01:31.760 into actual seats in an election? I have ideas about most of this because I mostly just borrow
00:01:37.980 my opinions on the matter from the man who knows the most about it in Canada. Our guest today,
00:01:43.480 Monsieur Philippe J. Fournier. Monsieur Fournier is the founder and owner of 338Canada.com,
00:01:48.940 a polling aggregator and seat projection website that has a pretty good record.
00:01:53.860 Welcome, Mr. Fournier.
00:01:55.160 Thank you, Derek. Much appreciate that introduction.
00:01:58.980 All right. Well, the polls have just swung wildly since the Liberals swapped out Trudeau for Carney.
00:02:07.340 Parties have had big bumps before.
00:02:10.340 You know, Alison Redford for Jim Prentice, Brian Mulroney for Kim Campbell.
00:02:15.060 And sometimes it has not worked, but sometimes it has worked.
00:02:17.920 Like when Jason Kenney was swapped for Danielle Smith here in Alberta.
00:02:22.300 What's different this time is that Carney called an election immediately after becoming leader without giving people time to remember that they're still angry at the governing party.
00:02:33.780 My question to you is, is it working and can Mark Carney keep it up long enough for the rest of the campaign?
00:02:40.540 Well, this is a very good question.
00:02:42.340 We do not know the answer, but we can go with the indicators and with the data to see, to have a better idea of how the next four weeks could turn out.
00:02:54.880 Right now, there is no doubt that Mr. Carney is going through a honeymoon, which is not uncommon for new leaders.
00:03:02.840 But honeymoons don't always last very long.
00:03:06.240 The hope for the liberals and Mr. Carney is that it lasts long enough.
00:03:10.580 So, again, we have four more weeks to go.
00:03:14.100 But voting intentions are one indicator, one of many.
00:03:18.580 And when we look at the other indicators, such as preferred leaders, such as also the regional numbers, the mood of the country, they all seem to point towards a liberal recovery.
00:03:30.440 We don't know how long it would last, but it looks to be more solid every day we get into this campaign so far.
00:03:37.000 well i want to talk about that honeymoon uh and matt gurney the at the line called it a sugar high
00:03:45.080 i think that might be an apt term we'll we'll see but uh some polls are indicating the most are
00:03:51.300 indicating the liberals are riding high how high depends on what poll you're looking at
00:03:54.660 uh but a lot of the polls are showing that the vote isn't very solid you know that it is kind
00:03:59.980 of an artificial sugar high if you will uh and that it could like a sugar high crash as quickly 0.87
00:04:05.640 as it came on. How solid is the liberal vote right now? I know one of the indicators is how
00:04:13.260 likely are you to stick with your party or how firm are you in sticking with your choice? I think
00:04:19.120 most polls have showed the conservative vote is more solid, but the liberal vote is high overall,
00:04:24.200 but less solid. How soft is that kind of sugar high liberal vote right now?
00:04:29.500 I would say your description is correct, that the Conservative vote is far more committed, and I would say even enthusiastic, than other parties' vote.
00:04:41.440 However, Derek, this is not new.
00:04:44.240 We see this indicator at every recent elections, at least.
00:04:49.860 Conservatives in this country are very committed, they're committed to the cause, to the party.
00:04:53.580 And since Mr. Harper won in 06, the party never had below 32% in a general election, whereas we have seen the Liberals swing all the way down to 19% and swing all the way up to 39%, and now we see them in the low 40s right now.
00:05:11.480 So the Conservative voters are generally more faithful to their parties, whereas the Liberals and NDP clearly are not.
00:05:21.820 So how solid is this?
00:05:24.320 Well, I could answer your question by a question.
00:05:28.660 Is the NDP vote going to recover?
00:05:32.640 And if the answer is like, well, I'm sure Jack Mead Singh can turn this around, then the liberals are in trouble.
00:05:39.100 But if you look at Jack Mead Singh's campaign and think, oh, they're done, well, that's bad news for the conservatives.
00:05:47.580 Well, you've now forced me to switch around the order of my questions.
00:05:50.900 I'm going to go straight.
00:05:51.900 I had saved this one for the last, but we're going to have to go to it now.
