Episode 945: Election Award Show Spectacular

Zain 0:01

Live from the famous Calgary, Alberta, the cultural capital of Canada and the Yeehaw capital of the world, the strategist podcast election awards special.

Zain 0:11

My name is Zain Velji and with me as always on the red carpet, Corey Hogan and Stephen Carter. Guys, what is going on? The

Carter 0:19

The paparazzi just took my picture. Of

Zain 0:22

course they did. Pretty excited. Excited! Every year on Emmy night, we of course compete with our own election award special. Now you might be asking, Zane, there usually are not elections at the time. Doesn't matter and it doesn't faze us. This is actually the only time we have done it in our run where an election is happening. And Corey, what alignment between the award show, the federal election coming to to a conclusion uh and of course the moon well

Corey 0:52

well of 20 years of podcasts we've been waiting for this opportunity and i'm just so glad to see it finally take shape here chester

Carter 0:59

chester always wanted it but he could never make it work and you did zane so way to go bud way to step here's the thing

Zain 1:04

thing you just keep going and the calendar eventually works for you uh what an exciting show we have guys uh We are going to cover off some of the best, some of the worst of election 44. So many things to talk about. But guys, let's just move it on to our first category, because we're not about long intros. I am the host of this show. I am also the host of the award show. We didn't have money for the outside budget

Zain 1:29

we had. We had pled every single year. We hire Chris Rock and he sits there saying, what awards am I supposed to give out? There's no election. And we just ran out of funds. And now he's got COVID. Now he's got COVID.

Zain 1:41

he has COVID. This

Corey 1:43

This is a reminder that correlation is not causation, but still very interesting coincidence, I think. I'm

Carter 1:48

I'm just really pleased that the budget was cut and we don't have to do the musical number, because Corey and I, the rehearsal was not going well. It's not going well at all.

Zain 1:56

You guys had really given up on the musical number, I have to say. It was looking grim. Alrighty, our first category, Corey,

Zain 2:04

Corey, Stephen, how do we want to make this work? Maybe we should talk about that. No,

Carter 2:09

no, it's just fucking go. Go, baby. Here's

Zain 2:11

Here's how it works. I will read out the nominees. You guys will pick the winners, of course, if there is some discussion on the winners, if there's a controversy between the two of you, we can certainly hash it out there on in. Our first category for the Strategist Podcast Election Award Special is

Zain 2:34

The Worst Dropping of the Writ. And your nominees are Justin

Zain 2:49

Eric Grenier of LaunchingTheWrit.ca. Also does count.

Zain 2:57

the first category of Worst Dropping of the Writ, Corey, who do you pick for

Zain 3:03

for Worst Dropping of the Writ? Are we going to pick Justin Trudeau? Are we going to pick Mary Simon? She was just into the job. She didn't know what she was doing. Are we going to be blaming Julie Payette? How dare she? Or

Zain 3:13

Or are we going to be focusing this on Eric Grenier and his dropping of the writ.ca? Corey, who is it for you? Well,

Corey 3:19

Well, I think I'm going to have to – the pedant in me wants to go with Mary Simon, but I'm going to go with Justin Trudeau. It was in many ways the story of this election, that there was no story for this election and that the prime minister could never figure out how to articulate a reason that we were all going through 36 days of pure fucking torture as we've been doing. And so, you know, that's my pick. I'm curious to see if there's a conflict here with Carter. carter stephen

Zain 3:46

stephen carter always a contrarian justin trudeau mary simon julie paillette or eric grenier i

Carter 3:53

can see how the simpleton across the way from me here has chosen uh you know justin trudeau but i don't know how winning an election makes it a bad call anyways uh oh i think carter already

Carter 4:04

already hey already everybody wanted

Corey 4:07

the liberals to win tomorrow no

Carter 4:08

no the the actual winner for the worst worst uh dropping of the writ is actually cory uh for appearing on that stinker the writ podcast with eric grenier so that's why

Carter 4:26

no it was it was trudeau

Zain 4:30

done carter nicely done cory we have we have got uh clearly agreement uh cory we clearly don't know what's going to happen tomorrow it is hobbled him we'll discuss it later on uh unsurprising perhaps to both of you justin trudeau is nominated multiple times across across multiple categories tonight. I think he's going to come

Corey 4:48

come home a big winner. Yeah,

Zain 4:49

Yeah, the awards are not very consistent in terms of best or worst. You get the same award. The output is the same. So Justin Trudeau will be taking up a lot of trophies tonight, Corey. We just have to figure out exactly the net balance of those. Anything more to discuss, or should I move it on to our next one?

Carter 5:07

Oh, let's do the next one. Carter,

Zain 5:08

our next one comes to us around words, the pithiness of words, the poetry of the words. Carter, it's time for campaign slogans, and your nominees are the Liberal Party of Canada for Forward for Everyone. You

Zain 5:27

You got the Conservative Party of Canada with Secure

Zain 5:33

You got the NDP with

Zain 5:35

with Fighting for You.

Zain 5:38

You got the Green Party of Canada with Be

Zain 5:42

And this is actually true. You got the Bloc Quebecois with

Zain 5:46

not applicable. They have NA as their campaign slogan. They do not have a campaign slogan, as at least it does not seem like they have a campaign slogan, unless it is, of course, Bloc Quebecois. Stephen Carter, is it the Liberals with Forward for Everyone? Is it the Conservatives with Secure the Future? Is it the NDP with Fighting for You? Is it the Green Party with with Be Daring, or is it the Bloc Quebecois with Quebecois?

Carter 6:12

I believe that it is the

Carter 6:15

the securing our future, because correct me if I'm wrong, Corey, but it seems to me that was used by the federal liberal party in the mid-1990s as their slogan. The reason I remember that is we used it for a slogan for Theatre Calgary when we were bankrupt. So these things all fling

Carter 6:34

fling together for me. So I think that securing the future has already been used by the other party. So coming back and using it as a slogan is the worst use of a slogan in my ever so humble opinion.

Zain 6:46

Corey, a lot of these seem to be used

Zain 6:48

used in some permutation in the past, but which one is it for you?

Corey 6:53

They're all so lame. Forward, not backward. Instead of forward for everyone. I mean, we've seen that. Secure the future.

Corey 7:00

It's kind of a matrix take on a standard conservative trope here. NDP fighting for you, fighting for Canada, fighting for us, fighting for a better future, fighting to secure the future, fighting forward, fighting for everyone. Who gives a shit? Fighting forward is actually pretty good. I like fighting

Carter 7:15

fighting forward. Actually, I can get my head around fighting forward. That's okay.

Corey 7:19

Green Party, be daring. Be daring. Don't

Zain 7:22

Don't run candidates in a lot of your writings. I

Corey 7:25

I think the blog's got this right. I'm not 100% convinced you're right that they don't have a slogan. I can't find it. I think it's Quebecois.

Zain 7:30

Quebecois. I think it's Quebecois. but

Corey 7:32

but uh i uh i think that they've probably nailed it because this is just a garbage medium

Corey 7:39

you garbage people carter

Zain 7:40

carter are you are you ever a fan of campaign slogans i don't use it let's discuss this for a bit because these have been used quite a bit and i am surprised let's also not forget you

Zain 7:51

you know cory if i'm going to throw another one into the mix uh justin trudeau with relentless you

Carter 7:58

for a minute what

Zain 8:00

happened there and He

Corey 8:01

He heard an Arkell song. He got all pumped up and he started making a campaign around it before somebody took him down to earth again. That would be my theory. You

Corey 8:09

You think so, Carter?

Carter 8:09

Carter? That's the only thing that makes sense. I mean, slogans are terrible. Slogans are absolutely terrible. But you've used them.

Zain 8:15

them. You've used them in the past yourself. Yeah, we

Carter 8:17

we did one for Joe Clark. I think it was trust, honesty, integrity. It was like three synonyms for the same, you know, like, it

Carter 8:23

it was the stupidest thing. But the actual thing that won the election for us was a billboard that we put up that said, Joe Clark, not just another pretty face. So, you know, that was, I

Carter 8:33

I don't know, is that a slogan? But slogans

Carter 8:36

slogans are boring. I don't know if they're supposed to signal to the voter anything. I mean, we can have an honorary write-in mention here of Jeff Davison's mayoralty candidate slogan. We can, we will.

Carter 8:49

Okay, good to know. That's excellent. I mean, I don't know what these things are supposed to tell me. I don't know what the messages are. And frankly, I'd much rather use that space to actually get a message out, because the messages that are put in these slogans are tripe.

Corey 9:05

Yeah, well, that's the thing, right? They get smoothed down to the point where they play for all time zones in a country as big as this, and they're ultimately just platitudes as a result. I would love a slogan that was something like, gun

Corey 9:17

gun attacks everyone, or whatever, you know, something that actually spoke to what the party was trying to do in a real tangible sense. And the thing about all of these slogans, can I just say, like, let's just you can almost slogan roulette here. Any of these parties could have used any of these slogans. Is there anything about any of them that you think interchanged?

Corey 9:36

Yeah. Liberal secure the future. Yeah, you're right. We want to try to secure a better future. Those other guys want to go backwards, right? right uh conservatives fighting for you yeah unlike that justin trudeau who's just fighting for his fucking buddies there you know ndp be daring it would be daring to have an ndp i mean it doesn't matter none of this matters fuck the liberals could use quebec if they want it oh every party has been using

Zain 10:01

party's slogan is actually it's the fine print is quebec i can almost

Carter 10:08

almost buy a slogan if it was literally like spend less or tax less right or um you know spending have you been investing in you or something like i mean even investing in you is bullshit

Carter 10:21

terrible i came up with it i feel awful i feel dirty now

Zain 10:25

we done with this one should we move it on to our next category everyone should be done with this one no

Carter 10:31

next time six months from now there will not be any slogans in the next election our

Zain 10:35

our next category is the best english debate uh and the nominees are the consortium debate justin

Zain 10:43

justin trudeau versus anti-vaxxer mobs aaron

Zain 10:47

aaron o'toole versus reporters for 11 rounds on jason kenney cory

Zain 10:51

cory for best english debate is it the consortium debate is Is it JT debating anti-vaxxers? Is it Aaron O'Toole going 11 rounds with reporters on Jason Kenney and not an Alberta situation on COVID? What was the best English debate for you?

