Transcript
Annalise
0:01
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1066. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil. With you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.
Corey
0:11
guys. Feels like we were just doing this yesterday, around this time. Yeah,
Annalise
0:17
I was not there, but I hear it was a good time. Oh, we
Carter
0:21
we had to switch you and Zain, because, I don't know, I can't remember. Was it the debate episode or something like that? It's hard to lose. A
Annalise
0:27
A lot of things happen. It's hard to care, I guess. Long weekend, outdoors, debate. It all came together. I had
Annalise
0:33
good... And now you're here two nights in a row.
Corey
0:35
Yeah. We're here two nights in a row, but on different topics. We're going to talk about Alberta. Things are heating up. Thank God. Are they, Corey?
Corey
0:46
Something to unpack over the next hour. Stay tuned.
Annalise
0:50
You took my advice to get people to keep listening. Yeah,
Annalise
0:53
Yeah, I know. Look at this, Corey. We were looking at the... Have you been looking at the stats of how long people listen to episodes for? Yeah,
Corey
0:59
Yeah, you know, apparently whenever somebody opens their mouth and starts talking about AFL, big drops, big drops. Eight for
Corey
1:06
last week. Just done.
Carter
1:08
You're welcome. You know
Corey
1:10
You would have been seven for nine, but... I chatted
Carter
1:12
chatted with you and you gave me... Somebody helped you. You gave me the opening prediction.
Corey
1:16
It all came from there. You
Carter
1:17
You didn't get the dockers over the cats, though. I mean, that's... No,
Corey
1:20
No, but you know what? I actually thought the cats were going to pull it. You know, whatever. This was supposed to be the Cats game, but it didn't happen.
Annalise
1:27
I don't know what any of these words mean, and I don't think many of our listeners
Corey
1:32
you're talking about. The AFL channel? Let's talk about the AFL. The AFL channel
Annalise
1:38
on the Discord? Discord is poppin'. Carter loves the Discord. It's all he talks about these days. It's massive.
Corey
1:45
Well, all I talk about is the pies these days. I'm thinking they're doing great.
Carter
1:50
They are, and they're almost like it's almost like no one's is going to catch them for the rest of the season but my brisbane lions will be there at the end i can tell you that right now it'll
Corey
1:59
it'll be the pies lions it'll be great man it's going to be epic we
Corey
2:02
fly out for that we should fly if it's
Carter
2:04
it's the pies and the lions let's you and i will fly live
Corey
2:07
live show in australia live
Corey
2:09
live strategist show you heard it here first oh my god that's
Carter
2:13
that's going to be epic i am so excited i'm going to look at the tickets while we're talking this is great well
Annalise
2:18
will that happen is this something that's likely to happen i mean it's It's actually their
Carter
2:22
second right now. And really, the Lions are the only ones who have the offense to catch up with the Pies. We'll
Annalise
2:29
We'll do it. Perfect. You want to come with us?
Annalise
2:38
That was a hard no. If strategist media corp is taking me to Australia, then yes. I would love to hang out on vacation with you two, Carter. Would you want to be on a flight over
Corey
2:47
over the Pacific for us? 14 hours. For 12 hours. 14 hours. 14
Annalise
2:52
Sandwiched in between the two of you. Just
Corey
2:55
talking politics. Yeah, you have the middle seat.
Annalise
2:59
We could just live stream for 14 hours.
Corey
3:02
That'd be great. You
Carter
3:03
You know what? The
Carter
3:04
patrons would love that. The patrons would go nuts.
Annalise
3:07
Discord would be bumping.
Annalise
3:08
Guys, we've got important things to talk about. We're moving to our first segment, the home stretch. We've got five days left in this campaign. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. day i want you to uh seasoned campaign folks to walk me through campaign strategy in these final days what should a campaign be doing and what should they not be doing um these these last five days cory you've got thoughts let's hear them i
Corey
3:35
do have thoughts i think the main thing to do is to not lose your cool to not lose your mind we talked a little bit about this with zane but of course because it was zane he refused to actually make it about the alberta election and tried to generalize everything.
Corey
3:52
If you are the UCP, you need to keep it together. And if you're the NDP, you need to keep it together. And I like to say that in the last week, campaigns run against themselves. And what I mean is on campaign time, everything accelerates beyond normal
Corey
4:09
normal time and normal sense and normal human comprehension. And what you end up having is people sitting around with one week to go bored with everything they've said for the first three weeks it's doubting that anything they did in the first three weeks matters and saying what else are we going to throw out there what can we do what can we do to lock this up what can we do to change the channel and they start doing crazy things and and so it takes a certain discipline both as a central campaign and also as a local campaign to say you know what we've
Corey
4:39
we've done our things we've chosen our path we're going to implement that and And we're going to stick to the plan. Is the plan going to carry them over the finish line? Who the fuck knows? But I can tell you this. Changing the plan is not going to get them over the finish line. Changing the plan is not going to get them over the
Annalise
4:56
the finish line. Who the fuck knows?