00:05:56.080 I think that has been the big story.
00:05:58.580 I think it's getting somewhat overlooked in the media talk and the punditry around this campaign.
00:06:05.440 The conservative vote has come down a bit, but much more movement has been from the NDP to the liberals here.
00:06:16.080 Just that the NDP vote has melted down.
00:06:19.880 So, you know, I have you here in your capacity as a man who understands polling and analysis, not as a pundit.
00:06:27.260 It means it's a bit more meat when you talk about things than when I talk about things.
00:06:32.040 But in a strange way, do you think the NDP are wearing the legacy of the Trudeau liberals more than the Carney liberals?
00:06:42.220 Well, that's fair.
00:06:43.440 Although I am not certain that the NDP going down into single digits because this is what we see right now is as much because they supported Trudeau for almost two years.
00:06:59.380 Maybe some of it is, but here's what we have to remember.
00:07:04.220 Pierre Poilievre has had a permanent campaign since he became leader and has done quite well
00:07:11.320 doing so, took the lead in every region. Even though he's not leading in Quebec, he is pulling
00:07:17.220 higher in Quebec than Renaud O'Toole, than Andrew Scheer, and in some cases than the late stages of
00:07:22.800 Stephen Harper. So he's been doing his part. But it's always been the case in this country that the
00:07:30.560 anti-conservative vote is a bit higher than the conservative vote it's just that the entire
00:07:35.920 conservative vote is split and so you could see a majority with 38 37 or 39 rather with
00:07:43.200 stephen harper whereas you know for the liberals they really have to hope the ndp goes down to win
00:07:49.440 an election and we see those ingredients right now uh so the conservatives uh they cannot win
00:07:57.920 in this context right now with the NDP solo. In single digits, perhaps winning a handful of seats,
00:08:05.360 maybe a little more than that, if you're optimistic of their local MPs. But for the
00:08:11.440 Conservatives to be at 38%, my podcast partner Eric Grenier mentioned that the last time the
00:08:17.520 Conservatives had 37% in a general election and did not win, you have to go back one century.
00:08:25.280 So this is a normal right now.
00:08:27.600 When you when the conservatives have 38% of the vote, they win.
00:08:31.840 It's just that right now there seems to be, as you said, the sugar high
00:08:36.000 for the Liberals, that's keeping them afloat and keeping the NDP very low.
00:08:42.160 You know, your answers are forcing me to mix up the order of all my questions here.
00:08:47.160 Apologies.
00:08:47.600 So we know the Liberals, they're on the sugar high.
00:08:49.920 They're up in the polls.
00:08:50.880 but it is, as is pretty predictable, most strongly east of Saskatchewan
00:08:56.560 and in the less conservative-leaning regions of British Columbia.
00:09:02.120 You're an Easterner.
00:09:04.820 What is it that has Easterners viewing the political landscape 0.96
00:09:09.380 so differently than Westerners right now?
00:09:12.080 Besides, you know, the traditional, you know,
00:09:14.800 there are east-west divides politically.
00:09:16.860 There have been for over a century.
00:09:19.420 um but you know there was this moment and i i you know i would talk with conservative
00:09:25.180 leaning people in calgary here and you know and in the country and you know they'd always say oh
00:09:31.220 the eastern bastard's gonna screw us again i'd say you know i'd say well no the polls are pretty 0.96
00:09:36.220 strongly they they seem to be coming around at least this time to be voting similarly not as
00:09:43.560 strongly but similarly to people in alberta and saskatchewan and now they're running back
00:09:48.440 but Westerners
00:09:51.420 you know there's a few pockets at Edmonton
00:09:53.360 where perhaps a few Albertans have moved over
00:09:55.300 too but
00:09:55.860 what is it that's got Easterners 1.00
00:09:59.520 giving the liberals
00:10:01.100 another chance here the way that
00:10:03.320 people in Alberta and Saskatchewan
00:10:04.620 are just not giving them any
00:10:06.420 well I'm not sure I can
00:10:09.300 give you a very satisfactory
00:10:11.080 answer
00:10:13.160 Derek on this but I can
00:10:15.160 look at some numbers and say that
00:10:17.400 We in the East, in Ontario, in Quebec, in the Atlantic provinces, it's not like there's no conservative voters.