Corey 11:10

think that the best English debate has to be Aaron O'Toole versus reporters. I'd like to broaden it beyond just the 11 questions, though. But I also think about his ducking and weaving on the issue of gun control. earlier in the debate.

Corey 11:27

Yeah, makes a ton of sense to me. And I frankly, I feel like I learned more from that debate than I learned from that train wreck that was the consortium debate. Now that the English language debate might have might have been the best French language debate, because it had such a significant effect on the Quebec, you know, federal election. But hey, what are you gonna do?

Zain 11:47

Carter, which one was it for you? Which one are you given the the award to on your front. Are you agreeing with Corey? Or do you feel like it's one of the other ones that deserves the title for best English language debate? Was it the consortium debate? Was it Justin Trudeau versus anti-vaxxer mobs? Or was it Aaron O'Toole versus reporters going 11 rounds for best English language debate?

Zain 12:11

Are you agreeing with Corey? Or you got a different take?

Carter 12:13

It's the rebel versus Justin Trudeau. And it's

Carter 12:17

it's a write in moment. It's a write in moment. But But that was the best moment of the debate. That was the most memorable takeaway, and it may have actually signaled to

Carter 12:28

English Canada that Justin

Carter 12:32

Justin Trudeau was ready to fight for this. Now, it happened on the night of

Carter 12:35

of the French language debate, but let's not let that stand

Carter 12:40

stand between us and a write-in moment here.

Zain 12:43

Carter, I'm glad you understood what I was trying to do there, which was expand the scope of the word English language debate beyond the debate. So thank you for choosing something from the French debate, which is the most non-English language debate thing you could choose. Listen,

Carter 12:55

the fight was in English, okay? I met the criteria. No,

Zain 12:58

No, you did meet the criteria. Tell me about this. In retrospect, sitting here one day before the election tomorrow, that rebel moment, it didn't even register to me. It was like the biggest thing of that, you know, 24-hour time horizon stomped by the disaster that was the English debate the next day. Hey, Carter, does it does it have any any remnants in terms of perhaps the narrative on Trudeau and what we've seen in the final days where they've been able to tighten the polls against the conservatives? Do you feel like that moment actually spoke beyond that 24 hour period?

Carter 13:33

Well, Zane, given that I just picked it as the most impressive part of the English language debate. That

Zain 13:40

That was not the question. It's the question was pretty clear to me. English debate. Let me finish. The question

Carter 13:44

question was best English debate. Let me finish. You got more time than I did. I'd like to finish. You got five seconds.

Zain 13:51

seconds. You got five

Zain 13:51

seconds. You got five seconds. Bottom

Carter 13:53

Bottom line, it had

Carter 13:54

no impact at all, Zane.

Zain 13:56

Corey, before you answer, is your mother in a home? I'd like to

Zain 13:58

respond to that. Is your mother in a home? Is your mother in a home yet? I need to

Corey 14:02

I've been busy. Okay. Her stuff is in the home. She's not in the home yet.

Zain 14:09

That's actually super funny.

Zain 14:15

she's imagining an old lady just

Corey 14:18

and i don't know how old your mom is just

Corey 14:20

being like not someone i would call an old

Carter 14:23

not to her face anyways

Zain 14:32

whatever you want to talk about cory i fucking lost control of the show

Carter 14:35

as always do you

Zain 14:37

you want to talk about anything you want to respond to carter and his

Corey 14:39

his rebel rebel moment no i think the rebel moment was not of significance i think at the time it was pretty clear it wouldn't be of significance good thing they didn't take your advice and run a bunch of ads with it carter that would have been dumb no

Carter 14:52

no i would have actually extended the only moment that mattered uh

Zain 14:57

carter let's go to our next category best campaign endorsement here

Zain 15:03

here we go Best campaign endorsement. Is it the Liberals? Is it John Chrishan for the Liberals? Is it Brian Mulroney for the Conservatives?

Zain 15:11

Is it Obama and Clinton one-two punch for the Liberals? Is it Bernie for the NDP? Carter, is it Conrad Black for the Conservatives?

Zain 15:21

Or is it Jane Fonda for Abby Lewis?

Zain 15:24

Best campaign endorsement. Chrishan for the Liberals. Mulroney for the Conservatives. Obama and Clinton.

Zain 15:31

Bernie. any jane fonda or conrad black carter um

Carter 15:36

um i think it's it's it's got to be

Carter 15:39

see i wanted to joke about this one but the joke is uh the klu klux klan for uh bernier and i don't think that that's actually funny so i think what i should do is just move away and go to obama and uh and uh hillary clinton for um for

Carter 15:58

for the for the liberals because that actually seems to have have had impact in

Carter 16:01

the twitterverse in the twitterverse it had impact yeah

Zain 16:06

so than corny what do you think it's

Corey 16:08

it's such a no-brainer you guys have such short memories like goldfish you are adamie paul of the liberal party climate plan is the best endorsement of the election oh

Zain 16:19

oh i forgot about that she had

Corey 16:21

had the second best she

Zain 16:22

she had a 65 second zayn velji style build-up to a conclusion she went for a long walk and then she ended the punchline with the liberals well

Corey 16:30

well the second best endorsement was also a green of the liberal party and that was andrew weaver uh that's the serious answer because that was all of us that was the big throw the liberals made to get votes from a crumbling green party and those votes could and might matter tomorrow that's

Zain 16:46

that's that's really interesting carter what do you think of that one no

Zain 16:48

he's weaver's impact is significant out in bc former leader of the greens it's going to

Carter 16:53

to be hard to tell it's going to be hard to tell given that you know what what separated the votes from the greens was probably their own behavior so uh moving to the liberals doesn't feel like it was that big a deal it seemed like every everybody who was evaluating the climate uh components of platforms came out with the liberals on top so it uh it feels like the greens have really done themselves a disservice us

Carter 17:16

and the endorsements didn't matter after that yeah

Zain 17:20

yeah i just want to make sure you guys are still on the record for saying the endorsements overall are are what like net neutral do you feel like they're at least net positive in certain cases cory you're saying the weaver one is important we've said endorsements are kind of like blah but yeah i

Corey 17:35

i don't think i generally speaking i just think endorsements are overplayed i don't think these are people who are celebrities to people who already have political views. They're not celebrities to people in the real world, right? At the Obama one has a bit of mainstream appeal, I'm sure. So does Hillary Clinton, I guess, probably somewhere. But I really, I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm just saying this because it horrifies me to think of the person who's sitting at home, turns on their television and says, Obama endorsed Trudeau. I guess I'm in, right?

Corey 18:07

Like, I don't know. That's just a a mortifying thought

Carter 18:09

thought how shallow the decisions are you

Carter 18:12

you know like how shallow it can be i

Corey 18:17

i try to i try to live in denial of it yeah

Zain 18:21

carter we talk about influencers working in like a

Zain 18:24

modern consumer marketing world um massive industry do

Zain 18:28

do we do we discern a difference here not

Carter 18:31

not really for me it's the same thing cory

Corey 18:35

well it's the same thing and the same rules apply The endorsement matters most when it's either celebrity, which I guess Obama would certainly play, but I think most of these others do not count as celebrities, or

Corey 18:45

or if it's something that's just wildly against type, right? It's like if the Pope endorses the idea there's no God, that would be noteworthy. But the fact that you have Jean Chrétien endorsing the Liberal Party, that's not noteworthy. Yeah. That's a given. It would be shocking the other way around.

Zain 19:03

And is that why you say Weaver, because of his green affiliation? affiliation

Corey 19:06

that is absolutely why because that is a moment of flux for the green party the voters are looking for somewhere else to go because their party is in utter shambles and they have a stalwart of the party who doesn't look like they're involved in all of this internal fighting between people around elizabeth may and people around anime paul and

Corey 19:26

that's a pretty reasonable signal especially in a battleground like bc guys

Zain 19:30

guys it is now time for my favorite category stephen carter I know you're ready for this. You have predicted this category correctly for 10 years straight. It's incredible. The award show would not be anything without you correctly naming this category. You just have a great instinct for this, Stephen Carter. You know what it is. It's the thirstiest moment of the campaign. The thirstiest moment of the campaign. Stephen Carter, was it muscle man Aaron O'Toole on the policy cover of the conservative policy book? Was it Trudeau in the endgame begging to NBP voters, saying, you have to vote for us, you gotta do it, please, oh please? Is it Aaron O'Toole, who finally used one of the lines that we'd used in this podcast, a vote for the PPC is a vote for Justin Trudeau? Or

Zain 20:21

Or Stephen Carter, is it Jagmeet Singh skateboarding and doing handstands in ridings that he has no chance of winning in the final days of the campaign? Stephen Carter, the thirstiest moment of the campaign.

Zain 20:35

Is it Trudeau, you have to vote for us? Is it O'Toole, a vote for the PPCs, a vote for the liberals? Or is it Jagmeet Singh doing Justin Trudeau tricks a la 2015?

Carter 20:44

You know, you missed it again. It is, in fact, Jagmeet Singh in the shower.

