Transcript
Annalise
0:02
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1068. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.
Corey
0:12
Well, it is a good evening. Okay, it is evening. Is it a good evening? It's an evening. Listen, my radish is sprouted. Is it good? My
Carter
0:19
How are your tomatoes
Carter
0:20
Listen, my prediction game has never been stronger either. I got three of nine on the AFL this week.
Corey
0:26
You're getting the bad predictions out of your system. You're ready for the election. Everybody screwed up the
Carter
0:31
the AFL this week. Like every underdog won.
Corey
0:33
won. Four underdogs won. It was crazy. It was nuts. Four underdogs won. I know. It really screwed up my picks too. It's really been the week of the underdog is
Carter
0:40
is what I'm trying to tell you, Corey.
Corey
0:42
Oh, that's interesting. Good. It's nice that you got a week all for yourself, Steve. Yeah.
Carter
0:47
Right? I mean, no
Carter
0:48
no one more underdog than us middle-aged white guys, right? He just nailed us right there.
Corey
0:55
there. You know what really hurt me to my core Is you included me in that Because you know what age you are right now Middle
Corey
1:03
Yeah man I'm nearing old But I was feeling young yesterday I was at the Surge game Everybody
Corey
1:11
in Che loves the Surge I was at the Fuse Box Which is our nickname for the arena
Corey
1:16
We in Che that's what we call
Corey
1:19
That's what we call the
Corey
1:21
The Fuse Box It
Annalise
1:21
It was good it was popping
Corey
1:23
there with my kids
Annalise
1:24
Yeah, they had a good time. They enjoyed it.
Corey
1:25
My youngest kid, not
Corey
1:28
not the most Keaton sports fan. He really enjoyed chanting defense, but for both teams. So, you know, he was often trying to shut down the surge as well, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Annalise
1:39
say. You know what
Annalise
1:39
noticed? All of the strategists were there but you, Stephen Carter. Yeah, I was noticing. I was there. Zane was there. And our babies actually met yesterday.
Carter
1:47
Well, that's exciting. That is fantastic. It was exciting. Real exciting.
Carter
1:51
Corey, you and Annalise were like texting back and forth. You know, you asked me where I was and I was, of course, in the bathroom. But you guys were texting back and forth. Zane was also included in that chat. Didn't respond once. Didn't
Carter
2:06
Didn't engage. Didn't even acknowledge
Carter
2:07
acknowledge it. It wasn't until there was a photograph of Zane and his wife and a child that we even knew that he was there. Because he was like in a box and he was like, fuck you commoners. You
Corey
2:16
You know what's the best part about that? The best part about that is I was like six rows behind Zane. But
Annalise
2:22
But Zane was on the court. You were not on the court.
Corey
2:25
He was on the court. And he just, you know, he wouldn't even turn around. I saw a few times when I texted him, he'd pick up his phone to look at it. And then he'd just put it back. It was the most unbelievable
Carter
2:37
unbelievable power play I've ever seen from the guy. It
Corey
2:39
It was amazing. It was unreal.
Carter
2:41
like, no, fuck you. I'm not even acknowledging
Corey
2:44
He's a big deal. That's what somebody on a central campaign does two days before an election. He
Carter
2:49
He has no time for us callers. That's for sure. Absolutely. And his court
Annalise
2:55
Unwinding. Yeah, with his baby. Guys, we've got things to talk about other than sports. Do you want to talk about whether
Carter
3:02
children should be allowed in council meetings? That sounds like right
Carter
3:05
right up your alley.
Annalise
3:07
Why would we want to talk about that right now?
Carter
3:09
Well, that's quite a throwback.
Carter
3:11
With ages ago. I want to make you happy. Okay.
Carter
3:14
Maybe you've changed my position.
Carter
3:16
oh okay i haven't have you have you no i
Carter
3:19
i have not okay no okay i was just teasing you a little there annalise that was teasing yeah
Annalise
3:23
yeah that that was a that was a real throwback uh
Annalise
3:26
guys let's let's jump into it enough small talk um e day eve today is e day eve a month ago
Annalise
3:35
you two one of you compared um rit drop eve to new year's eve so
Annalise
3:40
so tell me 28 days have gone by
Annalise
3:43
election day is tomorrow what does e-day eve feel like when you're on a campaign if if rit drop eve is new year's eve what is e-day eve well
Carter
3:52
e-day e-day eve is just um you
Carter
3:57
know it's the night before christmas really except it's not the night before christmas when you're a child it's the night before christmas when you're a parent right
Corey
4:05
right fucking nailed it and
Carter
4:07
and you're the parent and you've got to you've got to take all
Carter
4:09
all you know you you got to make sure the turkey's ready you got to make sure all the gifts are wrapped you haven't done you know uncle fred's coming over uncle fred's fucking drunk you don't like uncle fred he's coming over he's gonna you know there's gonna be all kinds of fucking havoc you're you're just upset about it your spouse who hates uncle fred also hates aunt janine aunt janine's coming over too you got janine you got fred everybody's on edge everybody's just barking at each other you don't feel like you're ever going to sleep again you're trying to set up the kid's toy and the kid's toy keeps fucking breaking and you're thinking to yourself why how did i get myself into this situation i was single for so long it was so good i didn't have to host fuck all that's what that person is that that's what election eve is like did i get it okay cory yeah
Corey
4:57
yeah you did well i i think the other thing is there's those moments where you're just waiting so
Corey
5:02
so waiting for your kids to go to bed so you can start wrapping the presents putting them under the trees unless you're a kid listening to this in which case Santa Claus is real and
Corey
5:11
and we don't want the magic to die
Carter
5:13
die yeah Annalise, Santa Claus is real why are
Annalise
5:16
are you being so nice to the kids right now after last episode well we
Carter
5:20
we got some feedback
Carter
5:23
we got some feedback
Corey
5:25
apparently Stephen's choice words for the kids
Annalise
5:29
it's not nice when you call 14 year olds oh there you go again um okay so that's that's what it feels like how do you like
Annalise
5:41
so you have a lot to do on no either is that like nervous it's like a
Corey
5:47
a lot of stuff is about to happen feeling and there's a bunch of stuff that you've got to remember but mostly it's remembering things you've got to do later right and there's actually not a ton to do at that particular moment so you're sitting around and you're you're
Corey
6:01
you're kind of just taking stock of things you know the funny thing is steven and i were talking a little bit earlier on the phone about this upcoming recording and this episode and steven said fuck
Corey
6:12
fuck i don't want to do this episode because this is the strategist we like to talk strategy but the tank feels almost dry like i feel like we're going to be the pundits tonight and what i said to him and what i believe is yeah but that's actually 100 accurate to the role of being a strategist the night before an election you are unpacking it you are second guessing yourself but you're not doing anything because there's nothing left to do so you're shooting the shit and
Corey
6:36
and uh in 2012 when steven was running the conservative kit the pc campaign and i was running the liberal campaign we
Corey
6:43
we literally were exchanging emails like not on the same campaign on the day of the election just being like what are you hearing what are you hearing here's what i'm hearing because
Corey
6:52
because it doesn't fucking matter anymore it's done what this thing is we talked a week ago about the cake being in the oven and you could still fuck up the cake you
Corey
6:59
you almost can't fuck up the cake at this cooling on the counter over it's
Corey
7:05
if you don't put your bare ass in it you're gonna have even
Carter
7:08
even then it's still gonna be okay having done that twice exactly yeah
Carter
7:12
yeah i mean it's not once but twice
Annalise
7:14
twice cardi well you
Carter
7:16
you know the the first time is an experiment the second time is a perversion you know so thank
Corey
7:24
you were going to say the first time was an accident but no
Carter
7:27
no it's an experiment
Annalise
7:28
okay well then let's let's do what uh and you kind of just hit on it cory but let's do what you kind of do on a central campaign on the day before or the day of e-day let's uh put on your pundits hat let's dissect stuff let's talk about stuff and uh we've got some audience questions too i didn't even actually ask the audience for questions no uh someone someone did using
Annalise
7:55
using twitter so that
Annalise
7:58
that was bizarre um so i don't where where do we want to where do we want to start do we want to start with predictions or do you want to dissect the last 28 days to
Carter
8:08
to bring in the bring in the stuff that's happening this weekend first and then we can like what let's talk about advance and then we'll get into predictions like there has to be something for us to base our
Corey
8:17
carter is trying to put off predictions as long as humanly
Annalise
8:21
doing predictions tonight yeah that's fine no
Corey
8:24
no it's fine we always
Carter
8:25
always answer the questions you ask as evidenced by last
Carter
8:28
no worries yeah you
Annalise
8:29
you never do okay
Annalise
8:31
okay let's start with advanced vote numbers uh what do they mean so 2023 758 550 2019 696 000 so a nine percent increase but cory i know you've got some population stats
Corey
8:47
yeah well the overall population of the province grew by i think about six percent i don't have it in front of me six
Corey
8:53
point i don't know yeah i don't know what the voting population grew by but i guess what i would say is it looks like it's just almost linear like Like, it's just tracking within a reasonable margin to what the turnout percent going to advance polls who went in 2019. But let's be really clear. 2019 was the high watermark for voter turnout in this province since 1982. It was 67% of the vote. It was a significant amount of turnout. So if we're even just on track for that, that's still a pretty well-turned-out election in Alberta. I mean, I can certainly remember many
Corey
9:26
many when I was younger, being
Corey
9:28
being a middle-aged man like like Stephen, where
Corey
9:30
where turnout was in the 40s, 45%,
Corey
9:33
45%, 47%. And so it's no doubt, like
Corey
9:38
like this is a big number. It's
Corey
9:40
It's not a ton bigger than last time, but that doesn't mean it's not a big number.