00:10:26.280 But as you very well know, there are many flavors of conservatives.
00:10:30.800 I mean, Doug Ford just won a third majority in a row in Ontario.
00:10:36.440 He calls himself a conservative.
00:10:38.420 Many of his voters call himself.
00:10:40.640 We don't call him a conservative out here.
00:10:42.940 Yes, in Ontario, he is considered one.
00:10:45.280 Yeah, so that's the thing.
00:10:46.940 And Francois Legault, the premier of Quebec, I mean, he would be, I mean, he's a nationalist
00:10:52.940 government, but compared to precedents in the province and in eastern Canada, he would be a
00:10:59.900 moderately PC leader if he wasn't for the CAQ. And of course, New Brunswick just switched red
00:11:06.780 in the fall, but the PEI and Nova Scotia just swung hard towards the progressive conservatives.
00:11:13.020 So there are many flavors of conservatives, and the fact that Western-style conservatives has not taken a strong foothold in those provinces, I'm not sure I can explain it.
00:11:27.060 I guess I'm aware it's a very different kind, very different kinds of flavors of conservatism. Even in Alberta, we've got our factions here. But my question is more towards, you know, why have Eastern conservative voters, at least in some numbers, or swing voters who are considering voting conservative, why are they willing to give the liberals a fourth chance here?
00:11:54.280 the way that Western conservative voters
00:11:57.940 are just not even really considering it?
00:12:01.480 Yeah, that's a good question.
00:12:03.160 I wish, again, I wish I had a good answer for you.
00:12:05.140 I'm just looking at the numbers,
00:12:06.260 but I would say this,
00:12:07.540 and you may disagree with it,
00:12:08.900 but there are a lot of voters,
00:12:11.260 again, that voted for Doug Ford,
00:12:13.320 that look at Mark Carney
00:12:14.680 and they see a progressive conservative,
00:12:19.040 a blue liberal,
00:12:20.440 a more centrist liberal than, for instance,
00:12:23.100 which was Justin Trudeau for a decade.
00:12:25.220 Is that conservative enough for many Westerners?
00:12:29.520 Probably not.
00:12:30.640 But Mr. Carney is running to the right of his recent predecessors of his party.
00:12:36.940 So the goal here is to make a big tent.
00:12:42.040 That's how you win elections, right?
00:12:43.840 And then you could say perhaps Mr. Poilievre has not built a tent wide enough.
00:12:50.400 uh i'm gonna put my theory to you uh okay that it's not there is a bit of policy i mean he's
00:12:58.880 jettisoned uh at least he says he's jettisoned the consumer carbon tax and then there's capital
00:13:05.020 gains he's uh and he's dropping some of the more extreme woke language at least in public uh so
00:13:11.020 you know there is some policy difference at least on the surface between carny liberals and trudeau
00:13:16.800 liberals. My theory has been more that, uh, he's less annoying than Justin Trudeau. Uh, there's,
00:13:26.220 there's, there's a term I've used on this show before, uh, a German word, Bechfeifengesicht,
00:13:30.980 which translates as a punchable face. Uh, you know, just when someone's got an annoying face
00:13:36.720 and you just don't like them because of the way they look and, you know, that a lot of people,
00:13:42.100 maybe they want liberalism they like the liberal party but they were just sick of his face is it
00:13:48.740 that you know eastern and you know bc lower mainland and island voters uh they actually
00:13:54.640 kind of liked the trudeau government's record and its policies but they just did like trudeau's face
00:14:01.520 and socks oh well in the last weeks of justin trudeau before he announced his resignation
00:14:08.680 his personal numbers were atrocious, and they were atrocious throughout the land, from coast to coast.
00:14:15.680 And those numbers were not coming from one or two firms.
00:14:20.180 There was a consensus that Monsieur Trudeau's time was done, and I do mean everywhere.
00:14:27.180 When you look at the personal numbers right now for Mark Carney, he seems to be hitting the right notes.