Corey 20:49

I was going to say that. Perfect. I was also going to say that. We've got a consensus here. Yeah,

Carter 20:54

Yeah, that's the consensus

Zain 20:56

have tweeted this out uh yeah yeah it's got what 135 000 views on this video which is yeah which i think is close to what jugmeet singh got organically on tiktok so you're well 34

Corey 21:06

000 or me so

Carter 21:07

yeah i just kept watching it over and over again trying to understand it well

Zain 21:12

well i understand it i need you to i need you to explain it because i need you i need someone who doesn't really understand it to explain it which is what makes it great carter okay

Carter 21:19

okay so jugmeet singh is in the the shower this

Zain 21:22

is a nine second video yeah

Carter 21:23

yeah he's in the shower and he's holding a ndp sign a

Zain 21:28

a sign that says how you vote.ca underneath it says jugmeet sing yep and

Carter 21:32

and it's the shower's on and

Zain 21:34

and what else is going on the

Zain 21:38

it's a song it's a song which song carter i

Zain 21:42

sung by dido i

Carter 21:43

don't know the song i

Zain 21:45

i want to thank you yeah

Zain 21:46

yeah carter it was used as a sample in an eminem track i

Zain 21:49

i don't understand yeah

Zain 21:51

you don't understand no

Zain 21:53

no he's he's white he's one of you how do you not know this carter it's

Zain 21:58

it's a hallmark of white culture carter uh cory carter that was a train wreck i thought it'd go better cory uh

Zain 22:07

cory explain to us the thirstiest moment of the campaign uh i like this choice for two reasons reasons number one it's very recent number two uh it's wet there is water so the thirsty element does apply literal water yeah literal water cory

Corey 22:21

cory explain to us what's going on i

Corey 22:23

i can't zane all i can tell you is what i feel and what i felt was something tingling in my voting booth yeah

Zain 22:29

yeah for sure i

Zain 22:31

i felt like taking you

Zain 22:32

you to your ballot box you mean yeah yeah

Corey 22:35

my ballot box got mighty stuffed craft shall we say yeah

Zain 22:42

we're not gonna explain to people what this is we're just gonna be like they can look on

Carter 22:45

on the fucking internet the internet exists people uh

Zain 22:50

jugmeet's doing a tiktok meme um while running for i mean he's done those before this one is a little weird it's uh i don't know how to describe it uh myself i think i described it pretty well i think we

Carter 23:02

should just move on i'm

Carter 23:03

i'm using how you felt i will say you did get one one of them right i did use the aaron o'toole men's health thing as my uh vaccine passport id photo so

Zain 23:12

how's it going it's

Carter 23:13

it's going pretty well no one knows what a vaccine passport looks like in alberta so i'm able to pull it off carter

Zain 23:18

carter we're moving on to the next category the worst allocation of funds we always talk about campaigns are about resource management well not just for the campaigns uh for the campaigns for the media for the pundit class um here we go here are the nominees you can obviously write in as you choose the first nominee the conservative party of canada allocating

Zain 23:42

allocating funds to run an aaron o'toole documentary on the day before the election on multiple networks cory

Zain 23:50

the second nominee is mainstream media paying for daily tracking polls uh

Zain 23:57

uh and of course carter the third nominee is enemy paul paying for her two flights that she took the entire election. That is the third.

Zain 24:05

Corey Hogan, I'll start with you. Worst allocation of funds in election 44. Is it the O'Toole documentary? Is it mainstream media paying for the tracking polls? Or is it Annamie Paul taking her two flights in the 36 days of the campaign?

Corey 24:22

I think that it has to be the O'Toole documentary. I don't know how much it cost, but it just feels like, and this is something my wife pointed out out to me today doesn't it sort of feel like the people who are watching um

Corey 24:33

um the food network at 8 a.m is a demo that o'toole should already have locked up my

Carter 24:42

my parents are gonna be really upset by that yeah why

Zain 24:45

why are you advertising to these people what is going on at 8 a.m on the food network i uh the only thing i know about the food network is they once stayed in a hotel and um it It was the only room left, and they told me that this is the only room left in the hotel. It was very cold in Ottawa during the middle of winter. This is the only hotel room that they have left. The one problem is that the power is centrally connected, which means that the TV, which is somehow buried into the wall, has to stay on, and they haven't been able to turn it off for like seven

Zain 25:20

now thankfully it's not on it's not it's the sound isn't on but the the channel it's stuck on is the food network and all they've got going on all night is repeats of beat bobby flay and let me tell you something carter no one fucking beats bobby flay no one beats bobby flay baby fucking guy hey

Corey 25:37

hey can i ask you why didn't you just turn brightness down to zero no no

Zain 25:40

no remote control they had no idea where the remote was they're like if you if we pull the the plug centrally you get no light no heat no nothing and i'm like i guess i'll pay 425 dollars for this holiday in thanks ottawa carter

Zain 25:57

aaron o'toole documentary mainstream media for daily tracking polls or enemy paul for her two flights you

Carter 26:03

you missed it again it's the curse of politics also the former hurley burley for paying for their own daily uh daily uh tracking and then getting their asses handed to them by three jackasses out of alberta that's

Carter 26:16

that's gotta sting that's gotta sting we're crushing those fuckers jesus

Zain 26:22

christ carter your multi-front war you're really taking an example of it by jason kenney uh and just start except when

Carter 26:29

when you're winning you

Zain 26:34

yeah is that actually your answer yeah

Zain 26:38

worst allocation of us they're not they're not paying for their their let's talk about polling actually i'm going to use the mainstream media

Carter 26:44

media whoever's paying for the poll that they're using is paying is getting ripped off same with the mainstream media if you're going to use daily tracking polls then learn how to fucking interpret the daily tracking polls that's embarrassing well

Zain 26:55

well what's what's going wrong yeah actually let's talk about this a bit more we're now at the end what we have we have nanos daily tracking we've got ecos daily tracking i think abacus doesn't abacus

Corey 27:04

abacus jumped in they They started doing daily tracking.

Zain 27:07

I initially was wrong when I said they're part of the daily tracking crew. So they've – Coletto and – They just tried

Corey 27:11

tried to make it right. They just wanted to make you retroactively correct. They're now doing daily tracking too.

Zain 27:16

What's your issue with them, Carter? Let's talk about them in terms of where they stand now and what your issue is with them as a practice.

Carter 27:25

Everybody is taking the number on the day and saying that that's – if the election were held today, that's the number. I mean

Corey 27:31

mean that's literally the question they ask. Yeah,

Carter 27:33

Yeah, but what they're doing, though, is they're taking three days of data, and they're adding those three days of data. None of those days of data would on their own be statistically significant, right? They would not have enough sample size to offer a single day. So what you're really doing is you're looking at three days of cumulative data. And therefore, the most important thing in that set of data isn't the end point of the data, but in fact, the trend line. So the trend line itself becomes the important part. And so the media should be pointing themselves to, well, this is an interesting trend. We are seeing a trend downwards for the liberals or upwards for the conservatives. We've seen fascinating trends through this. We've seen a trend with the PPC. We've seen a trend with the CPC. We've seen a trend with the liberals. liberals, all

Carter 28:18

all of that, we've seen no trend from the from the greens, all of these things are interesting in and of themselves. And the trend is far more important. And when I'm looking at polling, I'm not necessarily just looking at the end number, because the election, I think you guys will be shocked to find out was not held today. Sure, advanced polling was done. And there was mail in ballots and all of those things. But the election is held tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day that actually matters. The trend to tomorrow is what matters. And the trend lines are fascinating.

Zain 28:49

cory what do you think about the the mainstream media and the tracking polling that we are seeing

Zain 28:56

i don't know if we're seeing it more i was about to say we're seeing it more this election than last time maybe we're just clued into it more um perhaps but your thoughts on the on the daily tracking well

Corey 29:06

well look i don't know that the mainstream the quote-unquote mainstream media here is is paying a ton of money for this tracking polling if you're nanos i suspect that you're getting subscriptions to do it i politics

Corey 29:17

politics has that partnership with main street and they've

Corey 29:20

their little spindly dial but that's

Corey 29:22

that's also something where you can probably purchase into it and so there's almost a subscription model there that i suspect is self-recuperating and i i don't know ecos has the the deal with the hurly-burly they seem to be going over the daily numbers there isn't that isn't that where that is kind of spilling out in a formal sense every day seems It seems to be, yeah. I think that in general, it's

Corey 29:43

it's just data. And I mean that not in the sense that look at the numbers and that's what they are, but it's just one of your inputs and you've got to look at all of these polls and you've got to follow the trend lines and you've got to be mindful of the methodology that's being used and all of those things we talked about along the way. And if you were to follow exclusively one pollster or another, you would get such shockingly different versions of what this election is. ECOS right now has the Liberals up by six, right? That nobody else has the liberals up that much, but maybe ECOS is right. But if you've been only following ECOS, it's been a wild ride. Because at one point, Frank Graves was saying, it's going to be conservative, just question is how big and now it's liberal majority is on the table. Oh, boy, talk about a bit of a rush. Abacus has been, you know, shows a conservative lead, Ipso shows a conservative lead. And, and that's a different story. Altogether, that's a seven point difference in terms of who's on top relative to the ECOS one. And when you look at them at aggregate, it largely looks like a big mess, largely looks like it's, it's an even race. And I think that's the thing that people should take going into the election, not faith in one poll over the other, but appreciating

Corey 30:51

appreciating that the data is messy, and is not going to tell us who's going to win tomorrow. And we can make predictions, and we can rely on the data as one of the inputs. But you'd be a fool to choose just one of the polls and say, this is for sure what's going to happen tomorrow.

Zain 31:03

Carter, you want to round us out there with anything? anything?

Carter 31:06

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's been a little bit of convergence down to a tie with most of the pollsters. And, you know, one point here, one point there. Let's try and keep in mind that most of these polls are plus or minus three points. You know, there's a margin of error on these things for a reason. The margin of error is the get out of jail free card. And we'll see how close people actually were.

Corey 31:29

Yeah, it's the get out of jail free card. But that's one of my biggest pet peeves when people say, oh, there's a three point margin of error, ergo, oh, we could have a result that's just as likely on the edges. It doesn't work that way. When we talk about margin of error, we talk about it being within X number of points 19 times out of 20. It's following a standard curve. You are much more likely that the poll is accurate or within a point of being accurate than being three points off, even if you're purporting a three-point margin of error. Think more about violin graphs or waves, right? And the thing that they've represented is most likely to be correct, and it bleeds off from there towards the edges. So, like, that's a cop out that pollsters will use once everything is sort of settled. But it's, that's not how you should be thinking about margin of error, as just as equally likely to be here or three points from here.