Carter
9:44
No, I mean, I think that I expected it to grow more. I mean, Elections Alberta had indicated that they were
Carter
9:50
were preparing for 50% of the electorate to come out in advance. We've done everything that we can. It's easier to vote this election than it was in the last election. Um, so we, we have huge advanced voter turnout, uh, as Corey's indicated, but I'm, I'm thinking that might be a
Carter
10:08
a higher percentage of the overall voter turnout. And that's something that I'm going to be watching tomorrow
Carter
10:13
tomorrow is, you know, do another million people vote or do another 800,000 people vote? Uh, because if
Carter
10:20
if it's a million, then we get another 1.8 million person
Carter
10:23
person voting exercise. That's, that's big. Anything million or higher is interesting. Anything 800,000 or lower, also very interesting because the turnout will have dropped considerably. The numbers between 800 and a million, I mean, I think you're, I
Carter
10:39
I mean, who knows then because all hell's going to break loose as we move along. long. But because
Carter
10:43
because Elections Alberta was so convinced that they were going to see 50% of the electorate vote in advance, it has sparked my interest to see what percentage it actually is. Is it 40%,
Carter
10:59
I'd be shocked if it was over 50%. That would mean a significant drop. But,
Carter
11:05
you know, somewhere between 40, 45 could get really interesting.
Corey
11:09
well and and will it what does it mean one of the things that i think there's
Corey
11:13
there's something i feel but steven i'm curious what your your observations are too and maybe you've got a little better sense of how the data has unfolded in the past few years but it used to be when advanced polling was more of a privilege it's something that not everybody did it was only a couple of days and you had to go to that one station in your in your writing you know everybody with like an excuse
Corey
11:37
it often skewed conservative right right you you sort of expected that conservative voters would use the advance polls and so when the advance came in unless you had a campaign like i remember uh darshan kang in 2012 right where just like huge waves of voters came in because he pushed people to the advance polls you generally expected advance to be a
Corey
11:57
a little conservative but
Corey
11:58
but over the past decade what's happened is it's become increasingly perceived as uh avenue for for progressive votes. That kind of makes sense. As you loosen it up, all of a sudden you have people whose jobs don't necessarily lend them to just being able to go and vote whenever they want on a random Monday. So they're picking a different day, or maybe they've got family obligations they've got to take care of, you know, people you traditionally think of as more progressive voters. But on top of that, when we threw COVID-19 in the middle, there was this discourse in the United States, which I think has somewhat permeated into Canada, that,
Corey
12:30
that, you know, advanced polling is for liberals or if you're a conservative more negatively there's something nefarious about advanced polling and you want to show up on election day because that's when you know your vote's going to be counted right you don't have to worry about those voting machines and all of that not huge but i still think it's floating out there and so when we talk about how big the advanced poll is relative to the day of vote 10
Corey
12:53
10 years ago that would probably mean something different than it means today but right now it probably means if the advanced vote is bigger than the day of vote vote advantage
Carter
13:02
Well, and let's break it apart a little bit that would prove this a little bit more than just kind of the hypothesis. We
Carter
13:08
We know that in Calgary, the advance vote is somewhere, well, I'm not going to count Calgary Cross, Calgary East, some of the Northeast ridings, they still have relatively low voter turnout in the advance polls, four and five, six percent. But in the more populous ridings, or the more voter turnout ridings, the ridings where we expect to see higher voter turnout. We're seeing voter turnout in 10,000, 12,000 votes, almost 50% of the total number of expected votes. Some places are as high.
Annalise
13:38
In the advanced polls,
Carter
13:39
polls, you're saying. In the advanced polls right now,
Carter
13:40
now, some of the ridings have up to 14,000, 15,000 votes already cast in those specific ridings. What is that telling us? It's telling, and let's compare that to rural.
Carter
13:51
Rural is seeing 3,000 and 4,000 votes. So if we go and say, okay, okay, the rural vote is probably more conservative. I
Corey
13:59
we can accept that.
Carter
13:59
that. I think that we can accept that as a truism. Then we know that the conservative vote isn't necessarily voting in the same percentage. What the expectation for me now is, because we're going to see the vote count on tomorrow night, it's going to come in advance polls first.
Carter
14:17
We may see a situation, and if we don't see this, this will be the very first key that we're in for a bad night for the NDP. we
Carter
14:24
may see a situation where 50 to 55 seats are immediately ndp and it looks like it's going to be a significant
Carter
14:32
a significant ndp uh breakthrough uh and then as the election day vote comes in you're going to start to see you know things kind of chopping down and the question will be how far will they chop down right so expect that tomorrow we we do know well what
Carter
14:50
what i have been told by people people in both camps is that the advance poll uh is skewing to the ndp especially
Carter
14:58
especially in calgary so
Carter
14:59
so i will expect to see that big jump if we don't see it then it's going to be very clear in
Carter
15:04
in that first five minutes you know and at least when we're sitting at the national the national on 10th uh where your company is not buying everybody drinks uh to start with why
Corey
15:15
why did you just wink are they actually buying them i don't
Corey
15:17
know now i think that might
Carter
15:19
might have just been my sphincter uh
Annalise
15:23
yeah so tomorrow night carter and i will be sitting beside each other at national at eight
Carter
15:28
eight o'clock and people will come down and 805 it might be over because the ndp would be ahead in four ridings after the advance in which case you know i think that free drinks will be on annalise's champion company i mean if that goes that bad fine
Corey
15:41
fine because everyone will leave right away because everybody will
Carter
15:44
will just go home and cry um but that's that's the very first number that that I'm going to be looking for, because that is going to be indicative. And we now know so much more. Okay, Carter,
Carter
15:55
over the place. What is the
Annalise
15:56
the first number you will be looking for? Just in
Annalise
15:58
in like a one sentence. It's the number of ridings that
Carter
16:00
NDP is in. Everybody else got this, Annalise. I need you to keep up, okay? The number of ridings, the number of ridings that the NDP is ahead in, after the advance vote. After
Carter
16:13
After the advance vote. We'll be looking at about 55, and we'll know right away, because the advance votes are being done by the tabulators.
Corey
16:22
Yeah, certainly my expectation as well. It was something we were talking about in the rehearsals at CBC today. Oh yeah, Corey, tell us where you'll be tomorrow night.
Corey
16:30
you can be anywhere and you can hang out with me, unlike these two elitists who are
Annalise
16:35
dragging you to a bar.
Annalise
16:36
bar. With real people, yeah. Or you can be home alone listening to the radio, listening to Corey. You
Carter
16:42
You know what, I'm kind of leaning towards that myself right now.