Annalise
4:59
With changing the plan, detail
Annalise
5:02
detail that. What does
Annalise
5:04
does changing the plan... I mean, obviously, huge, huge change. But what about little things? Adding in little details or... like
Annalise
5:12
like yeah walk through what what you mean by changing nope
Corey
5:15
nope i mean the leader goes up to a microphone and says all i need to do is give that heartfelt speech like it's the end of a sorkin movie and i'm going to change it all right i mean going on to an editorial board and saying i'm willing to be the balance of power in a minority situation when nobody thinks that's possible yeah
Corey
5:36
calling everybody you know and letting them know that you've got the scuds And you're going to release all of the truth about health care in the final. You know, actually, now that I think about it, all of these are from the same campaign that I was involved in.
Corey
5:47
But I mean, stuff like that. You don't do those things. You've got to stick to the plan. And one of the challenges campaigns have is often the plan is pretty fuzzy on the paper by the time you get to week four. And we've talked about that, because you say like, oh, well, we're going to leave some flexibility for whatever becomes the issue. Or, yeah, we're going to react to whatever the top issue is at the moment, or we're going to try to frame it out based on the media hooks that are available there. Very dangerous, because then you start doing crazy things. Stick to the plan. It's pretty baked by now. We've already had in Alberta, what, almost 170,000 people vote, is the estimate, Stephen? Yeah,
Carter
6:23
something like that. I'll double check just as you're chatting. Continue.
Corey
6:28
so yeah you've got to sort of realize it is what it is at this point and the the worst thing you can do is try to try to make it into something different it's
Corey
6:37
it's just not enough time yeah
Annalise
6:38
carter what's the number as of
Carter
6:40
uh 8 15 is uh 161 830 which
Carter
6:46
which is approximately my rounding is
Corey
6:47
is a bit generous but yeah that's that's a lot of people yeah
Carter
6:50
yeah i mean and there's still going to be one more update before the end of the night so you may not be that far off by the the end of the night.
Annalise
6:58
Carter, what's your take? What should a campaign be doing and not be doing these final five days?
Carter
7:03
What you do at this particular point is you remember all the words that you said at the beginning of the campaign. Now you repeat them again, over and over again. And the other big thing is you are shifting from
Carter
7:16
so identifying vote, finding new voters, finding people who want to vote for you. You
Carter
7:20
You are now getting people out to So the last thing you really want to be doing is canvassing for new supporters. You want to go and you should be working on the telephones and getting those supporters that you've gotten over
Carter
7:32
over the last three weeks or three months or however long you've been running your campaign.
Carter
7:37
You've got to get those supporters to the polls. What you definitely don't want to be is that one door knocker in Rosedale that Heather just emailed me about that's knocking on doors and waiting far too long for someone to answer. You
Carter
7:49
You don't want to be that person who's, you know, out there trying to find a last few voters. It's about finding the, you know, the 6,000, 8,000, 10,000 people that you've identified in your riding and getting them to the polls. polls if 160 000 people have voted today you
Carter
8:05
you know divide that up between you know the the 87 ridings and figure out exactly how many you know did you get your 2 000 or 3 000 people out to the polls that you needed today i don't know if my math is even close to correct it's
Corey
8:17
it's not great no no
Carter
8:18
no i you know what i i immediately said why am i doing why am i doing math on the fly here doesn't feel like it's a particularly good idea but i did it anyways for the for the patrons that's what i did it for that's
Corey
8:30
that's good of you that
Corey
8:32
really good of you yeah
Annalise
8:34
uh why did heather email you about that door she texted i but the word came out of conversation okay yeah
Carter
8:40
yeah she's out right now walking the dogs and apparently watching uh a single door knocker in rosedale or rosemont or wherever she is i don't know where she is she's
Carter
8:49
she's out walking a dog i don't know i don't pay attention I should pay attention more.
Annalise
8:56
super, super informative. You're
Carter
8:59
taking pleasure in my pain, by the way, Annalise, is something that the listeners love. They
Carter
9:03
They enjoy that a tremendous amount. So thank
Carter
9:06
thank you for that. I'm grateful.
Annalise
9:08
We've heard a lot that this campaign is about the undeciders. Yeah.
Annalise
9:12
How do you get the undeciders to decide in these final five days?
Carter
9:18
I'm glad you didn't listen to Coriara. I'm really pleased that neither one of us made any impact on you.