Zain 32:14

Corey, let's move it on to our next category. Our next category is best line, or best quote from the campaign. I've got three nominees. John Cree-Chan with his line that says Aaron O'Toole can do something I can't, which is speak out of both sides of his mouth.

Zain 32:32

you got the NDP and Jagmeet Singh saying, I'm not Justin Trudeau. I've lived a different life. I felt the pain of being made to feel like you're not worth anything. A line that was quite popular in the early stages of the campaign as he tried to draw some daylight and lived experience between him and Trudeau. And you got the line from Aaron O'Toole in the debate saying Justin Trudeau has more ambition than he has the ability to act.

Zain 32:54

Stephen Carter, best campaign line for you. Is it one of those three? Are you doing another write-in?

Zain 33:00

Which one are you giving it to?

Carter 33:02

Oh, man, I think you have to give it to Brian Mulrooney, don't you, who said that if

Carter 33:23

O'Toole becomes prime minister, he's going to have to do some things that are deeply unpopular. Not that he's popular now, which is fantastic. which is fantastic. It's a great line. This is a guy who's come out to be your surrogate, to actually endorse you. And he fucking just hammers you in the back. That is the best line of the campaign, in my humble opinion.

Zain 33:44

Corey, best line of the campaign for you. Is it O'Toole on ambition over action? Is it Jagmeet Singh on lived experience and feeling the pain? Or is it Jean Chrétien on criticizing Aaron O'Toole and his ability to do something he cannot do uh

Corey 33:59

uh you know i'm tempted to do o'toole because that line really stuck with me from the debate uh about ambitions not being matched with accomplishment probably

Corey 34:08

probably the most memorable lines not the best lines is uh are are attributed though to trudeau arguing with protesters right both his comments on the first night where he said they've had a hard year two year yeah i remember that we've talked about that line a lot yeah

Corey 34:24

um i also think a lot about him saying isn't there a hospital you should be protesting which you know given that his wife was just called a whore like i think we could forgive right and it was a flip line but it i i i wouldn't be in the mood for it either if i were him and um and all of the ones in between all of his commentary about how he will not back down to these people. He just gave us every night that he got into a fight with them, he gave us another quote. And in my mind, they've aggregated into just the feud of the election, which is him and the protesters.

Zain 35:02

Carter, do you feel like those

Zain 35:04

those Trudeau lines have actually galvanized something meaningful for him in his campaign? Do you feel like those moments have actually helped him? Or are they just of the distant past? And it's just been the contrast against him and O'Toole, because part of that strategy, we'll talk about strategies coming up, has been O'Toole, has been Trudeau trying to run against anti-vaxxers rather than O'Toole directly. Do you feel like that portion of the campaign successfully worked for him?

Carter 35:30

Yeah, I mean, I think that it has worked, but it's also, I mean, it's faint praise, because those are the only elements that we actually get to evaluate him on, because there haven't been any other stellar moments, right? So he gets the rebel, he gets the anti-vax moments.

Carter 35:47

those are the things that we're grading on because it took it you know it's it's day 35 of the campaign and we still don't know why we're in the damn election uh as per you know according to the liberals so um you

Carter 35:59

you know he he's performed so poorly on the campaign trail so far that that these minor victories uh against the vaxxers are or the anti-vaxxers are uh are what defines finds the campaign for us so far let's

Zain 36:13

let's move it on to our next category guys this one is a a popular category this one comes up every single year this category is alberta premier most likely to fuck up the campaign for the conservative party of canada uh steven carter the nominees are

Zain 36:31

jason kenney or right in uh carter are you going with jason kenney or are you going with right in this time you

Carter 36:38

you know i i was thinking about this a lot i was thinking about laheed klein you know there's been some epic battles it's jason kenney it's jason kenney by a mile that first of all jason don't come out of your hole was the first instruction and then when he did oh my god just puts a fucking nail in the coffin fantastic work jason well way to go

Zain 37:01

cory we'll do a bit of state of play on on alberta's impact uh from thursday to sunday right now when we're recording and when we recorded last so we'll do that but before i jump and then just assume you want to go with jason kenny cory hogan are you going jason kenny are you going right in i

Corey 37:15

i you know i think i'd go further back alexander rutherford was the first premier of alberta he was instrumental in the creation of alberta and

Corey 37:24

and everything else is kind of secondary from that he

Corey 37:27

he was the original fuck up so

Corey 37:29

so i'm gonna say alexander rutherford is the the Alberta premier who has caused the most grief to the Conservative Party of Canada.

Zain 37:37

Oh, God. Okay, thank you, Corey. Corey, on Thursday, you predicted that this could be a 24-hour story.

Zain 37:45

We already, by that time, we recorded on Thursday night, had already talked about O'Toole's struggles to answer the question.

Zain 37:54

Over the weekend, O'Toole has gone fucking dark in the media. Carter, they took one of your three strategies, strategies the one that you said is insane that cory and i were

Zain 38:04

like well that's not that crazy uh and then you said no of course they would never do that they need all hands on deck you need every tool available it seems to be the case that they took strategy number one which was not engaging with media um perhaps because of the kenny question but cory i i stick with you for a second uh the lingering effect of alberta do

Zain 38:24

do you feel like this has defined the end game

Corey 38:28

in a sense i mean it's defined it in that it's driving his tactics so you have to say it's defined it now has it defined it to his detriment unclear there is the reality that in a lot of the polls that i'm looking at in this mad cavalcade of polls we have the conservatives are either tightening it back up or they're giving themselves a bit of a small lead you know research company they went uh last week the liberals were up four now it's even we've got ipsos with the the Conservatives up one. We've got Abacus with the Conservatives up one. We've got a bunch of people with ties. So it seems to be working right now. And there is some logic to if you don't give it oxygen, the fire can't burn. Now, I did agree with Stephen. I'm not going to pretend that I was sitting there thinking that this was a great strategy to not talk to the media, because then I thought we'd lead to a meta story where it was, why is he avoiding the media? But that story is coming really late. It's basically too late to affect the election. So maybe it works just fine. Maybe the calculation was made and the calculation was 100% correct, that media conversations just were not going to help them, at least not ones fueled by new media interviews. And given that it's the day before the election, they're going to write about them anyways, even if they can't talk about it.

Zain 39:38

you're vigorously shaking your head.

Carter 39:40

I mean, I just don't know how. I mean, the media aren't there to help you. They're not there to hurt you. They are a tool, right? Right. So this is like saying we're going to take, you know, we've been running television ads all the way through, but we're going to take our television ads the last three days off. I mean, you don't get to control 100 percent what the media say about you, but you can control your message. You can control how you're perceived and you can be perceived to have strength or you can be perceived to have weakness. And O'Toole has chosen to go with weakness.

Corey 40:07

Corey? Yeah, the media is a tool. And if your tool is broken, say you've got yourself a nice table saw without any guards on it. Like, don't put your fucking hand in it. And maybe that's what Aaron O'Toole rightly understood.

Corey 40:21

Carter, you still think it's a bad strategy for him?

Carter 40:22

him? It's a terrible strategy. It was a terrible strategy on Thursday. It's a terrible strategy today. It's going to be a terrible strategy tomorrow night.

Zain 40:29

Reconcile terrible strategy with people aren't paying attention. We always say people don't pay attention right now. It's already baked. It's already done. How does something like this change anything? Which is why, perhaps at least for Corey, maybe I can't speak for you, Corey, but at least for me, him taking the weekend off was like, Like, that's fine. Isn't it? Isn't it baked? Isn't it done? Because

Carter 40:47

Because there's a day year that you are day every three years or day every four years that you actually pay attention. And that's election day. So the late deciders, the ones who are making the less engaged, the ones who are making their decisions based on the least amount of information. Remember, we referred to this earlier, the shallow decision makers, those shallow decision makers are making their decisions right now. And what they're getting back to them is Aaron O'Toole won't even talk to the media. and most people don't watch the media news they don't watch you know they they absorb it almost through osmosis it's kind of like the way i absorbed the fact that the emmys were tonight almost by osmosis it's like oh yeah there's an emmy show of course there is i don't pay attention because i don't care i give zero fucks that's most people when it comes to voting so the fact that during the last 24 48 72 hours i say that most low information voters are making their Their mind's up 72 hours to 72 seconds before they cast their ballot. That's now. That's right at this second.

Zain 41:48

Corey, this kind of, Carter,

Zain 41:50

Carter, this kind of speaks against what we talk about. But, Corey, I'm going to let you jump in before I kind of go on a soapbox. Yeah,

Corey 41:55

Yeah, look, if not doing interviews led to no media, Carter would have a point. If the coverage was Aaron O'Toole won't talk to the media, he'd have a point. But instead, what we're seeing is that the newspapers, the television shows, they're still covering the conservative campaign. They're doing their campaign rap stuff. off they're doing their dumb ass award shows on their podcasts they're not actually obsessed with the idea of whether aaron o'toole is doing media interviews so it's quite possible that this was not a bad strategy carter

Zain 42:23

carter any retort before i move on to our next category it's

Carter 42:25

it's a bad strategy cory's wrong let's

Zain 42:28

let's move it on to our more somber category guys this is our category of should be Be in memoriam. This is our should be in memoriam category, of course, aptly brought to us by Flair Airlines. Not

Zain 42:43

Not brought to us by Flair Airlines.

Zain 42:47

Corey, the should be in memoriam category, and the nominees are The

Zain 42:53

The Word Wedge, Consortium Debates, Pandering to Quebec, Partisan

Zain 43:00

Partisan Political Panels on Television, and Carter, you're going to love this one too political science profs quoted in media or television

Zain 43:11

once again this is our should be in memoriam section brought to us by our sponsor flair airlines uh the word wedge consortium debates pandering to quebec partisan

Zain 43:23

partisan political panels or political science profs quoted in media or television carter

Zain 43:30

carter i added that one just for you Oh, my God.