Annalise
16:46
carter's gonna be in the bathroom all night bathroom on
Corey
16:50
on his radio that's great no
Corey
16:52
no i i think that's what steven said is right we don't necessarily know with 100 certainty that the advanced boat's gonna have that kind of ndp skew but both camps expect it and so if it doesn't come in with that ndp skew you
Corey
17:07
you know i think both camps will be reading into it and that's going to be one of our first early signs here and
Corey
17:13
and we'll We'll have to see.
Annalise
17:14
Okay, well, now that we're talking about our plans for tomorrow, what else will you be looking for tomorrow in addition to those advanced vote numbers? Well,
Carter
17:21
Well, I mean, there's these great big swing areas, right? So we had Stephen Harper show up yesterday in Calgary Acadia and Calgary Pagan. Now, I don't think any of us had Pagan on our dance sheet before we started this week, really. But Pagan has suddenly showed up on a number of dance sheets. and i think that pagan is starting to become more uh more
Carter
17:45
play we started to see like the former mla from fish creek is now door knocking in pagan uh stephen harper showed up in pagan there's a lot more social media about pagan the leaders have both been to pagan you know all of the all of the things we've talked about a number of different episodes are showing that pagan may be in play now it
Carter
18:04
it may not be probably isn't but if you start to see big shifts in pagan then
Carter
18:09
then you know so pagan acadia glenmore northwest foothills edgemont
Carter
18:17
um east all of those ones in calgary if you start to see any of them switch back to blue or go blue after those advanced poles come in orange then it's going to be a longer harder path
Carter
18:29
path and they of course the four ridings in the in the donut um which again i still think is a horseshoe but lou has now threaten physical violence if we refer to it as such he's on edge cory he's on edge um so we well you know just
Annalise
18:43
just just pull a cory and call it a made-up name and repeat it all the time and put it on merch carter just do that oh yeah this
Corey
18:50
this is about the fuse box i said
Corey
18:52
the fuse box because i think it's going to catch on crescent heights east
Annalise
18:55
east is what it's about cory well
Corey
18:56
well we call it che no one calls it we've sold
Carter
18:59
sold multiple t-shirts um we
Corey
19:02
we have sold two guys
Corey
19:03
guys guys we've sold more More than a few Jay T-shirts. I
Carter
19:07
I just want you to know that. That means three.
Annalise
19:11
More than a few, at least.
Annalise
19:13
Sorry, Carter, I interrupted you there. You were talking about the donut. I've got to be honest with you.
Annalise
19:18
You were talking about the donut.
Carter
19:19
I'm just going to turn my camera off here for a second and mute myself. No reason. Where's the camera? There it is. Hang on. Okay, I'll be back in a second.
Corey
19:29
Honestly, he actually did mute himself, so I don't know if he's coming back or not. but um
Carter
19:35
what are you looking for tomorrow it was just gas it was just gas it was touch and go i'm not gonna lie to you i didn't even think i should have done that it was fine why did you okay
Corey
19:44
what am i looking for um oh god i don't want to see anything ever again after that display steven um what am i looking for i'm i my bellwethers remain the same like listen pagan could be very interesting because if i see that going ndp in a way that seems solid and real it sort of feels like solid
Carter
20:05
what we're calling my bowel movements by the way
Corey
20:12
necessary um just walk again goes though
Corey
20:17
then i think that it's going to be a pretty good night for the ndp but i still think the true bellwethers the true tipping points are probably Calgary Glenmore and Calgary Acadia and
Corey
20:26
if Calgary Glenmore and Acadia go NDP or
Corey
20:29
maintain an NDP lead even as the UCP vote comes in if the advance vote does turn out the way we think well
Corey
20:36
well then I think that the balance of probabilities is it's an NDP government I my thinking hasn't really fundamentally changed on that although I do wonder if we've all been so hyper fixated on Calgary we are forgetting getting about how the math being this close means you
Corey
20:52
need to win in both lethbridges not just one of them you need to win those seats in uh the horseshoe as steven likes to call it outside of edmonton i call it the donut lou take it up with steven i like donut personally but
Corey
21:05
but you know the places like lesser slave lake the places like bath kananaskis the places that are not a gimme
Corey
21:12
but are possibilities you do want to be competitive in them as well uh because it's it's a tough it's It's a tough road to walk for the NDP, but Glenmore and Acadia, those are my two bellwethers. Well,
Carter
21:22
Well, and again, though, Banff, Kananaskis, we saw Danielle Smith spend two days up there in the last three. Well,
Corey
21:29
it's a beautiful country. I mean,
Carter
21:30
mean, it's fantastic. Why wouldn't you want to go up there? Well, we didn't go bike riding today. We went yesterday, but it was fantastic.
Annalise
21:37
I saw a picture of you on a bike today wearing a fedora. Yeah,
Carter
21:40
Yeah, we went and got some gardening things. This is who I am now, apparently. I garden. Old
Annalise
21:47
Okay, let's, I mean, both of you have kind of said a couple, let's talk about polling. Let's talk about polling right now, because that is a big thing that people on the internet are talking about.
Annalise
22:00
And I guess what
Annalise
22:03
what are your, pundit
Annalise
22:05
pundit hats, what are your thoughts on where we're at with polling right now, Carter? I
Carter
22:09
mean, top line numbers are never. So if political professionals rely less on top line numbers than anybody else in politics. Right. So pollsters rely on top lines. Journalists rely on top lines. They just, you know, you know, who else? The prognosticators rely on top lines and then they plug them all into their into their little models and they come up with anticipated results. But ridings don't necessarily perform in lockstep with top lines. Top lines and ridings are very, very different. I will remind people in 2012, not exactly zero pollsters got this. None of them predicted a PC majority government. And we came in with 63 seats. Is this 2012? Maybe not. We
Carter
23:00
We haven't seen as much shifting. But what I can tell you is
Carter
23:03
is that the ridings, when you start to poke in at some of the numbers underneath it,
Carter
23:09
visible minorities, which we talked about last time. You see women. Janet Brown's poll had women one point apart for
Carter
23:15
for NDP and UCP. No other poll, no other poll that has been produced has that kind of element. element
Carter
23:22
element now some may say you
Carter
23:25
you can't look at the components of these polls and project you know and say that they're well you know this is the statistical reality but
Carter
23:33
but if the components don't make sense oftentimes
Carter
23:35
oftentimes the actual top lines don't make sense and i will use poor keto maggie as an example the
Carter
23:41
the components of his poll in 2017 were
Carter
23:46
they were wrong you're
Carter
23:48
about from From municipal. From municipal. When people looked at them, they said, this does not make sense. And you know what? Turns out he was wrong, right?
Carter
23:57
The components in this particular campaign tell
Carter
24:00
tell a different story than
Carter
24:02
than the story that is being told by the top lines, especially
Carter
24:04
especially in Calgary. I'm going to go with Mark Henry's poll. I think that his oversampling of Calgary of 1,000 plus people, dividing it up by quadrant, reflect more of the racial diversity of Calgary and also reflected some of the trends
Carter
24:20
trends and strengths that we are seeing on the ground far better than the other polls have that have been released this week that have gotten more attention. And there's also something, and Corey may be able to speak to this a little bit more, but it's kind of a move back to the mean that occurs with pollsters where you'll start to see some divergence from them and then they will start to as the election date gets closer all of a sudden all come up with the same numbers and that's kind of a protection
Carter
24:50
protection in my mind that they do when they look at their polls and they say is this feasible and
Carter
24:56
and though they make sure that they're they're
Carter
24:58
they're waiting in the construction of the poll they
Carter
25:01
they look at it really carefully they don't manipulate it but they look at it very carefully to make sure that their numbers aren't out of lockstep with everybody everybody else's yeah
Corey
25:11
well you know it is an interest the phenomenon steven's talking about is called hurting and it is noted that pollsters will often find themselves reporting similar results to everybody else because there is a bit of game theory in being a pollster right and if you're the one person that's way out there yeah there's the chance that you can look like a genius the only one who called the election but
Corey
25:30
but there's a risk you look like the lunatic who was out there and every other pollster saw the thing you didn't see and a lot of pollsters make their living on
Corey
25:39
hired for all sorts of other things that require accuracy whether it be kind of consumer issues or public affairs issues for corporations so there's there's risk and there's anxiety there and and it can be disputed how much hurting is an issue in any given campaign i will say no pollster is going to like being told that they're accused of hurting that's
Corey
25:59
that's that's considered pretty poor form in polling but if they are all looking at what everybody else is doing they're looking at how things are weighted you can see because of requirements in elections how campaign polls are being constructed and it could be things like we waited women this much as part of the composition and this much of them had to be from calgary and ultimately if every pollster decides to wait the same way odds are good they're going to end up in the same place but that doesn't mean they're necessarily waiting in the way that is most reflective of of
Corey
26:30
of i guess i want to say the the truth, but that's not quite right. I mean, that
Corey
26:34
that your choice of weights can really change your insights into an election. And the example I'll give you is in the United States, they wait on race a lot. We never do that in Canada. That's just not something that happens in Canada.