Carter
9:25
You don't, okay? I'm going to take you back till you find your 8, your 10, your 12,000 people that you've identified, and you get them to the polls. This is not the time to figure out, you know what, 20% of the electorate still hasn't decided. You know where they're going to be on election day? They're still going to be undecided. They're not going to vote. The
Carter
9:43
The only people you care about are the 12,000, 10,000, or 8,000 people that you've identified. And if it's fewer than that, that you've identified, then fuck it, go home, you're done, you're going to lose. So you know, if it's 8, 10 or 12,000 people you've identified, get them out to the polls. That's what each and every day is all about.
Annalise
10:02
Okay, but you guys, okay, you've been in those rooms, is it tempting to just kind of at this point, panic, essentially be like, well, things are really close. And we've got five days, let's just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks like, yeah, sure. Walk me through that.
Corey
10:17
Yeah, it looks less like let's throw everything at the wall and more like somebody says, let's leave everything on the field, right? We don't get these days back. We just got to go for it. We got to swing for the fences. We got to do the thing that's going to get us the stuff. Make a comment like, if I can't prove this, I will resign immediately. Immediately. Again, same campaign. Strange how that keeps working. But, you know, you see all of these really dramatic movie-style moments that people try to create in order to get the outcome that they want. But frankly, if
Corey
10:49
if it didn't work in the first bit, it's not going to work in the last bit. And Stephen's point about the undecideds, I want to expand on a little bit.
Corey
10:57
Who are you that you're undecided at this particular point? And I don't just mean that in kind of a rhetorical sense, like you are somebody, there
Corey
11:06
there is no helping you, you're not going to make a decision about this. Listen, I'm not saying every undecided voter is just floating around and has no ability to make a choice, but an awful lot of them fall into that category at this particular moment. And are they going to make choices? Some will, but it's probably not going to be because anything of you are doing, because what you've done to date has not actually had an impact at the moment. So it'll end up being something like one of their friends says, hey, have you voted yet? It's election day. And they go, oh, I don't know. I wasn't really going to vote. I think I'm going to vote for David Swan. I like him. Oh, no, he hasn't run into elections. You can't. Oh, okay. Who's the person like David Swan then in this riding? Well, David Swan never ran in this riding, but I think you're thinking of Marlon Schmidt. He's the NDP candidate here in Edmonton Gold. David Swan's actually from Calgary, Margaret. Like, are you feeling okay? Have you gotten too much sun? Oh, so should I vote? Should I vote for Marlon? Yeah,
Corey
12:04
I would vote for Marlon if you like David Swan. I think that's pretty good, Margaret. I think that's what you should do. So then Margaret goes to the polls and Margaret accidentally votes for the UCP candidate. And that's what an undecided voter is at this particular moment. This is how they're deciding. This is the decision making that an undecided voter goes through at this point. yeah
Annalise
12:25
was good cory that was i love the introduction of the the bob stuff yeah margaret margaret
Carter
12:30
margaret coming in is unexpected unexpected yeah fantastic i already
Corey
12:35
already like her i like margaret yeah
Carter
12:37
yeah i don't like margaret
Carter
12:38
i'm gonna tell you why she had to figure
Carter
12:40
out who to vote for and it's like
Carter
12:43
controversial election with with polar opposites uh in terms of you know what the uh what the outcome could be and and margaret still can't make up her fucking mind because margaret's apparently uh brain she's
Corey
12:55
she's heard things from both sides and you know she's just not sure yeah
Carter
12:58
yeah great people on both sides thanks donald thank
Annalise
13:03
carter what what would you say to margaret
Carter
13:06
what would i say to margaret nothing because i'm not calling or speaking to margaret i am focused on my eight ten or twelve thousand people that we've already identified um listen there are lots of margarets in in these types of things in fact there's a about a third of the people who go to the polling stations on any given day will make up their minds between 72 hours and 72 seconds before they cast their ballot. There is a large number of people who, but it is different than being undecided in a poll. And we can talk more about polling at a different date, but bottom line, how you engage is super important. And the poll, when someone calls you for a poll, that changes the way you engage. When you go to the ballot box, you stay undecided much longer because you're not forced to pick, right? You're not forced between the green gum and the orange gum. I'm not even sure if those are colors of gum. I don't even know what I'm talking about tonight. I'm
Corey
14:00
I'm such a bundle
Carter
14:01
bundle of nerves. Why are they green and orange? I don't know.
Carter
14:04
You said orange and
Carter
14:06
It's a mess. I don't know. Why
Annalise
14:07
Why are you a bundle of nerves? I'm
Carter
14:09
I'm a bundle. You know what? You're making me nervous. Why?