Corey 43:32

God. Corey, I'm going to you.

Zain 43:33

This one has had a multi-choice winner in the past, depending on your rage every year. You guys have generally been pissed off that there has been no election when we've held our election award show in the past. But, Corey, if you're choosing a winner of our should-be-in-Memoriam category, what are you choosing? Well,

Corey 43:52

Well, I have no problem with polysacrophs, and I have no problem with the word wedge. But the other three, I think it's got to be a three-way tie for me. The consortium debate format is fucking dreadful. And I think more broadly, this commission on debates is a bad idea that needs to go away. And look, there are people who have kind of figured out how to run these debates better. We have seen more functioning debates in Canada's past. In fact, I would argue that 2015 was probably in some ways, despite not having a consortium debate, a high watermark for debate formats in recent years because we allow different outlets to kind of hold on to them and drive a vision on them. the

Corey 44:31

the political panels political panels right now on on all of the networks are you know 10 minutes four people plus a host everybody says 30 second quip goes around get two rounds of that you call it a day and that's what passes for insight i agree that they're pretty dreadful right now and i'm very confused by them because i actually think that most of the political shows have so many good components to them and they would be materially better if you you had less guests if you just said i'm just going to have one guest for this panel i'm going to talk to them about something and we're actually going to get into something or maybe two if you want to have a countering point of view but maybe just invite the countering point of view on a little bit later like what's wrong with that they're just there's a lot of sound and noise right now and i do believe there's got to be a place for

Corey 45:21

for for just longer form television because right now television has has just gotten very

Corey 45:27

very short form. Pandering to Quebec.

Corey 45:31

All of our leaders are cowards. Giant cowards. And the idea that all of a sudden we are supposed to all just, all of the leaders at least, be outraged that there would be a question about a bill in Quebec that basically forbids you from practicing your religion in public. What in the fuck are we talking about here? Of course that should be up for conversation, even if you can at the end of the day come to a reason why you want to do that law anyways to pretend

Corey 45:57

pretend that it is an outrageous question is just beyond the pale so i'm i'm doing a three-way tie here consortium pandering political panels carter

Zain 46:06

carter the word wedge consortium debates quebec pandering partisan political panels or polysci frost what are you going with uh

Carter 46:14

uh there's a three-way tie uh for me as well it is different than cory's because uh obviously pandering to quebec that's

Carter 46:21

that's a proven category That's a proven strategy, and I'm not taking it off the table. I am in. You want it to be. You want it.

Carter 46:27

Pander away. Quebec, keep selling your votes. We love you for it. Let's just go and get that. That's doing it. But obviously, Consortium Debates has to win this year. They have proven time and again that they do not know how to produce entertaining television. And at the end of the day, TV is supposed to be entertaining or informative. This is neither, and therefore fails on both counts. it also is not good electioneering um you could have you could come up with 50 other things that the the leaders could do that night that would generate more votes so the consortium debates need to disappear they were they were terrible they're not going to get better if they stay in the same format cory could not be more right on panels uh

Carter 47:10

uh panels i mean power and politics got longer and the panels got worse like i don't know how it happened i mean outside of youtube being regular guests it strikes me as nearly impossible that this is this is actually happening the panels are tragic and it's partly because everybody feels that they need to invite the stripes right we gotta have a blue stripe an orange stripe a green stripe and a red stripe if we don't have one of each of those stripes on our panel then the panel is going to fail or maybe they drop the greens and they bring in the impartial journalist and for the most part the the impartial journalist is tragic so we we need to change it invite like get good tv put good television on and make it actually matter i mean the panel shows died and the the third one and this is a write-in the third thing that we need to see in memoriam is of course the green party executive uh so if the green party executive would please exit through stage right uh that would be great thank you very much i'm note oh

Zain 48:09

oh very nicely done carter that was of course our should be in memoriam section brought to us by our sponsor flair airlines flair airlines we're a sponsor not a sponsor okay thank you cory i how are you feeling guys do you feel feel good halfway through the show this is probably this is the halfway mark this

Zain 48:25

this is the halfway mark yes uh let's

Zain 48:29

cedric the entertainer comes out and tells you some jokes from the 90s uh because i did not turn this

Carter 48:34

this into a telethon that's my big question

Zain 48:36

well carter we have we don't need money from a telethon when we've got such dedicated long-term sponsors in place such as flair airlines carter we're moving on to our next category carter i think you're going to enjoy this category you're this is a category that is all about you uh this is a worst tactic category steven carter the expert of worst tactics here we go this is a laundry list you guys got some pen and paper ready i'm ready you may want to write these down writing it down go slowly go slowly the

Zain 49:07

the worst election 44 tactic cory you want to jump in before i list them out Oh, I'm just saying this is going to be great radio. Thanks. Get

Zain 49:14

your pen and paper kits. I was writing it all down. Yeah, it's getting out. Here we go. People love this shit. There's a lot going on. They like to follow along. Yeah, okay. Is it the conservatives and their documentary?

Zain 49:25

Is it the conservatives and their virtual studio?

Zain 49:29

Is it the liberals and their manipulated media tag that they got on that healthcare video?

Zain 49:36

Is it the conservatives and the Willy Wonka video? video?

Zain 49:41

Is it the conservatives with their brochure with the typos?

Zain 49:47

Is it the quasi-cringeworthy ad by the NDP and Jagmeet Singh saying, if you liked anything Trudeau did, that was Jagmeet?

Zain 49:56

Very cheeky ad. Or finally, was it the conservatives in the endgame refusing to reschedule and sit down with CTV for a one-on-one interview? The worst tactic, not strategy the worst tactic of the 2021 election election 44 cycle carter which

Zain 50:15

which one is it for you

Carter 50:19

think it has to be the conservatives um and this was tight because i had to write in for uh the men's health cover but i'm gonna let the men's health cover go and instead

Carter 50:29

instead go with the refusal to reschedule the interview because that was the beginning of the end of all of the media interviews that we've seen to this point so carter seems

Carter 50:37

to be you seem to be

Zain 50:38

be sticking to your end game uh recency uh of the end game it's

Carter 50:43

it's when people are paying attention that's

Zain 50:45

that's a good point you you you you might be right regarding the low information voter and what the conservative

Zain 50:51

conservative tone has been in the in the final days cory which one is it for you on worst tactic well

Corey 50:56

well some of these aren't even eligible the willy wonka campaign was out of or ad was out of the campaign it was true That's true, but it was the start of the campaign. Get out of here. Nonsense.

Carter 51:04

No, it's disqualified, Zane. We're taking that one right out.

Corey 51:07

Yeah, we're taking it right out.

Corey 51:09

For me, it is either the conservatives refusing to reschedule CTV or the liberals manipulated Mediatek. But I'm going to go with the liberal one, if only to be different than Stephen for a minute here.

Corey 51:19

here. And this was supposed to be a marquee attack by the liberals on the conservatives. This idea that it's two-tier O2. Remember, they even created a hat-tier O2. you had

Zain 51:30

had trudeau doing the the video the selfie video well

Corey 51:33

well it's all come out now hasn't it all that bullshit nonsense and it just went nowhere it went flat and i think one of the main reasons is because anybody could say did you hear that about aaron o'toole yeah they got tagged as manipulated media by twitter you know just like that donald trump guy that everybody loves so much right so um i think by doing it so ham-fistedly they actually took a pretty significant going to arrow out of their quiver. Now, did they need it to win the election? Maybe not. We'll see what happens tomorrow. But that should have been a more powerful attack on Erin O'Toole. And they lost it because of the way they approached it.

Zain 52:09

Guys, what do you think, and I asked the question when this happened, it seems like a lifetime ago, but only a couple weeks ago, when it did happen, I asked you guys, what does this do to the brand of Chrystia Freeland? Because one of the things we have not seen, I was going to say seen, but maybe I'll say not seen since, is her in a position of pit bull or attack dog again, or really in any position of, you know, delivering a key message on behalf of the campaign. Like if Trudeau's entire argument has been, this is the person that runs my government, this is my COO, you know, the Deputy Prime Minister, the first female finance minister, we haven't really seen her as COO material in the 36 days of this campaign. Anything to And I don't think it's not a knock against her. I'm just trying to make an observation. But Carter, any thoughts on, you know, has this perhaps, did this moment perhaps change the trajectory of Freeland's involvement in the campaign going forward, do you think? Yeah,

Carter 53:02

Yeah, I mean, they misused her. She wound up looking like a fool. And instead of being a powerful voice in the campaign, she wound up door knocking with Ben Henderson and Randy Bossineau in Edmonton. I mean, great,

Carter 53:19

but that's not exactly the the end game that you're looking for from your deputy premier or prime minister from your from your number two. You want that person out stumping to win you the most votes in the best the best areas. And the door knocking picture is usually used for the kind of junior ministers. I mean, Scott Bryson excelled at it. He was great at that. The door knocking photos. those.

Zain 53:41

Corey, what are your thoughts on Freeland? And perhaps, you know, this is still not baked in terms of an outcome, but she has been touted as being the next leader of this party. You know, what does this do to brand Freeland? But even more specifically, what do you think this did to brand Freeland during the confines of this election? Well,

Corey 53:58

Well, I think it's less about the brand and more about if you were on the central campaign, and you had an idea that you could get Chrystia Freeland to do that was even remotely controversial. And keep in mind, door knocking is never controversial.

Corey 54:10

Would you have the guts to pick up the phone and ask her to do it again after how badly it went?