Corey
26:46
But they do it because in the United States, race is more of a determinant of how you vote.
Corey
26:52
Here, less so historically, right? But if imagine all of a sudden here in Canada, you've got a situation where race does become that determinant. And there are some reasons reasons to believe it might be based on the polling that exists right now between racialized Canadians supporting the NDP two to one over, you know, white Canadians. So it's possible that nobody's doing anything wrong, but by everybody choosing the same weighting and approaching things the same way, they're all getting the wrong result. That is possible. I don't think that's probable. I want to be very clear on that, but it is certainly possible.
Annalise
27:27
What about internal polling? We've had a couple audience questions about kind of internal polling versus public polling and how much better, Carter?
Annalise
27:37
Well, internal polling is
Annalise
27:39
How much better? So
Carter
27:40
So much better, because what you're doing is you're going to pick a couple of bellwether ridings, and you're going to do a three-day rolling poll. So
Carter
27:45
So Janet Brown's poll is an excellent example. Janet polled over, I believe it was 10 days in this last one, And she polled approximately 100 people per night. That would be what we would do in a rolling poll, right? Maybe we'd actually do 300. We'd actually have a larger sample and do 300 per night. And what we're going to see is we're going to see averages moving, right? Because we're taking day one, two, and three on the third day and averaging them and seeing a movement. And then we're taking two, three, and four. And then three,
Carter
28:14
three, four, five. Because each day shifts along. And you can start to see trends that emerge that are different. Because Janet
Carter
28:22
Janet is using a 10-day structure, she's
Carter
28:25
she's got the numbers from the beginning that may be fundamentally different than the numbers at the end, and
Carter
28:30
and she is putting
Carter
28:32
putting them all together in
Carter
28:33
in one pool of numbers. So we're doing rolling polls. The other thing that internal polls do is they take bellwether writings and they will do bellwether writings and they will do spot polls in those bellwether writings of two, three, 400 people. Not necessarily to get the plus or minus 3% that you're looking for in a publicly released poll, but
Carter
28:56
but in a way to just double
Carter
28:59
how you actually think you're performing in that writing. So you're getting a bunch of data. So polling is only one of your data tools when you're actually doing a campaign. You've got polling data. You've got door knocking data. You've got voter contact data. You've got Internet sign up data. All these different types of data are then compared to the poll.
Carter
29:20
are we seeing the same type of shifting? My polling numbers, you know, I've seen a five point increase since the last time we
Carter
29:27
we did a spot check in Calgary Glenmore.
Carter
29:31
how is that related to our actual on the ground efforts? And, you know, when I talk to the professionals in the campaigns, I'm asking them things like, did
Carter
29:40
did you get a full sample of data? Did you get the full community? Did you leave out seniors? Did you leave out the Jewish community? Did you leave out this you know did you leave out um you
Carter
29:50
you know one particular geographic region that does not fit into your model all
Carter
29:55
all of that you
Carter
29:56
you know you if you do a thousand person poll you're going to get um
Carter
30:01
um the top line but you're going to miss all that specific data that you get when you dig in on the you
Carter
30:09
know from the campaign's point of view well
Corey
30:12
well look carter said the magic word and the magic word in this case was model and in 2008 one of the things that the barack obama campaign was very famous for was reducing their reliance on polling and going more to a modeling based approach to these things and what that meant was as they were going out and identifying voters that were voting for barack obama they were running ab tests meaning they were putting people through various different samples you know some people might get one set of things some people another set of things things, including contacts with various people. And they looked at how people reacted relative to expectations. And they looked at what actions had effect relative to other actions. And this was all bolstered by polling.
Corey
30:53
And one of the things that a campaign has that a pollster does not have is this big data solution available to them where they can say, I have 20,000 data points in Calgary, Glenmore. Of the 50,000 people who live in Calgary, Glenmore, I know something about about 20
Corey
31:07
20 000 of them and
Corey
31:09
and there's a few things you can do with that information first you can just look at the ids and you can say well that's way more ids than we got votes last time and we expect 50 of them to vote and that's still more than we expected so we're exceeding it and that goes into the model and that feeds a few things the other thing you can do is you can use that polling to then call some of the people that you've identified and you can determine how solid your ids are right Is 95% of what you're identifying actually true NDP vote if you're the NDP, or if you're the UCP, UCP vote? And that allows you to have another picture as well, because we've talked a lot about this in different contexts, but I often talk about a model of polling called accessibility, viability, intent. intent and
Corey
31:53
we we ask about who would you consider voting for and who do you think is going to win as well as intent when you're a professional political pollster because we know people
Corey
32:03
people lie intent lies to you sometimes and sometimes people put their intent in a way that they don't actually plan to leave their
Corey
32:10
their vote at the end of the day so we see that whenever you see the alberta liberal party in a poll getting five percent no they're fucking not there's not even candidates for that And I guarantee you at the end of the day, they're going to push their votes somewhere else. And by asking about viability and accessibility as well, you get a sense of like, who do you think could win? That's going to determine part of where votes go to. Who would you consider voting for? That's going to define the universe that votes can go to. So by having kind of, you
Corey
32:38
you know, you might have intent as a campaign, I guess I'm saying, where somebody says, I'm going to vote for
Corey
32:43
for Kerry Cundall in Elbow, right?
Corey
32:46
right? But with all of your other data points, you might understand, no, they're not. You know, they're going to say they are, but at the end of the day, when the rubber hits the road, they're going to vote NDP. Very
Corey
32:55
Very possible if you're a campaign, a
Corey
32:58
a little less realistic if you're a pollster. okay
Annalise
33:02
more thing on the internals then we can talk broader polling um cory audience question about internals in 2012
Corey
33:10
yeah that's a super interesting question so as
Corey
33:13
as the liberals we didn't have a ton of i don't think we necessarily had any internal polling in that last week although certainly like
Corey
33:21
like there's internal polls to the campaign there are people you know and organizations you know who are always polling people have interest in campaigns that are not necessarily going to share that information broadly but you hear things when you work in this industry when you have connections uh certainly we were hearing at the time that there was a late switch back to the pcs would it be enough we didn't know but we had heard a little bit about that and i know from the
Corey
33:46
the decade since talking to steven their last polling well
Corey
33:51
well i don't yes steven talker yeah you talk about Oh, me?
Annalise
33:56
that campaign. Stephen Carter, internals, 2012. Yeah,
Carter
33:59
Yeah, I mean, the internals
Carter
34:01
internals in 2012 were markedly different than the public. First of all, we saw shifting way earlier than anybody else started to see shifting. We knew that the public polling was off because of who they were sampling and how things were coming together. Keep in mind that reasons
Carter
34:20
reasons or rationale for voting were shifting dramatically. You were originally voting to get rid of the PC government. That was your modus operandi. That's why you were voting that way, to go to the wild rose. And then we started to see a significant shift where people were now voting to, you
Carter
34:37
you know, prevent Danielle Smith from becoming premier.