Carter
14:12
You're making me nervous. What's going on,
Annalise
14:13
on, Carter? It's this whole thing at
Carter
14:14
at the National that we're going to do on election night, you and I. It's freaking me out. Where's my safety net at Corey Hogan? over on cbc radio who
Carter
14:23
who the fuck does cbc radio on election night what
Carter
14:27
what tv wasn't available cory oh what a setback i've
Corey
14:30
i've done tv on election night i wanted a new experience i wanted
Corey
14:34
done that i wanted the rich texture that comes from an audio medium it sounds like someone
Carter
14:39
someone who wasn't invited when you talked like that i wasn't invited it's
Corey
14:42
it's true but and
Annalise
14:43
now carter's left to do tech tech stuff so everything's good yeah
Annalise
14:49
yeah everything's good how okay how hard is it to stay on message and focus right now in a campaign like you both of you have said repeatedly that's all that your job is for the next five days yeah how hard is that when you're getting internal polling you're seeing other polling you're talking to people like how how hard is it to just put your head down and stay focused cory it's
Corey
15:10
it's like impossible it's so hard and it's really easy from the outside said to say why are they losing their heads why is this not working but between the stakes the fact that an election is a finite period of time that leads to consequences for four years personal consequences for many of the organizers who are involved you know who may or may not have jobs after this moment depending on how it all works out right like that's that's some high stakes but then there's also the physical limitations of the human body and we talked about this a few months ago i think maybe it was at the start of the election but you get tired you
Corey
15:42
really tired And so not only are you kind of mentally tired of listening to the same message that you've heard your leader espouse for 21 days at this point, and you start thinking, like, it's not working. It's not working. The polls aren't changing. It's not working. We got to mix it up. You get that mental tiredness, but you have a physical tiredness, too. and any anyone will tell you any physician you talk to like a certain amount of fatigue is the same as being impaired from alcohol they're all there right now nobody is sleeping everybody is working around the clock it's pure adrenaline people's
Corey
16:14
people's better instincts fall to pieces at this particular moment yeah
Carter
16:19
yeah yeah it's it's super hard to keep on track and at least like you and and then there's this sense that if you just did one last thing you could fundamentally change the outcome if you just did one last thing but there is no one last thing right like it's you know um you could we did the in 2010 peter oliver one of the volunteers who was working with nenshi came up with the idea of putting chalk um you know vote today vote nenshi um fantastic idea you know you know why it was a fantastic idea completely harmless didn't hurt anybody and kept like 180 volunteers busy on on on the night before the election it was a make work project that wasn't going to win the election wasn't going to lose the election it was just get out and do something now it turns out that was completely illegal you're not allowed to do that but nonetheless as
Annalise
17:12
you were describing that i'm like i remember those stories like that wasn't that
Corey
17:17
that wasn't allowed to get somebody to vote there's a lot of things people don't realize you're not allowed to do but you can't give people food no one would drink like
Corey
17:25
to tell them to no one
Carter
17:26
one would give food to someone to vote like professional campaigners know that that's just a no-no
Corey
17:31
yeah yeah in alberta for sure you
Annalise
17:34
you can't give food and you can't do what was the sidewalk chalk rule again it was where they were doing it wasn't no it's it's
Carter
17:39
actually graffiti on the on this you know every time like if you're when your kid goes and and uh does the graffiti on the uh or Or like the chalk on the... Yeah,
Corey
17:49
Yeah, the graffito text. That
Carter
17:50
That is against the law because it's graffiti even though it will wash away with the rains.
Corey
17:57
Again, if it's one, it's just graffito. Yeah.
Carter
18:00
You've made an excellent point, Corey. Once again, your
Carter
18:03
your leadership on this podcast is
Carter
18:05
is recognized and noted. Thank you, sir. But
Annalise
18:07
But okay, Carter, are you saying the chalk thing, had it not been illegal, that was a good idea just because it occupied people during final days when they want to do...
Carter
18:16
do... You know, when we didn't do anything stupid, like, for example, okay, so here's, here's a story that not everybody knows. And maybe I've told on the podcast before, maybe I haven't.
Carter
18:24
But who knows, we'd told Denchi, you know, so Barb Higgins got in trouble for campaigning on overpasses, right? Because you're not allowed to campaign on an overpass that that's technically illegal. It's actually stunting under the Traffic Act, because you are impeding traffic, and you are creating a visual, a visual problem. So on election day, we get a telephone call, Chima and I around 545 in the in the maybe 515 in the evening. It's Nenshi's body person. And she's calling to tell us that they ignored our requests not to campaign on these overpasses. And they were campaigning on the overpass at Southland Station over top of McLeod Trail. And they caused an accident.