Corey 54:15

Like, sometimes I think it comes down to just these human interactions. She's going to say, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. No, I'm not doing that again. Go find another patsy. And ultimately, I don't think it's because she was burned. I think it's because they're scared of her. That's my thing. Are you surprised, Corey, just

Zain 54:33

just sticking on Freeland for a second, that she wasn't more in play, even in announcements and daily campaign stops with Trudeau? Just because, and I know it's not traditional to almost have a 1A beside you, but he effectively says she like runs my shit, the feminist budget, all that sort of stuff leading into it. I was, and I'm projecting on you a bit, but I was quite surprised that she wasn't more part of the mix on a day-to-day basis alongside the PM. Am I wrong? Yeah,

Corey 55:01

Yeah, I think you're wrong,

Corey 55:02

it would have probably accelerated some of the conversations about who are we actually electing. If we elect a liberal government, is Justin Trudeau going to be the prime minister very much longer? And that's not helpful during a campaign. You want kind of more singular messaging than that about the leader. and then the the other component of this is it would just be it you get the same amount of minutes the same amount of column inches and you're now splitting it with somebody else so it's not helping you build that leader brand at the same time i just i just don't see what the upside would be for the liberal party that we don't have a campaign like the americans and even frankly it's not like the vice presidential campaigns in the united states are flying with the president they're sent to go do a bunch of other secondary shit like door

Corey 55:45

door knock with randy broseno so i i mean in many ways she was doing the role that the veep does now

Carter 55:50

now they're not door knocking they're not they're making regional announcements that have impact in those regions this this was uh this is this is putting the a star on the bench or at least um on special teams carter

Zain 56:05

carter we got a few more categories here in front of us let's power through them our next one is worst reaction time to an event is it justin trudeau on not knowing why he called the election at the end of the election? Is it Aaron O'Toole for his slow motion on gun reversal? Is it Aaron O'Toole for his slow motion on distancing from Kenny? Or is it Jagmeet Singh for his slow motion on what he would do with the Trans Mountain Pipeline? We got one for each of the three major party leaders. Stephen Carter, who gets the award for worst reaction time?

Carter 56:38

Trudeau is the big winner in this category to be on day 35. And I still don't know why we called the election uh way to go justin uh that is that's impressive and to beat those two like sometimes it's not just about it's not just about being the winner it's about who you're the winner in

Corey 56:55

really ambitious field here really

Carter 56:57

really ambitious really bad field and and you've been able to pull it off so i mean what he does is are you sick are

Zain 57:04

are you saying outcome agnostic this is going to be a regret yeah

Carter 57:08

yeah i mean this is this he was going for the majority the majority No one's predicting a majority right now. His acceptance speech should be, for this award, I had no idea it would go this badly.

Zain 57:24

Thank you. Corey, are you also going with Trudeau? And please, craft a bit of a speech for Trudeau to accept this award, if indeed you are going with Justin Trudeau on this mix.

Corey 57:39

Look, O'Toole, not failing fast on guns. was bad. O'Toole, not failing fast on Kenny, continues to be bad. In many ways, I think we

Corey 57:47

we will say that that is the turning point of the election where O'Toole... The Kenny. The Kenny stuff. Yeah, he wasn't leading in the polls at that point. It was still mixed. But that was where any kind of opportunity for the swing back got

Corey 58:00

got rattled out. And look, O'Toole can still win this. I'm not saying otherwise. But if he loses this, we're going to point to that as a really bad moment. And we will certainly point to guns as the moment where Where he lost all the momentum. I don't think he ever got it back after that, right?

Zain 58:14

right? No, it seemed like it really, you know, the campaign, Carter, we talked about scripting, either wasn't scripted or didn't really have a good response mechanism built into the crisis element of it. So fail fast,

Corey 58:26

you should just put

Corey 58:27

put those things to bed faster. But neither of those come close to Trudeau on the election. The guns thing broke the O'Toole momentum that O'Toole had basically unbroken since the call of the election because Trudeau didn't know why he called the fucking election. And it's just – it's impossible for me to believe that there was a more foundational tactical error than that in this entire campaign. Strategic error, tactical error, all of the errors were committed on this one. was

Zain 58:53

was there a moment stephen carter that justin trudeau should have gotten up on a mic and have said i

Zain 59:01

i want a majority and that is why i've called this election just to get the fucking question behind him and not be a a friction coefficient so to speak for 36 days no

Carter 59:12

no i mean that would not work either i mean but

Carter 59:15

but you know we all know it in the absence of an answer version

Zain 59:19

version Some version of that, some version of a liberal majority would

Zain 59:23

would get you good shit, like, you know, something like that. No,

Carter 59:26

No, I mean, the

Carter 59:29

point of this exercise needs to be that there had to be a reason for the election, right? The reason for the election was we were shifting out of COVID, you know, the recovery, you know, the active COVID stages to an active economic stage, except we're not. And he wound up screwing it up. He didn't have the answer to the question. and to cory's point the the polls before he called the election were spectacular the liberals were supposed to win a majority we can't raid this on the curve now and say well the liberals may still win the election the liberals may win the election but anything short of a majority is a failure because they had a super stable minority government before and if they have a super stable minority government after why did we do this and it's you know it could be another two years and he's going gonna try it again like he's not john kratchen this isn't gonna work cory

Zain 1:00:20

cory you know to that point we can always play hindsight is 2020 and fucking let's do it for a second if the pm had asked you knowing that it's gone this bad day 36 it still wasn't resolved what

Zain 1:00:35

what would you have told them if he was insistent on calling an election would you have said you gotta find us you gotta find an excuse to call it like you know if i guess it's like maybe outside of messaging is what i'm trying to say outside of trying to find a different message because they tried multiple versions of a message throughout the 36 days would you have told them to try to like make shit worse with the ndp try to trigger something that like the actual government would fall like what would you have

Zain 1:01:02

told them as as as uh advice in that period

Corey 1:01:05

time all of the above and they don't even need to necessarily play ball but you need to do a much better case of suggesting that this This is a dysfunctional parliament than just, oh, they're asking for documents about the we scandal, right? So therefore, we need an election, which is about as lame as it gets, because I think most Canadians think that they should be held under a bit of a microscope for ethical failings. And I said it then, I'll say it now, the

Corey 1:01:30

the time for this election, if they wanted to run this election, the election that they clearly walked into, that was

Corey 1:01:35

was after the budget. it. That was when you say we're running on childcare, we're running on COVID. And the fact that we've managed all of this, but by the time we got to the middle of summer, that wasn't an election anymore. And they bought their own bullshit, right? They thought this would be the election of we're

Corey 1:01:52

we're so awesome. As you said, victory lap, just

Corey 1:01:55

just give us give us the keys to everything. And that's just not that's not how it's played out as we now know. Now, maybe they get a majority government tomorrow and this analysis will age poorly but at a very this this election was very rocky for them and it was not this posting that they thought it would be and it's only been in the past week or two that they've managed to get into a place where they've got a little bit more spring in their step they fucked this up and i think that they could have been in a much better position and had much better electoral chances if they had either gone earlier or if they had They'd waited for the fall and orchestrated their defeat, which I think was going to be increasingly easier because their opponents were getting increasingly strident and because their opponents have also managed to get themselves into this mindset of an election is coming. And when that election machinery is going, it can be very hard to stop it. It gets very guns of August out there. And they could have used that to their advantage by putting up some

Corey 1:02:49

some sort of sacrificial Archduke, just to continue the metaphor here. And then the election would have been off and nobody would have said, why do we have this election?

Corey 1:02:57

And they could have run on the things they want to run on, but they didn't do that. And instead, we're sitting here still wondering why we're here. And in many ways, they did a good job.

Corey 1:03:08

They right now are owning the COVID issue. That was not a given when they were the ones who called an election in the middle of COVID. COVID. Yeah. Yeah.

Corey 1:03:15

But here we are. Here we are. And it's a dodgy situation that they find themselves in one day before. the election.

Zain 1:03:24

Carter, same question to you.

Zain 1:03:26

Hindsight 2020. What would you have suggested that the liberals do in terms of either messaging or strategy to have called this mid-August election differently?

Carter 1:03:39

know, I'm a little bit on the fence. I don't think I would have changed the date of the call. I think that I would instead would have just changed the fact that they didn't have a message. Well, that's

Zain 1:03:51

That is at the heart of my question. you

Zain 1:03:53

can't change the day what would your

Zain 1:03:55

justification have been two

Carter 1:03:55

two weeks before the election was called cory and i sat at the on this very podcast and said we don't have the message this is a red flag for the liberal party and i think that you know the the wise beings that are listening to this podcast that are working with the liberals should have said you know what we better figure that out we better figure it out because if we launch and we have the answer to the question we're going to look like geniuses so let's make sure that we have it because cory and carter can't figure this out and if they can't figure it out no one can except us we are so much smarter than they are so why not do that and that's what they should have done because i don't necessarily you know the the the idea of calling the election in the spring or the you know the early summer or the actual summer is tricky right like there was still a lot of balls in the air now it turns out all the same balls are in the air in the fall but you couldn't know that when all the balls were in the air the first time you could know that heading into this election and And you could have a much better answer because the answer to the question was the problem, not the fact that the question itself existed.

Zain 1:04:57

That's interesting. I remember that episode where you guys, you know, through the conversation were ultimately being like, I don't know what the liberals were going to say about this election. And turns out neither did they. Let's move it on to our second last category. guys this is this is our our category for most desirable to be recast we are going to talk about the main players in the election and who would you have if you had a magic wand want to recast you can of course add the right in but i'm going to get you started here stephen carter the nominees are for the ndp jagmeet singh gets replaced by tom mulcair for

Zain 1:05:37

the conservatives aaron o'toole gets replaced by Peter

Zain 1:05:42

And for the Liberals, Justin Trudeau gets replaced by

Zain 1:05:47

Now, it could be a write-in, or it could be one of those three. But from the election that you have seen,

Zain 1:05:53

the story goes, you recast one of these characters on August 16th, when the writ was dropped. Stephen Carter, maybe I'll start with you.