Carter
34:43
it shifts the intention, right? So we go back to Corey's, you know, what is the intent? The way that you choose to vote dictates how committed you are to that vote. vote. David Coletto, and he put forth a theory very early in this campaign about reluctant UCP voters. That matched the data that I was producing, that matched the data that the people that I work with were producing. There was a lot of people who did not want to vote for the UCP. That hasn't changed. But how do they identify when they're actually asked who they're going to vote for? Right? What's the next question? How committed are you to your vote? We're not seeing any of that shit coming out in the public polling right now if
Carter
35:24
our theories are correct about advanced polls more people went to the polls for the ndp early
Carter
35:32
what's going to happen tomorrow if
Carter
35:34
if we see big numbers high commitment if we see lower numbers low commitment we
Carter
35:38
we are only going because we don't have access now to the polling that we should have access to you
Carter
35:44
you know like the numbers that i'm getting from the from my friends in the various campaigns tell
Carter
35:48
tell me that the UCP vote, less committed, the NDP vote, more committed. And the best news for the NDP, the best news for the NDP is that the recent polls do nothing but undermine the
Carter
36:03
the commitment to the UCP voter. The reluctant UCP voter is going to be going, I
Carter
36:08
I don't need to fucking vote for Danielle Smith. My conscience is clear. I
Carter
36:12
I don't need to go to the polls tomorrow.
Carter
36:14
They've got it. They're going to win by 54, 53 seats. Perfect. I don't need need to sully myself with casting a vote for for that person and that's where we're really going to see the rubber hit the road the internals tell us that story that's what they told us in 2015 uh or 2012 and i suspect that's what they're going to tell us uh in this particular election when when the campaign professionals are able to start telling their stories yeah
Corey
36:42
yeah i gotta say like internal campaign polls in my experience are much more sophisticated in terms of determining who likely voters are. And the questions you would have to ask, it was ever evolving. It's like anything else in this space. Something works for a while and then it doesn't and you have to switch it out. But it would be, you don't ask, are you planning to vote? Because everyone knows they're supposed to vote. So
Corey
37:04
So everyone says, yeah, I'm going to vote. Or at least far more people claim they're going to vote than actually show up to vote. Instead, you ask questions like, do you know where you vote? And
Corey
37:12
And if the answer is no, well, guess what? If it's two days before for an election and you don't know where you're going to vote you're probably not fucking voting right
Corey
37:20
right because we do know that having a plan to vote is a big determinant of whether you show up and vote it's part of why you've probably seen if you have engaged with either of these campaigns in any material way they're texting you saying hey make a plan to vote they want you to kind of put in your mind and your calendar where you're going to vote when you're going to vote how you're going to vote and and so campaigns have more of that information and have a better sense of who's actually going to show up on that day i did want to say though before we jump off this because yes 2012 was a big polling mess but
Corey
37:51
but there was a real come to jesus moment in the polling industry overall around that time this this was an era that i will call the end of the easy probabilistic poll so for a while you had really rigorous pollsters who would go in and they would use live callers and they would get you know if they didn't get a hold of you right away they would try 10 more times effectively what janet brown does still to this day right although you know with cell phones and whatnot and it's really truly saying i randomly pick numbers now i'm randomly going to try to get people there and if that's done perfectly you don't even need to wait things right because you've just got a probabilistic sample but what happened in the 2000s is ivr became very cheap and a lot of very low quality pollsters came around and all of a sudden the high quality ones even had to deal with these low quality ones undercutting them so everybody kind kind of wrecked their standard a bit and started doing things quick and dirty because it seemed to work okay.
Corey
38:44
And you saw through 2008 to 2012 in the United States as well, with the rise of the Tea Party, a number of other things people didn't necessarily see. Polling kind of broke. And in 2012 in Alberta, polling was pretty broken. But there has been a bit of a return to that higher quality standard for some pollsters. There's been increased weight, use of weighting and and understanding of how missing certain demographics can entirely break things, and that if you're going to do that lower quality thing, you've got to do a little bit of weighting because you're not going to get that probabilistic sample the way you used to be able to do it, and polling got better. And we haven't had a truly horrific polling miss on the provincial level since then, and I want to put that on the table because I think a lot of people are also searching for serious amounts of hope where there's maybe modest amounts of hope in terms of the numbers.
Carter
39:33
numbers. You know, you often talk about 2015 and how we were seeing, and we certainly talked about the NDP winning that election and the pollsters being unwilling or unable to understand their own polls. And, you know, as a direct result, they didn't make necessarily the polling miss, but they made the interpretation miss. That's one of the things that I struggle
Carter
39:56
pollsters today. They are making enormous interpretation misses. You know, I don't
Carter
40:04
don't like picking on Janet because Janet's a good friend. And, you know,
Carter
40:07
know, I think the world of her and I think the world of her polling structures. But I
Carter
40:11
I just, you know, she's out there saying that it's the NDP doing too much negative polling that's costing them this election.
Carter
40:21
right? Yeah, sorry. That's exactly
Annalise
40:23
exactly what I said, right?
Carter
40:24
right? You said negative polling. Yeah, well, okay. Well, you
Annalise
40:27
you know what I meant. Polling,
Annalise
40:27
Polling, polling, polling. So thank you.
Annalise
40:29
you. um but because i'm here for it just to interpret what you're saying carter well thank you it's
Annalise
40:35
it's a load of shit it's
Carter
40:37
it's an absolute load of shit there's absolutely no evidence because i'll tell you something i'm not sure if you guys are aware the
Carter
40:42
the ucp have been fairly negative in this campaign have you have you seen some of that stuff i
Corey
40:46
might have seen one or two one or two ads
Carter
40:50
no one's running around saying that that's potentially costing them a late election like Like, if
Carter
40:54
if you don't know, like, don't
Carter
40:56
don't talk about what you don't know about. There
Carter
40:58
There you go. I'll leave it there.
Annalise
41:00
Both words from Stephen Carter. Okay. On
Annalise
41:04
On that note, 41 minutes in predictions. It's time. Can we
Carter
41:08
we talk about something else?
Annalise
41:13
stomach. We got to do predictions and then there's other things. I mean, you can change this tomorrow when we're discussing it at the National on 10th. But right
Annalise
41:23
right now, what are you feeling? What's your prediction? Well,
Carter
41:26
Well, Corey early on said that it was going to be 45 to 42. And I'm still there. Actually, I may have gone up to 46 to 41, just so I could be different than Corey. And my view is that it's
Carter
41:40
For who? For the NDP. You think 46 to 41 for the NDP? Yeah, let me walk you through my reasoning. I keep jugging in on the donut. So, you know, and I got pretty good sources on the donut. it they're talking to me quite a bit about uh you
Carter
41:54
know about the various riding various areas and for certain the ndp is going to lose um three of them uh although i
Carter
42:04
shouldn't say for certain there's still a little bit of hope in fort saskatchewan uh but realistically i think that that's that's just uh hopeful hopefulness
Carter
42:13
hopefulness because their campaign their candidate's very strong and and they don't want to lose her. Nonetheless, I think that that's where, you know, Lethbridge, no one's gone to Lethbridge. Why has no one gone to Lethbridge? Because it's pretty much wrapped up. Why has no one gone, you know, Banff-Kananaskis at the very end? Because it's at risk. I think that from what we're seeing from the behaviors, it's an NDP victory with 45 seats, which is basically where I've been from the beginning.
Annalise
42:42
You keep changing it. Is it 45 or 46? Yeah, 46. 46,
Carter
42:44
46, 45, 45 seats with 46 seats on Thursdays. Corey, what
Annalise
42:52
what is whatever type of prediction you want to give us? Hang on, I'm just going to turn off my camera and my
Corey
43:01
Yeah, so here's my thing. I will eventually get to an answer here, but it's going to sound for a minute like I'm desperately trying to avoid giving an answer. And I guess maybe I am a little bit. it at this point the polls pretty much all tell a singular story of ucp victory and nine
Corey
43:17
nine elections out of ten that's enough for me right you you say okay well there
Corey
43:21
there it is and it actually takes a certain amount of discipline to just say there it is and people do have an awful lot of ability to find reasons why it won't be the case and nine times out of ten those people are going to be wrong i was saying on twitter the other day it's kind of like that scene in anchorman
Corey
43:37
which i believe was a sequel of the movie dave where uh yeah you know there's the the character who says like oh you know those those rating systems are flawed they don't take into account it houses with more than two televisions and things of that nature yeah if you go into the polls the way steven did you're gonna find something wonky in basically every poll where you're gonna go like i don't know about that gender gap i really is that what you're seeing When you look at that particular demographic, 18 to 24 year olds are all of a sudden voting easy. I don't think so. But the whole point is, if you take it as a whole, mostly
Corey
44:12
mostly those things cancel each other out, right? Like that's the probabilistic nature of this whole game. You know, big numbers, they tend to be pretty precise. Small numbers, wildly imprecise. That's polling, folks. That's the reality. So you're going to find some things that you don't like underneath the top lines. That's the case.