00:14:35.180 Again, he was prime minister for what, 10 days before he called the election.
00:14:39.020 So we do not know really what a Carnet government looks like,
00:14:45.180 but the early campaign so far and the early vibes and the numbers that we see.
00:14:50.580 Again, we look at the voting intentions, but you also look at personal numbers.
00:14:55.100 Monsieur Poiliev had strong numbers, but he was consistently compared with
00:15:00.120 Justin Trudeau. Now he's compared to the new flavor, the Mr.
00:15:04.120 Carney, who has, whether you like him or not, he has an impressive resume.
00:15:08.120 And for a lot of people, it resonates.
00:15:12.120 So you may have noticed, Derek, that Mr.
00:15:16.120 Poiliev, so far in the campaign, he's been in a better mood. He's been
00:15:20.120 smilier. And I'm not saying it's all about this, but
00:15:24.120 he spent the last two years as an attack dog in the House
00:15:28.120 commons and that works to a point at some point you have to run for the the role of prime minister
00:15:35.080 not the role of the uh official opposition leader uh well three months ago uh polyev was measuring
00:15:44.800 the drapes for the prime minister's office and today or today uh maybe he'd pull off a minority
00:15:50.780 government but that seems to be as the polls at least as they're locked in today there's a lot
00:15:54.960 campaign ahead campaigns change things but yeah you'd be lucky to pull off a minority
00:15:59.460 from the data you've analyzed where has polyev fallen short uh it's not all carny and liberal
00:16:07.380 magic here there's the other side of the equation where do you think uh polyev has fallen short in
00:16:14.000 his ability to connect with the times as we're in right now and uh going into april so if we go from
00:16:23.000 east to west the atlantic canada numbers that we saw in december those were also kind of a sugar
00:16:30.280 high they were abnormally high poiliev was doing better than at the height of stephen harper's
00:16:35.800 reign and so we had an idea that historically it would get a little tighter uh in quebec
00:16:43.160 poiliev has not moved you saw the numbers as i said poiliev and the conservatives have gone down
00:16:48.840 about seven points in the last two months, but in Quebec he's holding strong and he could win
00:16:54.440 12 to 15 seats, which is not nothing. But where it hurts the most, it's really Ontario.
00:17:02.200 When I crunched the numbers at some point, and I know it fluctuates, you know,
00:17:06.120 polls and projections fluctuate, but at some point I had 100 seats for the federal conservatives
00:17:12.920 in the province's 122 seats. That may have been a tad high, but even if you have 85 or 90,
00:17:22.280 that's still a huge tally that would have destroyed the Liberals. And now I have the
00:17:27.480 Conservatives more around 40 seats, basically identical score to the previous election.
00:17:33.720 So it's like all this progress that Mr. Poilievre has done since he became leader,
00:17:39.000 this permanent campaign this advertising campaign that worked so well against justain trudeau all
00:17:45.720 of this is just we're back to square one for the conservatives now if i was mr poeliev and his team
00:17:53.320 uh this is where i would put the most efforts and uh and resources because they are swing voters
00:17:59.560 this is the important thing those voters in the suburbs of toronto in the the gta i know it's a
00:18:04.920 classic but we'll say those gta there are 30 seats in the gta dog ford just won 28 of them
00:18:12.120 how come is poelyev projected right now to lose most of those this is where he has to improve
00:18:17.880 his numbers and if he does then watch out because you take seats directly from the liberal totals
00:18:24.360 into the conservative column i want to finish as i intended talking about the ndp because no one is
00:18:31.720 No one's talking about the NDP.
00:18:34.500 And I guess for fairly good reason, except the only reason to talk about them is what happened to them.
00:18:41.580 I cannot think of a single announcement.
00:18:45.140 Oh, no, I was going to say, I can't think of a single announcement that Singh has made this election,
00:18:49.960 except I do recall he said something about we're going to end corporate grocery stores.