Zain 1:06:04

Who would it be for you that you would be recasting in this election, either for the humor elements of it the upside to win elements of it the fact that one of these people if you change it's undeniable they've got this thing this was looking like an undeniable election if you asked us in early august so for you carter with hindsight and with an august 16th start to recast who would it be justin

Carter 1:06:28

justin trudeau would be replaced by the ghost of pierre elliott trudeau the

Zain 1:06:34

the hologram you mean yeah

Carter 1:06:35

yeah the hologram of okay no i think i think the actual answer is peter mckay um recast in uh in the role of o'toole's you're out of your fucking mind because yeah i'm gonna go on isn't

Zain 1:06:47

isn't he running a peter mckay campaign anyways keep going because this

Carter 1:06:50

this is my point peter mckay would have run this campaign better than aaron o'toole running this campaign i think you're wrong and peter mckay is actually likable as a human being which

Carter 1:06:59

which i think is a tremendous step forward over so wait

Corey 1:07:02

wait wait oh hold on so your theory is that peter mckay would run a better campaign based on what that you've seen from peter mckay in his entire political history in

Carter 1:07:14

in 2004 he ran a spectacular leadership campaign oh

Carter 1:07:18

oh spectacular i mean absolutely middling jesus

Zain 1:07:22

jesus christ carter okay that was a throw-in but that's interesting thing i mean it's bad answer cory

Carter 1:07:29

that's not true and it's literally it's literally one of the options you gave me yeah

Corey 1:07:33

yeah i got an easy one here yeah later uh make the make the whole election better replace stephen carter with eric grenier on the strategist podcast oh

Carter 1:07:44

oh i'm not gonna pretend that didn't cut me that day they cut deep oh oh

Corey 1:07:48

oh that's uh that i mean absolutely everything about it would be better if

Corey 1:07:52

if i had to go to another one i would probably say you could replace liberal uh edmonton center candidate randy broseno with mark carney who should have been

Zain 1:08:01

mark carney's good yeah yeah

Corey 1:08:04

but on your list the one that really kind of like i don't think trudeau for freeland would be a great idea to be honest i just because it's

Corey 1:08:12

it's it's not the freeland campaign and i think i don't know it's just not working for me she could run a kick-ass campaign but it wouldn't be this one uh

Corey 1:08:19

uh o'toole i think has been doing great he's seriously outperformed as leader relative to expectations. I just don't think that it's reasonable that we would replace him with the guy who lost to him.

Corey 1:08:30

Seeing Mulcair, that one made me go, huh, that'd

Corey 1:08:34

that'd be interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing that. I think Mulcair mixing it up with these guys,

Carter 1:08:46

I don't like Tom Mulcair.

Zain 1:08:48

Okay, well, that's fair. Jesus. so i mean i'm not even gonna fight him i i just like yeah okay just add it to the partners list yeah we'll just add it to the add it

Carter 1:08:59

to my tab if tom will care at a podcast we'd be fighting with him i'm telling you right now yeah

Zain 1:09:05

yeah okay you do know i talk to tom will care like every day on our other political panel but that's fine carter that's great yeah what

Carter 1:09:11

what do we say about political panels zane they suck you think the one that you're on doesn't suck it's still it's actually it's half bad it's

Carter 1:09:20

it's more than half bad you've

Zain 1:09:23

you've never listened why

Corey 1:09:25

so i like how you managed i like how you managed to turn insulting one person into insulting five people i've done of course of you expanding on that answer taking

Carter 1:09:32

taking it everywhere it's very good i feel really good about myself you

Zain 1:09:35

you you're is jason kenny influencing you this ability to just like turn one fight into multiple this

Carter 1:09:41

this is the weirdest thing jason kenny's personal popularity has actually dipped below mine and it is really it

Zain 1:09:52

Corey, Corey, we need to we need to get our sponsor to pay for a poll to actually confirm that Jason Kenney is less popular well that's

Corey 1:09:59

that's good, something they can do while waiting on the tarmac, right? Exactly fill in surveys

Zain 1:10:04

guys, we are moving on to our last category, this is of course the crowning category, this is the strategist podcast so guys Guys, it's a category of best strategy.

Zain 1:10:18

Is it the conservatives dropping their platform on day one?

Zain 1:10:24

Is it the liberal wedge on guns?

Zain 1:10:29

Is it the liberal wedge on anti-vaxxers and the fights that Trudeau had against those mobs?

Zain 1:10:37

Is it the PPC creating

Zain 1:10:39

creating a political home for the anti-vax, anti-lockdown crowd?

Zain 1:10:46

Is it the Bloc Quebecois torquing the Bill 21 question from the English debates and turning it into a bit of a movement in Quebec?

Zain 1:10:56

Or is it the Greens, Corey, telling Annamie Paul that her best chance to win a seat was actually indeed in Toronto Centre, which is what she said in a CTV interview, saying, yeah, you know what? I didn't pick this riding. My advisors told me this is the best shot for me to win. Is it not the best shot for me to win? That was pretty much the interview. Carter, the

Zain 1:11:15

the dropping of the CPC platform on day one, the liberal wedge on guns, the liberal wedge on anti-vaxxers. Is it the PPC picking up a, creating a political home for anti-vax and anti-lockdown crowds? Is Is the NDP, and talk about the NDP, I missed one here. Let me add one to the mix, Carter. Is it the NDP talking about six years of history of Justin Trudeau, and you compare his history versus our promises? Is it the bloc torquing the question on Bill 21? Or, of course, Carter, is it the Greens telling enemy Paul that the best place for her to run would be Toronto Centre? The best strategy, I'm starting with you again, Carter. We'll go back and forth on this if we need to. The best strategy of election 44 is?

Carter 1:11:56

The Conservatives releasing their platform early. That

Carter 1:11:59

That was a defining moment. It launched them up into the lead for quite some time. Granted, it was undone in the days after, but I think that when the polling began at the start of this campaign, the idea that the Conservatives could win was a figment of people's imagination. The release of their platform and their launch compared to the Liberal launch defined them as ready to govern and ready to take over from Justin Trudeau. And that was a big moment in this campaign.

Zain 1:12:31

Corey, what would your best strategy award be and who would it go to from your perspective? Well,

Corey 1:12:39

Well, so I don't know that half of that list of strategies. I would say many of them are opportunistic tactics that they play into bigger stories, but they're not the strategies. The CPC platform is part of a bigger thing. And I'm going to get back there because spoiler, spoiler, the CPC is where I end up here.

Corey 1:12:56

providing a political home for the anti-vax, that's a strategy, right?

Corey 1:12:59

right? This is who we're going to be and our actions are going to follow this. But most of these other things, they were just in reaction and they were determined to fit into a broader strategic plan that already existed here.

Corey 1:13:11

Strategy has got to be graded on where it took you to based on where you were. And you have to give the

Corey 1:13:19

the nod to the conservative strategy writ large. And, you know, I could even zoom out further and say O'Toole from taking over the Conservative Party through all the way. People were very critical about it. We talked a lot about it. Carter was very critical. I was pretty plausworthy because, you

Corey 1:13:35

you know, I can see things that Stephen can't. Well, we also

Zain 1:13:38

also are homeowners on O'Toole

Corey 1:13:40

O'Toole Island. Yeah, on O'Toole Island. That's right. But he made the calculation that he would sort of live with the right wing of his party as long as he had it to, and he would tack hard towards the center when an election came. And there were a lot of signs of that, right? And there were a lot of skeptics that this would work. At this point, regardless of what happens tomorrow, you have to say that worked, right? This was supposed to be an election where the liberals were going to come in, and they were supposed to get a majority government as their reward for all of this against a totally feckless Aaron O'Toole. But they came out very hard. That platform on day one was a big part of that strategy to say, this is who we are. You can talk about the hidden conservative agenda. This is our very unhidden agenda. Some things you're really going to love, some things you're going to say, well, what the hell is that? But it's all right out there, all ready for you. and

Corey 1:14:27

and the way that they then presented themselves unfailingly as moderates up until of course the guns thing and then uh with the kenny stuff was was really quite impressive and it continues to be their strategy and he continues to talk about himself as a progressive conservative and as a result you've seen that this election is in play for him and aaron

Corey 1:14:45

aaron o'toole right now the consensus is we'll probably lose tomorrow not definitely but probably but he was supposed to get crushed And he made this thing incredibly competitive. And that's why you got to say the strategic victory here, who I crown the best strategists of election 2021 are the Conservative Party of Canada strategists. They did a hell of a job.

Zain 1:15:08

Carter does does O'Toole get graded on a curve you're saying you're saying the the grading scale for Trudeau was

Zain 1:15:16

was anything but a majority is an underperformance is O'Toole coming in very close second being viable for a very long time in this campaign should he lose tomorrow big asterisk right because we don't know should he lose tomorrow is he given that same uh is he given even a charitable approach that said, you know, you weren't supposed to even come close. So kudos, buddy. Or is it, fuck, man, you were up for three weeks in this campaign, you couldn't seal the deal? Which one of the two emerges as the narrative for O'Toole heading into tomorrow? And I also want to say, isn't Corey a huge dick for just trying to tease out what a strategy is and what it isn't? We get it, Corey. You know more than us. Yeah. Carter, jump in. Jump in on the O'Toole question, because I think that's interesting, because it will be a defining moment of how he's Is he handled with conservative kid gloves? Because we're also simultaneously hearing of some form of mutiny in the conservative caucus around O'Toole picking the PC lane versus the more Harper-style conservative lane. So, Carter, your thoughts on how O'Toole is graded on the outcome of tomorrow? And yes, that's a seven-minute question for you.