Corey
44:29
but it is really hard for me to set aside everything
Corey
44:34
everything else you know like the cautious optimism that's leaking out of the ndp campaign in all sorts of ways the the anxiety from people who don't know each other in ucp campaigns locally who are kind of texting randomly being like i don't know man this doesn't feel that great for us what are you hearing you know x thinks we're doing really well but i'm less sure about this and you know there's there's an anxiousness that's just sort of there. And when I think about what I know the NDP are doing, which is being incredibly targeted saying, yeah,
Corey
45:04
yeah, we're not trying to win all the Southwest Calgary. Here's the three ridings we care about in Southwest Calgary, or, you know, the way that they are galvanizing an already galvanized base. I
Corey
45:15
I think you do have some of the components where if on Tuesday, we wake up to an NDP government, who's
Corey
45:20
who's actually going to be that surprised, right? I mean, We will clearly say the signs we're there, including the literal fucking signs, if
Corey
45:28
if it comes to this NDP government winning it on Monday.
Corey
45:32
I'm going to leave my prediction where I started it, 45 for the NDP, 42 for the UCP, because
Corey
45:40
because I don't have a fucking clue, and I might as well stick with what I came in then, because there's just no point in ping-ponging around on these things.
Annalise
45:47
You guys, you're matching. You have the same predictions. Well,
Carter
45:49
Well, what we've done is we've
Carter
45:49
we've herded our results. Yeah, we have
Carter
45:52
turned it on. Oh, shit. I'm okay, by the way. I
Carter
45:57
I came back, turned the camera back on, unmuted myself.
Corey
46:03
should also note that Stephen is kind of notorious for
Corey
46:08
being wrong when he predicts these things. Now, in fairness, I
Carter
46:10
I think that that's actually significantly overblown.
Carter
46:15
I may have missed on Jeb Bush a smidgen.
Carter
46:20
a smidgen on Bush but I think we were all caught off guard by the rise of Trump
Corey
46:27
don't know about that I
Carter
46:31
don't want to talk about you and you being right that's very uncomfortable for me makes
Corey
46:36
makes you upset I understand you
Annalise
46:37
you guys have put your predictions on the table both of you have the same 45 to 42 yeah we heard
Corey
46:43
heard it I like
Annalise
46:44
like that Carter's might be 46 Yeah.
Annalise
46:46
I'm claiming victory in this 46
Carter
46:48
46 is what I'm saying.
Annalise
46:50
I know you. I know that's what you're doing. Obviously, there will be a lot of time in the days after. There will be a lot of debriefing and analyzing and all that. But if it's the case and it's that close and it's the closest election in Alberta's history, what do you think that means for Albertans?
Carter
47:12
Well, I mean, the simple answer is that the polarization is real. One of the things that ECOS came out with, Frank Graves, was a very interesting kind of look at misinformation. And misinformation was guiding a large percentage of the UCP voters, whereas it was exactly inverted for the NDP. we are as is happening in the united states and and uh even elsewhere in canada we are moving more and more towards a polarized society with two different realities and it's not that we look at the same facts necessarily and draw different conclusions it's that we're looking at different facts right so because we're looking at different fact sets it allows our values to be markedly different where in the past we've seen kind of our values come uh
Carter
47:56
uh closer to the center right So
Carter
47:58
that polarization is problematic, and it would be problematic if it was a small number, but it's a big number. It's a lot of people that are falling
Carter
48:09
falling prey, falling victim, open
Carter
48:14
open to—I don't know which words to use. Corey will be more eloquent, perhaps. But being open to this type of rhetoric, it
Carter
48:23
is defining of our political tribalism.
Carter
48:32
it's disconcerting. So hopefully we are able to figure
Carter
48:37
figure out some sort of antidote, but Corey has
Carter
48:42
has indicated in previous conversations that, you know, with the rise of social media and such that we're not necessarily in a place where we have the antidote. And it's been tricky. So why don't I throw it over to him much in the same way
Annalise
48:55
way he threw it over to me. Be more
Annalise
48:57
more eloquent. But I guess both ways, too. Like your predictions, obviously, both of you are predicting NDP win. But either way, if it goes either way, and you're looking at three, four, five seats difference, like, we've
Annalise
49:08
we've never experienced something like that in Alberta. So what does that look like? What does that mean?
Corey
49:14
yeah carter's point about the the overall fabric of society is a huge one and it's one that we do need to come back to regularly for a very long time and we need to think about it in very active ways how we how we deal with this problem in a generational sense so kids are not falling for this when they become adults and they're voting because i do fundamentally believe this is going to require shifts in education shifts in the ways we approach these things from birth effectively but i want to take a little bit more of an optimistic view here and that's that win
Corey
49:47
win or lose the ndp have made it a competitive election yet again and alberta continues to
Corey
49:53
to defy i think that view of what alberta was just 10 short years ago this notion that it's just a conservative place and on the off chance it wasn't going to be conservative it was going to be even more more conservative. But here we are with the NDP, maybe
Corey
50:08
maybe 45% of the vote, maybe 50% of the vote, maybe more. But that, I
Corey
50:13
I think that tells you a story about Alberta that shouldn't be glossed over. And I firmly believe as much as Danielle Smith might be a historically intriguing
Corey
50:23
intriguing candidate that presents opportunities for the NDP. You said bad
Carter
50:29
historically. historically yeah it
Corey
50:31
it presents some opportunities for the ndp that might not have been there otherwise the
Corey
50:37
the reality is the economy is doing really well in alberta the macro conditions lend themselves to a government being re-elected this should
Corey
50:44
should have been a cakewalk for a government in a similar position whether they're in alberta ontario as it was the case with doug ford bc governments with these kinds of macro conditions win and
Corey
50:55
and the ndp have made it competitive and yeah Yeah, Daniel Smith, big assist in that. But it's not hard for me to imagine four years from now, different economic situation, different leaders, still
Corey
51:06
still this being a competitive place. And I think one of the really exciting things for me as an Albertan is
Corey
51:12
is that this is now a place where we can say things like the craziest thing in politics is going to happen. Boy, it's always competitive. Boy, it's always interesting. You know, I did election
Corey
51:24
election night in 2015. I
Corey
51:26
I was on the CBC panel. and
Corey
51:28
and i said at the time
Annalise
51:29
time on tv or on radio cory on
Corey
51:31
on tv yeah it was a better it was a better time for me i was younger yeah i had more hair i think that was part of it um
Corey
51:38
i said at the time that alberta had shifted from being a democracy in theory to a democracy in practice and we are living that practice
Carter
51:47
right now wow we
Corey
51:48
we are now in a democracy yeah
Annalise
51:50
yeah it's a really
Corey
51:54
look here we are um i am 41 years old and i was well into my 30s before i saw a change of government in my lifetime now
Corey
52:04
now we're seeing like one
Corey
52:06
one every four years right now it feels like you know to the ndp to the ucp maybe back to the ndp my kids are growing up in competitive times and i'm excited by that and i think that we should all be excited by that it's a much healthier your democracy in many substantive serious ways we
Annalise
52:22
need applause right there uh
Annalise
52:24
uh just just to underscore your point cory um something i saw today that was interesting in 2012 the ndp got five percent of the votes in calgary um
Annalise
52:33
um and in 2015 they got 34 percent in calgary so that number in calgary tomorrow the fact that 10 years ago it was five percent is um is wild um in terms of what next is there any other things you want to speculate on or predict or say or we'll save that all for after monday i'd like to
Carter
52:54
to i'd like to put something on the table because one of the questions you know we saw jim prentice resign uh basically the night that he he didn't win the government well
Corey
53:03
well it was the night that he didn't win the government
Carter
53:04
government he walked up to the microphone and was like he's in the newsroom
Annalise
53:06
newsroom that night the
Carter
53:07
the fuck out of here and he was gone um i
Carter
53:11
i don't expect that from the leaders uh from either
Carter
53:15
maybe danielle if she loses because she knows that her fate will be sealed but if you're if you're rachel notley and you're looking at this uh ucp the words that we've heard going around the ucp is that they're going to go to civil war with themselves and that's going to happen regardless if it's a win or a loss and six months from now when danielle smith has to face uh a leadership review even when she even though she had won the the election. I don't expect her to win that leadership review. And then if she doesn't win that leadership review, I expect a further right candidate from David Parker's Take Back Alberta to
Carter
53:53
come in. And then maybe, maybe, I'm just throwing it out there because we haven't seen any indication of this, but
Carter
53:59
but maybe at that point, a couple of the conservative MLAs develop a backbone, conscience, sense of right or wrong, or something along those lines and may have to to stand outside of it. And
Carter
54:10
And if we're if Courtney and I are wrong on our 4542, you know, 42 for the NDP, we're
Carter
54:15
we're probably not that wrong on 4542. We're probably not that far off on how big the margin of victory is. And we can be back doing this within a year. And so if you're Rachel Notley, that
Carter
54:30
that might be another opportunity for her to lead into the next election. When, you
Carter
54:35