Carter
19:13
so they were all in the midst of running off of the uh running off of the uh the overpass trying to not get caught uh and we chima and i were convinced that the six o'clock news was going to lead with nahid nenshi causes massive accident and we were trying to figure out what the impact would be because this is i don't know if you're aware but that's not a great way not a a great way to to win votes but that's the decision making
Annalise
19:41
i had no idea that's
Carter
19:42
that's the decision making that happens at the end of a campaign you're doing something you're literally told not to do because you're just tired and you're trying to squeeze out a few just what
Corey
19:51
what that last thing and
Carter
19:52
and we thought honestly we thought we can send him out there what
Carter
19:56
what harm could he possibly create and
Carter
19:58
and he created an accident i mean no one was hurt um i
Carter
20:03
truth be told we don't really know no because we the group that was there kicked ass and got off the thing got out of there quickly i can tell you like
Corey
20:10
like you better hope not i'm wondering what the statute of limitations is on that gotta
Carter
20:15
less than it's got to be less than 13 years
Carter
20:19
and it wasn't me it's not like i was up there fuck i mean you're not morally okay fuck
Carter
20:22
fuck nancy nancy can get the ticket like nancy can get the i didn't do it
Annalise
20:27
it i'm is that that being tired though does it not like impair um your judgment a lot at at this point in the campaign and i guess how how do you combat that like how important i know carter you've talked before and we had conversations lots during the municipal campaign like you would pick up the phone and call people like what are what are kind of strategies to just like deal
Annalise
20:47
deal with hey we're all really tired and we're in a bubble and we're making dumb decisions yeah
Corey
20:53
yeah well so it is the last week so in theory some people's work is done like if you're zane velge your work is probably pretty close to done you're doing advertisements and there's not a lot of advertisements to do from a production point of view from a creation point of view by the time you hit the fourth week so use those people right make sure it's like you're a relatively new parent annalise you know it's it's like the rule about always have one parent who's rested right like make sure somebody
Annalise
21:17
somebody good rule yeah yeah it's
Corey
21:19
it's a really good rule and i campaign should follow that rule as well and try to make sure somebody is still there with their head on their shoulders who can be that voice of reason and say like hey
Corey
21:30
hey man i don't think so i don't think we need to go do a sign wave from southland drive overpass i think that that that's like what is that going to get us what's the potential downside there
Carter
21:42
yeah but they're just you know for me we i try to not get too tired um so because you literally just can't make decisions and all you're doing as a campaign manager at this point is making decisions uh in fact i talked to a campaign manager today and you know trying to remove
Carter
22:03
remove the requirement of making decisions there's an awful lot of campaigns that switch over at this point from a campaign manager to a gotv manager and almost all authority for the entire campaign switches at this point over to someone else and the reason for that is very simple the new person has got fresh legs and they can go um and and they can push through uh this really difficult time uh and they also have a plan that was agreed to weeks ago right
Carter
22:33
right they know exactly how many uh volunteers they need they know where to put the volunteers they know what the volunteers are supposed to say they've got it all mapped out because it was done at a time when people weren't losing their minds. And that GOTV manager is then able
Carter
22:47
able to implement the plan for getting out the vote, not a plan for winning the election. They're two different structures.
Corey
22:55
That's such a great point. And so historically, like back in the day, when I did this a lot, and I did this professionally, like E-Day is what I did. Like I was that GOTV chair, I was that E-Day chair.
Corey
23:05
And you're right, there's a point, it's right around now, it really starts in,
Corey
23:10
in, well, because because advanced polls are now so prominent, it's, it's now it's
Corey
23:15
it's happening now, but historically it happens a couple of days before these polls start. And it just, all of a sudden it switches over and the volunteer chair works with the EDA chair and, and they're, they're taking their marching orders from somebody else. And the campaign manager is just keeping that limited amount of activity that still exists out there on the rails that needs to stay on the rails, but you're doing entirely different things for entirely different purposes with an entirely different team hundreds of volunteers being marshaled in to take care of what is now the
Corey
23:46
the the ultimate conclusion of all of that vote identifying that's happened in the election so far which is now that you've identified them get them out to fucking vote yeah
Carter
23:56
yeah and and with provincial wide campaigns and at least there's one other there's one other factor and that's moving your resources so if you are comfortable that you're going to win a seat you should be moving that like right now the telephone rooms in edmonton should primarily be focused on calgary so if you get a telephone call asking you you know have you yet voted from the ndp today or tomorrow that call you know should have a 50 50 likelihood of being generated in calgary or edmonton because you don't need the resource in edmonton you need the resource in calgary so you're doing it you know and that's part of the reason you're handing over to a new team because that new team has been marshalling all of those new resources bringing everyone together making sure they're being applied to the absolute right position
Annalise
24:43
on on that moving of resources there was um posts
Annalise
24:47
posts on the weekend about the UCP doing stuff in Edmonton um
Annalise
24:50
um rallies and Brian Jean talking about Edmonton and that sort of thing can you can you speak to that like I had several people kind of ask me that question of what
Annalise
24:58
what are they doing like Like, that would be like if Rachel was out in rural Alberta
Annalise
25:03
Alberta right now when she knows that it's all about Calgary. Like, is that a sign that the UCP thinks that they have won Calgary and now they can focus on Edmonton? Is that like, walk us through what is happening there. It is
Carter
25:16
is one of the oldest feints in the book, right? Right. And so the feint is we will put our leader into a place that we know that we're weak in order for you to think that you have to keep your resources there. It's the equivalent of a general saying we're going to launch a fake attack on our southwest flank, knowing that we're actually going to go from the north from the northeast. east right like however these these these
Carter
25:44
these faints these tricks yeah they're often not done for actual outcomes right so you know even rachel notley she stopped in red deer she was in leduc she was you know like the places that she was stopping i would say are marginal right like they are one step away from this is where we absolutely need to win but she was in edmonton Of course you put her in Edmonton the weekend before your big GOTV because that's the last chance to put her there. She's
Corey
26:13
She's not going to get back there.