00:18:54.580 So I'm not sure what he's planning on replacing Sobeys and Safeway with, you know,
00:18:59.860 some kind of commune vegetable farmer's market i'm not sure but uh i mean really just not landing
00:19:06.920 yeah uh if you were advising uh sing in the ndp campaign right now what do you think it is they
00:19:13.140 could do to get themselves i mean not in the race for the win that's yeah obviously wildly out of
00:19:19.380 the cards but to get them into the race to at least hold on to most of the seats they have right
00:19:24.020 now? What can they do to get in this race? I would advise them to look at what happened in 1.00
00:19:31.580 the Ontario election in February, where the NDP vote basically tanked everywhere, except where
00:19:38.860 there were already NDPs. They have to save the furniture. They have to have local campaigns,
00:19:47.960 put resources in a dozen or maybe 15 seats and just throw everything at them because the survival of the party is at stake.
00:19:56.660 They have to reach that 12 seat threshold to have more funding for research and for staff and stuff.
00:20:02.440 And right now they're short of this total in my projections.
00:20:06.040 So I would tell Mr. Singh, forget the national campaign or at least some of it.
00:20:12.920 Do local campaigns because there's a wave coming and it won't look good for you.
00:20:17.960 i'm going to close on a question i know you're not going to like i'll be surprised if you answer
00:20:25.680 but i have to try for your best guess and i know uh that you're going to start with an asterisk
00:20:32.500 saying well the polls are not how people are going to vote it's how they would vote if an
00:20:37.020 election was held you know within like the three days that the poll was taken i i get that but
00:20:42.600 there are trends there are indicators and it's not just how people say they're going to vote it's
00:20:46.400 it's on issues and personalities, things like that. Uh, if, if I put a gun to your head and
00:20:53.000 make you answer the question, I know you don't want to answer, what would be your best guess
00:20:57.300 based on the trend lines today about how the selection ends? Oh, you're asking me for a
00:21:02.500 prediction. Oh God. And I'm not going to hold you to it because, uh, I can have a prediction today
00:21:11.680 and i know there's a very high probability i'll be wrong so i you know you're not getting held to
00:21:16.560 this okay uh if i were to say anything else than a liberal win i would have to give you strong
00:21:25.200 reasons if i just go with the data which is what i do and i think that's what my readers expect of
00:21:31.360 me i will tell you that unless there's a big outside event or a major fumble like a major
00:21:39.120 fumble, not just somebody misspeaking, but just something major happening. The Liberals are headed
00:21:45.760 for a fourth win here. What gives me pause is that sometimes the Conservative vote is a bit
00:21:54.340 underestimated in the polls. I say a bit because usually in Canada, with rare exceptions like
00:22:00.840 Saskatchewan, we're talking about a point or two. And here a point or two more for the Conservatives
00:22:06.820 would not save them.
00:22:08.620 They would have to at least get
00:22:10.080 well within range of the liberal number
00:22:12.980 to say maybe we'll get a ballot box bonus.
00:22:17.240 But with a ballot box bonus
00:22:18.720 in the right places,
00:22:20.820 could the conservatives
00:22:21.600 reduce the liberal to a minority
00:22:23.940 or have the minority of their own?
00:22:25.760 It's possible.
00:22:27.000 But that's as far as I go.
00:22:28.800 If right now you're asking me
00:22:31.300 for what the landslide blue sky
00:22:34.000 with the data,
00:22:35.180 I'm going to say a liberal win.
00:22:36.820 you know that was a very good answer for a very difficult question that
00:22:42.800 thank you people would be very afraid of having thrown back at them uh i appreciate that uh mr
00:22:48.520 fournier thank you very much for uh joining today uh i appreciate your perspective and analysis i
00:22:53.920 hope we can call on you again at some point absolutely and thanks for this i appreciate
00:22:58.080 have a great campaign yeah oh and uh before i let you go where can uh people find you
00:23:02.620 338canada.com is the website where all the numbers 338canada.ca is my newsletter if you're
00:23:11.620 so inclined to uh to uh subscribe right and i strongly recommend people do this is uh
00:23:18.040 anything i'm saying is largely just doing my best impression of uh what miss uh monsieur fournier
00:23:23.200 does he uh he he knows his stuff a lot better than any of the talking heads like me uh thank
00:23:28.860 you very much for joining us today. Thank you. Merci beaucoup. All right. The sponsor of today's
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