you know, traditional traditional intelligence would be you know get out get out quickly um that may not be the case given the uh
Carter
54:44
uh the the the nature of of the uh of the problem here in alberta to
Corey
54:52
no i i don't i think that he's right about what could happen in terms of a total collapse and us being back in an election in a year but
Corey
55:01
but realistically well rachel notley certainly has the ability to stay on as long as she wants she has you talked about the percent from four to five percent to 34 percent to potentially closing in on 50 in calgary i guess we'll see tomorrow like
Corey
55:16
like she has the authority to do it but
Corey
55:18
but um you know realistically would you want to stick around if you were her for yet another kick on the can i think more about like what she might want to do and she'll have to make that decision herself i'm sure her party will support her either way because of what she's done for them and what she's created but i i certainly i guess what i would say is if i were the ndp i wouldn't count on rachel notley to save me right
Corey
55:39
right if the ndp don't lose they've got to be thinking about their future in a more long-term sense too and what it's going to take to be competitive for the long term yeah lou
Carter
55:47
lou lou if you're listening lou don't
Carter
55:49
don't don't listen to cory okay listen to me the province is at stake thank you okay i have to put in all these We're going to
Annalise
56:00
move into our lightning round, our rapid-fire E-Day Eve lightning round. So I'm going to ask you some rapid-fire questions. You can answer them.
Carter
56:10
on 10th Avenue at 8
Corey
56:14
CBC Radio 1, anywhere in the province of Alberta. Stephen
Annalise
56:17
Stephen Carter, will this be the closest election in Alberta's history? Yes.
Corey
56:26
yeah i think so i'm scanning back through them all i guess the answer is yes depends on what you count as close like as close in seats i think so yeah
Corey
56:35
if you're talking about like the number of votes to potentially flip it to a different outcome no
Annalise
56:39
um okay what was the best ad you saw during the campaign cory i
Corey
56:45
think it was the ndp ad that they've been closing out with where it had like these stickers flying onto the screen of various views of danielle smith that ultimately became the picture of danielle smith that
Corey
56:57
that said when somebody tells you who they are believe
Corey
57:00
believe them and then used her own words i
Corey
57:02
i think that um that
Corey
57:04
that had the ability to both bring in it's
Corey
57:07
it's clearly danielle smith seeing it plus a whole swath of uh you know of not even charges like things that she said in a rather rapid fire format when you think about what the ndp
Carter
57:22
ndp are trying the ucp's brochures where they've been uh just picking apart rachel notley and coming after her with the made-up stories um you know 185 000 jobs lost making it about the economy they've been really they've been really focused on their print game at least uh if not necessarily uh some of their other stuff interesting
Corey
57:41
interesting yeah well i was gonna ask they've been much more disciplined
Corey
57:45
disciplined on on that kind of stuff yeah
Annalise
57:47
um i was gonna say best mailer but you just kind of said it i really like that arena mailer cory do you have a favorite mailer
Carter
57:55
mailer i did not like i loved it i
Annalise
57:57
loved it because they said literally one month before it went out this is not an election thing and then they sent a mailer about it cory do you have a favorite mailer
Carter
58:06
mailer that's interesting i
Annalise
58:08
not believe when you when
Corey
58:09
when you like cory this
Carter
58:12
is it cory i is it a floating naivete or is it a stock is it kind of what
Annalise
58:17
what was your favorite mailer
Corey
58:19
my favorite that's a tough one because Because I've only seen the mailers that have, A, two things make that tough for me. One is I'm not in a swing riding. I live in Calgary, Mountain View. I live in the community of Che. Nobody thinks that Che is going anything but NDP. Nobody thinks Mountain View is going anything but NDP. So campaigns aren't generally bombarding us on either side, right? The other is I have a community mailbox. So it's very easy for me just to eliminate that kind of stuff before I even see it. So all I've seen is what's come through the, you know, the Twittersphere, what I've seen online that people have posted. And yeah, I actually do think that the UCP has
Corey
58:58
has generally been quite consistent on their message. They've done a good job of framing things on the economy, their attacks on the NDP or economic attacks. It's very on message with where I think the UCP needs to be.
Corey
59:13
But yeah, with the heavy proviso, I have not seen a lot of it, to be frank.
Annalise
59:18
Okay, what about worst ads or mailers? Does one stick out as being the worst that you've seen?
Carter
59:23
Elections Alberta, where they said you needed to bring your ID to the polling station. If you didn't have ID,
Carter
59:30
you couldn't vote. I think that that was
Annalise
59:31
was probably the- Not true. I know, but that was
Carter
59:33
was the worst mailer that I saw this campaign. Yeah,
Annalise
59:37
Yeah, you're saying it was bad because
Annalise
59:39
it was not true.
Carter
59:40
Well, because you just can't make up new rules. You are supposed to, especially if you like Elections Alberta, you're supposed to follow the rules that were constructed for you. And being called out by Andrew Leach every day doesn't really, you know, bolster confidence in the organization.
Annalise
59:55
Corey, do you have a word?
Annalise
59:56
The signs on Deerfoot. Oh,
Corey
59:59
I want to say those, like, so the vouching and attestation ability to vote is part of it. So even if you don't have photo ID, you can go with somebody in your poll and you can vote. You can do an attestation. You can vote. There are ways to vote. it is still generally easier with photo id so by all means if you have photo id go and vote but go and vote like don't be dissuaded i think actually my concern with elections alberta the id thing was annoying to me but the one that really bothered me was this implication that you should register to vote in advance and yes that no doubt makes it easier for the the whole system and everything smoother on election day you can show up as long as you meet the eligibility requirements you can just show up and you can vote and i can't imagine you're listening to this podcast and you don't already know that but
Corey
1:00:45
but try to spread the word make
Corey
1:00:46
make sure people know that they should exercise their their franchise here it's really really important in terms of ads that i think are not
Corey
1:00:55
not so great the ad that i continue to think was i really really didn't like and and they did drop it and i guess i can sort of understand the strategy they were doing but was the ucp ads just before the writ dropped that were all about health care that were these big conversations and commitments to health care the the one in particular of uh danielle smith and her team walking zombie like towards the camera uh saying hey you're never gonna have to pay for these things but in in a way that kind of raised the charge i think was just fundamentally not well thought out and i would imagine that some uh you know tall strategy forehead somewhere said we're gonna do this before the election we're gonna inoculate ourself then we're only gonna talk about the economy going going forward so maybe it was their plan i still don't think it was a good one i really didn't like that ad okay
Annalise
1:01:43
uh what about endorsement what's your favorite endorsement god you
Annalise
1:01:47
you got to pick one carter do
Carter
1:01:49
to pick my favorite yes
Annalise
1:01:50
yes you have to a sliding round rapid fire you must answer
Carter
1:01:53
favorite endorsement cory endorsed my capacity uh to run a campaign cory
Carter
1:01:58
cory what's your favorite endorsement uh
Corey
1:02:03
i believe that the best endorsement as much as we say endorsements didn't matter was uh uh
Corey
1:02:09
uh was stephen harper and i'm cribbing a little bit from jeremy farkas on this one and so i'm going to give full credit here but where conservatives may have had problems with danielle smith and said i just don't know if i can trust her she seems really out there having somebody that a lot of the conservative establishment perceives as fairly mainstream and
Corey
1:02:28
and saying yeah don't worry about it it's actually fine it's still mainstream enough that matters now i think
Corey
1:02:33
think a lot of us can have different views of stephen harper and particularly particularly his post-prime ministerial career and his involvement in foreign elections and, you know, his, you know, his, his good autocratic friends in various regions. But I think for the average voter, he's still Stephen Harper, middle of the road prime minister, a guy who looked like he was like from a British drama about a Canadian government, you know, like, it's just like, he just was like kind of this boring state looking guy. And I think that boring and state is exactly what the ucp need okay
Annalise
1:03:04
okay uh what about our live show remember that one two months ago when carter had that really long powerpoint and you guys both had strategies for the for cory you did ucp carter you did ndp is
Annalise
1:03:15
there anything in your um your strategy i mean you guys know them inside and out you spent hours and hours working on them is there anything in your strategy you wish the campaign either campaign like would have would have listened to and would have done over the past past 28 days oh
Carter
1:03:33
don't know tried to win maybe um what
Carter
1:03:40
oh what did i say i
Corey
1:03:43
don't even know who you're throwing that at right now i
Carter
1:03:45
i here's my problem i don't think that the ndp used every tool in their toolkit i
Carter
1:03:51
i think that they they did go exceptionally negative on on the uh on
Carter
1:03:55
on the ucp and on daniel smith and i'm not sure that they pulled everything out that they could have, I still think that, you know, I was really focused on individual accountability for their campaign. I still think that they are disconnected from what's actually happening on the ground. And that just brings me a little bit of concern. Now, I do think they did a better job than maybe I was worried about.