Carter 1:16:20

Corey and I would grade him on a curve. Corey and I would say, you know what, this was a good performance against a well-performing liberal government. And the fact that it's been, let's say, fought to a stalemate or modest. You should have been dunked on, so

Carter 1:16:34

you did a great job to do that. But the geniuses of the Conservative Party are going to put this guy in the ground. They are going to run another leadership where they get, you know, excellent competition like Andrew Scheer versus Max Bernier or O'Toole versus Peter McKay. so you know this time it's polyev's already basically launched his leadership campaign uh trying to collect signature you know trying to collect people's data if you are anywhere in canada and you sign up for a pierre polyev email or petition site you're an idiot don't do that please don't do that pierre polyev is is launching his leadership this

Carter 1:17:13

is a terrible mistake you're looking at you know how jugmeet singh has done just getting a couple of elections under his bell getting better at this um the conservatives need to give that opportunity to o'toole he needs at least two elections to show that he has the ability uh

Carter 1:17:27

uh to win or to lose and if they don't they will continue to be in their world richest rebranding who we are strategy and no one will know until the election who the conservatives actually are gory

Zain 1:17:39

gory jump in before we we ran this out yeah

Corey 1:17:41

yeah if he loses they'll

Corey 1:17:43

they'll drop him and that's insane because he performed very well and where Where the CPC failed was when they deviated from that strategy of looking like progressive

Corey 1:17:51

progressive conservatives, moderate conservatives, when they forgot that was their strategy. So when they didn't just abandon that gun rhetoric immediately, when they stood by Kenny longer

Corey 1:18:02

longer than they needed to, which was they didn't need to at all. He was already a burned commodity even amongst conservatives in Alberta, right? And the people who put the pressure on him to make those decisions, I suspect, are going to be the same ones who now come for him. But they're the reason your party is failing, conservatives.

Corey 1:18:17

You'd be nuts not to keep Aaron O'Toole around for another run after this performance.

Zain 1:18:22

Carter, I'm going to I'm going to go into some final, you know, commentary as we wrap up our Strategist Podcast Election Awards special. Stephen Carter, some rapid fire questions to you. These are not called over, under and lightning round. These are called different things because it's the Strategist Podcast Election Awards special. Stephen Carter, rapid fire for you. Most memorable moment of this campaign. pain uh

Carter 1:18:45

uh most memorable moment uh recording the podcast with you guys oh

Zain 1:18:48

oh thank you so much really appreciate it mostly

Zain 1:18:52

thank you cory it's

Zain 1:18:55

it's fine it's fine my most memorable moment was spending my time with tom olker and evan solomon so it wasn't with you okay

Carter 1:18:59

okay that hurts yeah

Zain 1:19:00

yeah okay uh just replacements for you too if we replace uh carter with eric grenier and then we replace cory with tom olker and then replace me with evan solomon that's actually an interesting podcast That's a better podcast, yeah.

Zain 1:19:12

actually could be a better podcast. Corey, most memorable moment from this campaign for you?

Corey 1:19:17

I think it was after every episode calling Stephen and talking about how poorly you had hosted the podcast. Okay,

Zain 1:19:22

Okay, well, that's hurtful. That's why we're getting Evan to do it.

Corey 1:19:25

But the second most memorable moment for me absolutely was, and

Corey 1:19:31

and it's maybe not one moment, so maybe not the answer you're looking for, but it's the protests at Trudeau's campaign. Good,

Zain 1:19:36

Good, I'm glad we're bringing this up.

Corey 1:19:37

Those give me a knot in my stomach about this country overall.

Corey 1:19:40

Right. And what we're going to do regardless, it's not like everything

Corey 1:19:44

everything goes back to, quote unquote, normal or changes tomorrow. We've got some pretty gross things out there that have to be dealt with no matter who wins. And I

Corey 1:19:53

I don't see easy ways to deal with them. We talked about the protests

Zain 1:19:55

protests on Ryan Jasperson when we were on Carter and you disagreed with Corey and I about their long term perhaps impacts and how Trudeau maybe shouldn't have pounded on those fractures. if he wants to govern a whole country rather than 32% of a liberal base.

Carter 1:20:11

Yeah, I mean, we're seeing the liberals come down in most of the polls except for one. So I don't know. I mean, I think that I don't know if I trust the daily tracking right now. I think that everything's up in the air. And the

Carter 1:20:22

the trend lines coming back to a tie leave

Carter 1:20:27

me with a lot of questions. questions.

Zain 1:20:30

Carter, is Trudeau weakened regardless of what happens tomorrow night, Monday, election night?

Carter 1:20:36

There's still, what, a 5% probability he can get a majority? If he wins the majority, he's not weakened. Everything else has weakened him.

Zain 1:20:42

Corey, do you agree with Carter? Is Trudeau weakened regardless of the outcome tomorrow night?

Corey 1:20:46

Yeah, like him, I would say not regardless. If he pulls off a majority government, then I think he's walking just with

Corey 1:20:53

with a total spring in his step. But But if he ends up in the same position he was or worse, he's in some trouble.

Zain 1:21:01

Corey, what is the one or two things you're going to be looking out for tomorrow as you consume election night? It could be a stat. It could be a metric. It could be voter turnout. It could be the vote percentage for the PPC, the NDP. It could be certain regions and how they go early on. Atlantic Canada will come in early. Are you going to see if there's a strong liberal hold there? What is the one or two things that will be kind of the Corey Hogan I will be on tomorrow night as you consume and absorb election night 2021?

Corey 1:21:29

One of them will be turnout. I think higher turnout will help the liberals. Lower turnout will be maybe an indication that people didn't see a lot of need for this election. And maybe there's not a motivated government base. I guarantee you the conservatives are going to show up. I guarantee you they're somewhat motivated. The other two you also mentioned, Atlantic Canada is a battleground this election and should give us a good indication as to whether the Conservatives are going to outperform expectations. Now, you can't call it at that point because the Conservatives outperformed expectations in the provincial election that happened during it too. And so maybe there's just something weird going on in Atlantic Canada with polling. But then the third one really is the PPC vote. And

Corey 1:22:09

And if that PPC vote is lower than what people are seeing, then

Corey 1:22:13

then I think it's going to be a good night for Aaron O'Toole, like markedly lower. If it's higher, I think it's a bad night for Canada. And we're going to have to talk about what this means going forward. But that is the big difference in the polls right now. We mentioned that ECOS is showing the liberals with a lead of six points. That's not because they see the liberals in a different place. Everyone sees them at 32, 33, 31, around there. It's because they see the PPC in a different place. They're seeing 10 points in the PPC, and that's at the detriment of the conservatives. If that's

Zain 1:22:45

Carter, what are you looking for tomorrow night? Stat, metric, area, region, could be anything. thing six

Carter 1:22:51

six seats in alberta up in the air i think that that's a fairly staggering number when we did elect um you know we had five before uh in 2015 in the sweep election uh that was the the liberals uh this could be really interesting in part because of what cory mentioned with the ppc um also in part because the ndp are kind

Carter 1:23:12

kind of the the the second or the third party in alberta and And federally, the NDP have never really taken off. Well, I shouldn't say never. Recently, the NDP have not really taken off in Alberta the same way that the Liberals did, for example, in 2015. So this is fascinating. Obviously, you know, it's the

Carter 1:23:33

the four big areas, Atlanta,

Carter 1:23:34

Atlanta, Canada, Quebec, Ontario and B.C. I'm hoping that we see everything

Carter 1:23:41

everything boil down to the very end when they finally get to the British Columbia. I know the voting hours have all shifted, but when we

Carter 1:23:49

we finally get to B.C. and see what they're doing, things are going to look pretty interesting. I think there'll be a lot of a lot of shake.

Zain 1:23:57

you wanted to add something?

Corey 1:23:57

Yeah, Alberta. I'm not so convinced Alberta will be determinant in the the federal campaign, because I feel that if the liberals do well, they've probably won the election because they're probably doing well in a lot of places, but maybe not. And I do think that the

Corey 1:24:12

the results federally in Alberta will tell us a lot about what the next week is going to look like provincially in Alberta and just how much trouble Jason Kenney's in. Because if the Conservative Party dramatically underperforms, even if they end up winning 30 of 36 seats, but dramatically underperform where they've historically been, that's going to put a lot of pressure on Jason Kenney. There's already a very strong narrative that this has greatly damaged, if not cost, Erin O'Toole the election.

Zain 1:24:39

Cori, I'm going to end with the question I ask every episode, and I'm going to ask you for the last time in our election series here. Cori Hogan, who would you want to be main party leaders tonight, Sunday

Zain 1:24:52

before the Monday of the 2021 election? Which of the party leaders would you want to be tonight? In a

Corey 1:24:59

a way, you're asking, who do I think is going to win the election? It is a very, very sophisticated,

Zain 1:25:03

sophisticated, moderating way of asking that question, Corey. You can interpret how you will, but who do you want to be tonight? I

Corey 1:25:10

I don't want to be Aaron O'Toole or Justin Trudeau, because I don't think either of them are sleeping tonight.

Corey 1:25:15

I think Jagmeet Singh knows the rough band that his party is going to be in, and will be doing just fine. And this is one of his last well-sleeping nights for a while, as he's got a young one on the way. So I'm going to pick Singh.

Corey 1:25:27

If only Only for the

Corey 1:25:29

the restfulness of it all.

Zain 1:25:30

Corey, who's going to win tomorrow, Corey? Hey, Corey. Hey, Corey. Hey, Corey. Who's going to win? Who's going to win the election tomorrow?

Corey 1:25:36

tomorrow? Truly, Zane, I don't know. I think what it comes down to is a couple of competing forces here. The conservatives usually

Corey 1:25:44

usually outperform their polls on election day in that they get people who show up who vote for them. The liberal vote has largely been observed to be a little bit more efficient. and what's

Corey 1:25:57

what's gonna win carter

Zain 1:25:58

carter who would you want to be tonight sunday night before

Zain 1:26:02

before the monday election of 2021 laid on us max

Carter 1:26:08

you can't who's carter's gonna win the fucking election

Zain 1:26:10

election you guys need to start reading what these questions actually mean am

Zain 1:26:14

am i gonna be the one that closes us out with a red oh

Carter 1:26:16

who's gonna win who's gonna win the election oh

Carter 1:26:19

oh i wouldn't i wouldn't i I wouldn't predict that.

Zain 1:26:25

That concludes the Strategist Podcast Election Awards special. My name is Zane Velji with me on the red carpet, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. We'll see you after the election.

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