Carter
26:14
there. She's not coming back. So you do your things up there. On your way down, you're passing through Red Deer. You may as well do a rally.
Carter
26:20
And then you get to Calgary, and now it's where the
Carter
26:23
the rubber hits the road, right? She's doing rallies down in the south. She's doing rallies in the northwest. She's doing all of the different pushes to get all those volunteer resources into one place. and that the faint that comes from the from the ucp i mean my problem with the ucp in doing this is i think that the ucp their faint was too big right no one was buying that they're going to get three seats four seats five seats in edmonton if they'd done their faint in the donut if they'd done their faint in calgary bow and maybe those faints are coming later then then you start to see oh well maybe right but
Carter
27:00
but you've got to look strong when you're weak you got to look weak when when you're, you know, where you're strong, like it's, it's all about kind of getting
Carter
27:06
getting your, getting your opponent to put their resources in the wrong spot.
Corey
27:11
Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's, it's, there's also kind of a public element and there's a, your own team element to it as well, right? You want to, you want to kind of fake a certain momentum, even when you don't have it, you want to get people motivated saying, yeah, we're going to take the fight to them. You want those Edmonton people to come and volunteer and sure, maybe you're going to throw them on a phone bank for Calgary, but you want to keep the energy levels up. So Danielle Smith being in Edmonton, I don't think that was a misallocation of resources because of the same logic why Rachel Notley was there. You're not going to be there again. You're going to be in Calgary the entire time. So by all means, I do agree with Stephen. It kind of, it went a little beyond straining credulity when you started seeing people say, oh, six seats are in play, like Fox six seats are in play in Edmonton. In 2019, the NDP won all but but one seat and this is a stronger election for the ndp i think we all acknowledge that i think we realize that is it pot now look if they had said hey daniel smith did two rallies in edmonton decor maybe i'd go oh what's
Corey
28:11
what's going on at edmonton decor oh that's interesting i've heard a few things about edmonton decor and maybe that would have piqued my curiosity but the suggestion that
Corey
28:20
huge swaths of edmonton are going to go towards the ucp is just not plausible i agree with steven And probably that effort would have been better focused on the donut. But if you want to stick in the city, pick a couple of areas, pick a region of the city. Don't try to convince me that a third of the city is going to go UCP. That's just not going to happen. yeah
Annalise
28:41
um just last one on this we've we've talked kind of several times throughout this campaign about who's won right like who's won the debate who won the first week at this point kind of five days until e-day is there a campaign or a leader that you think i
Annalise
28:55
guess that you think is winning or that is like acting like they're winning like is is there one that is acting like hey yeah we've got this yeah
Carter
29:02
yeah i mean for me it's not lee uh she looks like the the the the actions Actions that are being taken look like more like a winning campaign from her side. I'm not saying necessarily that she is winning, but it certainly looks more like a winning campaign. And that is
Carter
29:19
is partly due to the decisions that are being made, the rallies that are being held, and also just the oppo that the NDP are doing. The NDP oppo, you know, like the pictures that they had from the donut on the weekend where, you know, only 15 people showed up to do a door knocking session or something like that. And they spun it that this was a sad, pathetic turnout for an area that the UCP are supposed to be doing super well in. Like, I thought that that was very well executed. I thought that they had a pretty solid approach to building out this narrative that they were going to do fairly well. So to me, the NDP looks more credible at this particular moment. But, you know, everything shifts around and you can't trust anybody in election week.
Corey
30:08
Yeah. You know, my challenge is that I'm getting too old, right? And
Corey
30:13
can't stop. I know, right?