Corey
1:04:21
Yeah. Well, when I think about the advice that I gave to the UCP, honestly i think it holds up pretty well they probably didn't do as much of a job or as clear of a job as i would have recommended to them about tying um you know all of the unpopular actions they have had to take to that ndp term certainly they said an awful lot about how bad they perceived 2015 to 2019 to be but for me that missing piece of the argument was to say and that's That's why we had to do all of that shit you didn't like with health care, with education. And I think that was an important part of the argument that they didn't put on the table as strongly as they should have.
Carter
1:05:05
Oh, the arena, for sure. I'm really a big fan. I think that that's really going to do some great stuff.
Annalise
1:05:12
Corey, your favorite campaign promise?
Corey
1:05:15
It's not my personal. not like the thing that I as a voter would be most intrigued by. But I think the best campaign promise was the first one that Danielle Smith made, which was offering to reduce income taxes for huge swaths of Albertans. Just gave a foundation for so much of that economic conversation that the UCP have tried to seed.
Annalise
1:05:36
Okay, Carter does not look happy about that answer. It
Corey
1:05:40
It would have been a good one for the NDP. Like a version of it. I think like if I were the NDP, I would would have lowered at the low end and maybe even raised at the higher end and said, yeah, let's do this. Let's have the UCP argue for lower taxes for people over $150,000. Brought in, you know, really weakened the UCP on some of those economic things.
Annalise
1:05:59
Kate, what about biggest surprise of the campaign?
Corey
1:06:05
Yeah, it's easy for me. The ethics commissioner report, I did not think we were going to see it when we saw it. And I guess I will say that the next biggest surprise was how little anybody seem to fucking care about that i still think that is an enormous deal that we had an ethics commissioner condemn
Corey
1:06:21
condemn the actions of a premier calling them you know calling actions like that democratic threat to democracy a threat to democracy unbelievable
Carter
1:06:30
and the fact that um you know the
Carter
1:06:33
the ndp just kind of walked past it in the debate i mean i get you i get that the debate was locked i get that it was it's going to be tricky to open it back up again but
Carter
1:06:44
there's some low-hanging fruit in life and sometimes you just got to take the low-hanging fruit
Annalise
1:06:49
uh best laugh what's your like what's something that was
Carter
1:06:52
was really funny oh no
Annalise
1:06:54
no no that was funny during the campaign um best laugh i
Carter
1:06:59
haven't laughed for about three weeks um it's a little tricky uh cory you got anything no
Corey
1:07:08
no you know we're missing that one great moment moment like uh in 2012 with danielle smith's bus with the unfortunate placement of the wheels the boob bus it was called
Annalise
1:07:20
called if you're not
Corey
1:07:20
not familiar with this you should google it yeah
Annalise
1:07:22
yeah look that up
Corey
1:07:24
i'd probably have to look back on it that's not something i've been sitting tracking being like oh that's a new best laugh right but there were funny moments there were weird moments that made me chuckle but uh i can't think of any standouts right now okay
Annalise
1:07:35
okay last question so
Carter
1:07:37
so it's been tricky you've
Annalise
1:07:39
been in tears and in the bathroom carter last question what time do you think we will know results tomorrow like
Corey
1:07:51
don't know when it's gonna be called i'm still confused
Carter
1:07:53
confused on how it all works to be honest so they're hand counting tomorrow is
Carter
1:07:57
is that it doesn't
Carter
1:07:58
doesn't even make sense i'm
Corey
1:07:59
i'm a little confused as well like my understanding is so the advanced ones are all gonna come in pretty instantly but then there is kind of the old school way that's got to go through for some of this here why did
Annalise
1:08:10
one method one day do we think the first outlet calls it first
Carter
1:08:14
first outlet calls it at 9 14 and
Carter
1:08:17
and it's incorrect because the first outlet to call it will be the western standard this
Annalise
1:08:25
time like i like that answer
Corey
1:08:27
lot that's really good cory
Annalise
1:08:28
cory what's what's your answer or when does the first alec call it well
Corey
1:08:32
well i just said i think it's going to be close and so if i'm going to be consistent with that i think we're waiting up i think it's 10 45 oh
Carter
1:08:39
oh my god i'm planning to be a long night
Annalise
1:08:42
for you on the radio there cory
Corey
1:08:47
that's okay i can carry it there's
Corey
1:08:49
there's some other people there too but i can i can carry it don't worry about me guys
Carter
1:08:53
guys can i let
Carter
1:08:53
you guys in on a little bit of what's happening here at shea carter uh behind the scenes i
Carter
1:08:59
i was was rushing to get into the computer and i did not bring my water with me and as you guys would imagine i'm a little dehydrated because of what's going on so
Carter
1:09:07
so i have been texting heather i have texted heather i bet you 15 messages i
Carter
1:09:13
i forgot my water could you bring me cup i'm dying here water please barely able to speak throat is constricting please god water water what lips Lips cracking. How many responses do you think I've gotten from her?
Carter
1:09:28
Zero. Where is she? What is she doing? I can hear her in the fucking house. She's here somewhere. I'm
Carter
1:09:35
I'm sure the dogs needed attention or something like that. The dogs ran out of water or something.
Annalise
1:09:43
Carter. Any of those times you turned off your camera, you could have just ran out. No, I can't because the static electricity
Carter
1:09:48
kills the microphone. Corey knows it. It's a whole thing. Okay.
Annalise
1:09:55
okay guys tomorrow is that it that is that those are all of my rapid fire questions
Carter
1:10:00
questions just take a moment uh carter and i will see some people at national and if not they'll listen to cory on the radio the energy is spectacular annalise i think i just
Corey
1:10:12
just feel like i'm in a robert altman film now he was the director of dave if you need to look him up yeah
Annalise
1:10:18
okay i'll have to do that uh We're going to leave it
Annalise
1:10:21
Are we? Cool. Yeah, I think so. We're going to leave it there. Boy,
Corey
1:10:25
Boy, this is our strongest ending ever, I think. That's a wrap
Annalise
1:10:27
wrap on episode 1068 of The Strategist. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil. Can I get some water? With you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.
Carter
1:10:40
Jeb Bush needs to survive this primary and compete in a general. Jeb Bush is not surviving this primary. He's totally surviving this primary. Mark it down on your calendar, okay? Okay, Stephen Carter said today,
Carter
1:10:51
Bush is the guy.