Corey
30:15
I can't stop, but
Corey
30:18
but feel marveled by how well the NDP are doing relative to a decade ago, where
Corey
30:24
any of this province was like nothing was competitive. And the fact that we now have an NDP that can do the kinds of things Stephen's talking about, that have that kind of force, are a player, if not the player in this election in terms of setting that agenda and driving the conversation. Big campaign, multi-million dollar campaign, candidates everywhere, really playing to win. I have a hard time not just looking at that and saying, holy shit, like what Rachel Notley has managed to create out of the NDP since 2014 is totally surreal. And we can get pretty blasé about it. The world moves on pretty quickly. But that was nine years ago. Nine
Corey
31:00
Nine years ago, people talked about this province as being a one party state. This is now our third competitive election in a row. And it's one where arguably the NDP look like the tougher campaign organization against a conservative party that has governed for fucking ever, forever. Right? I mean, it's hard not to just be really like when you take that even one step, step back from the campaign, be really, really impressed with what the NDP have managed to do in less than a decade. and you know for that reason I kind of have a hard time scoring it on points individually here I do think probably it's closer than it feels to me because for me it feels just like amazing what the NDP have managed to pull off but you know the reality is we can see the polls we know things are still pretty tight in certain areas we know that this is this is a dog fight right it's by it's by no means a walk for either party and I think you got to give credit where Where credits do, the UCP, despite
Corey
31:57
despite all of the body blows Daniel Smith has taken, is somehow still in this, right? And so there's something to that as well. And you do have to acknowledge that.
Annalise
32:09
We'll leave it there. And we'll move on to our next segment. Our next segment is called Polls and Predictions. And we've got a lot to talk about, guys. Oh, I'm so good at predictions.
Annalise
32:21
There are polls. People have questions. Carter and I were talking earlier today. He's got a whole spreadsheet. He's got predictions. He
Annalise
32:29
He wants to talk about it. And I want to square kind of Carter's spreadsheet with polls. So I guess just before we get into that, you two have been around for a while. Corey, you said you're feeling old. How does this polling environment today in 2023 compared to past elections? I mean, in 2019, we saw UCP
Annalise
32:51
UCP clearly ahead. In
Annalise
32:53
In 2015, NDP was ahead, but no one believed it. Like, where are we at now, given how much closer the polls are than previous elections? So
Carter
33:03
So let's go back and remind people of what polls are used for. Polls are used to show a degree of momentum and overall support. court. When we are doing 87 individual elections, polls can be very useful in kind of getting the tone and tenor of the 87, but they are not particularly good or particularly useful at predicting what's going to happen inside those 87 ridings, especially when you've got ridings that are behaving differently and not made up of the same types of individuals. So I've been on the wrong end of polls a couple of times, right? 2012, I told people we were going to win with 62 seats and everybody thought I was a lunatic. There wasn't a single poll, not a single poll that had us winning, let alone a poll that had us winning a significant majority. And people looked at me like I was a lunatic. And I was a lunatic. I was a lunatic that was right because the polls were unable to pick up on a significant change. And they were unable to pick up on some of the things that were actually happening underneath. Now, some would say that's just a delay factor. It wasn't just a delay factor. It was decisions being made late and the social fabric not yet locking in. And I think that we have some of that happening today, where the cultural nature of our province has been to be conservative, right? We vote conservative. That's what we do, even when we were electing very liberal conservatives, right? We were electing very liberal conservatives, whether it was Peter Lougheed, Ralph Klein in his later days, Ed Stelmack, Alison Redford. Prentice was the first conservative really to come in since the 1993 conservative of Ralph Klein. So we behave like we're super conservative, but our values are different. The
Carter
34:52
The polling, by the way, has picked up on that inconsistency for years and years and years. The pollsters know that this is our value set, but they don't
Carter
35:02
don't understand how that actually translates to making decisions. All they have is this indication that
Carter
35:08
that when asked, people are choosing the UCP more than they're choosing the NDP currently in a province-wide poll. And then they're applying it to 87 different elections. And my contention is that that application to 87 different elections works very well in Edmonton. It works very well in rural Alberta, but it is going to be off a titch in Calgary, primarily
Carter
35:32
primarily because of the distribution of the visible minority population and our history of how we choose to make, how people elect people in Calgary. We see different quadrants, different regions behave in different ways. And I've seen that up close firsthand in a whole bunch of different elections.
Annalise
35:51
Kate Carter, you didn't answer my question at all. Yeah, I was going to say, really, really interesting. interesting yeah i'll let cory do that i think i did actually it's all good i think the discord will show
Annalise
36:01
totally did what we teach in media training which is you didn't answer it at all it's all good but just uh just to square one thing when you said you said you predicted 62 in 2012 how many seats did you get in 2012 it
Carter
36:12
it was embarrassing we only got 63 okay
Annalise
36:16
uh cory do you want to answer the question that i did don't
Annalise
36:18
don't do it carter didn't didn't answer or do you want Do you want to tell Carter why he's wrong? Mike is yours, Corey.
Corey
36:29
you look at polling, when you look at the state of polling, what polling has told us about past races, the reality is polling hasn't done too bad. 2012 was the exception, for sure was the exception. But there have been a couple of notable misses on the municipal side, right? Which maybe you can make a good case that Calgary is just really tough to poll. Super relevant if we've got a race that's coming down to Calgary. That's certainly a legitimate hypothesis I'm willing to entertain. But the reality is, like I have said this on the pod before, I have two rules about polling, right? Don't lie about polls. Don't let polls lie to you. and people let polls lie to themselves all of the time because they sit there and they look at them and they say ah but the margin of error ah but you know if you think about the results that's really only 10 per riding and what does it really tell us about ridings but if you look at the large numbers when you think about the overall thrust of these things the reality is simple 2019 polls were pretty good 2015 polls were pretty good people misremember 2015 people should should should take a look they will surprise themselves to see that 2015 the final polls were really really predictive of the final result and 2012 was a miss 2012 was a miss for a lot of things across the board here but polls don't become a polling nihilist just because one poll was wrong if you want to come to me with a theory as to why the polls might be missing
Corey
37:54
sometimes there are misses in the polls you know and it come with a good theory but because you You can always sell yourself a theory. Look at that theory with a jaundiced eye, right? Really contemplate what the likelihood of that particular theory is here. So to answer your question in short form, what have the polls told us? Usually the results of the election.
Annalise
38:15
Do you see how Corey wrapped that up with a bowl at the end there, Carter? That was good. I'll tell you something. I'm
Carter
38:21
with him right now. Corey,
Annalise
38:22
Corey, let's do this. You be like the voice of polling. Carter be the voice of his predictions. Can I
Carter
38:31
jump in on a second?
Annalise
38:31
second? No, I want to talk about the
Carter
38:32
the spreadsheet. You've been waiting all day to talk about the spreadsheet. But I'm going to take modest issue, modest issue with your word predictions.
Annalise
38:45
Well, it sounds nice with polls. You think it's projections.
Annalise
38:48
Projection? No, I want to talk about
Carter
38:51
about observations. Observations. Because what I have is I don't have predictions that, you
Carter
38:57
you know, I do have certain predictions that certain ridings will go certain ways. And I'd be willing to put fairly decent currency into most of the ridings that I'm predicting. But it doesn't get the NDP to government and it doesn't get the UCP to government. my predictions of the actual seat tallies will work out to about 38 to 38 where
Carter
39:18
where i then start to you know to try and prognosticate trying to figure things out uh not predict but where i'm looking at things and where i'm looking at trends um i
Carter
39:30
i don't quite get to to you know picking winners and losers i have who i think could win uh but but both parties could win the uh the
Carter
39:40
the the remaining ridings and that's what makes it so
Corey
39:42
so you have you have like a and then there were 11 like there's 11 seats you think the selection is basically just
Carter
39:47
just double check i've got it color-coded one two okay three four well you said you
Carter
39:56
eight nine ten no i'm sorry i have 39 39 to 38. Yeah, 39 to 38.
Annalise
40:04
10. I mean, Corey and I have seen your spreadsheet, but so you have 38 as NDP wins. Yeah,
Carter
40:11
Yeah, 38 NDP wins.
Annalise
40:13
39 UCP wins. What
Annalise
40:15
What are you basing that
Annalise
40:18
on before we get into?
Carter
40:19
You know, previous behavior. You know, for example, I'm betting right now that Rimby Rocky Mountain House is most likely to remain a UCP safe site, given that
Carter
40:29
that they had, like, 75 of the vote or no they had a vote margin over the ndp last time of 75 points uh you know it's going to be tricky it's going to be tricky now i have had people tell me that that one might be in play here's my reaction you're on crack that one is not in play but you know i love their optimism i really do okay
Annalise
40:51
so then walk us walk us through the 10 remaining seats so
Carter
40:55
so the 10 remaining seats kind of fall into uh primarily calgary but there's a little bit around the donut so the remaining seats um fort saskatchewan and leduc are the two in the donut that you know so the area around edmonton that yeah
Corey
41:08
yeah can we aside can we sidebar here for a little sidebar when
Corey
41:12
when did we start calling this the dome i
Carter
41:14
i don't know because it's not one of my fucking hate it i'm not a fan i don't like it
Annalise
41:18
it i figured you would know the answer i think i think
Carter
41:20
think we picked it up from from lou i think
Carter
41:22
think we need to blame lou for this because lou as you know is a lunatic uh and we would probably be afraid to
Carter
41:30
contradict him and say that's a stupid fucking name for a reason
Annalise
41:35
don't you like the name the donut cory well
Corey
41:38
for starters it's not really a donut it's like
Carter
41:42
really it's a horseshoe yeah
Corey
41:43
it's you know for seconds for seconds if we're going back for a second course here like
Corey
41:49
like that is is that's just such a generic term like any city could have an area around the city is that do we call them all donuts i don't
Carter
41:57
i don't like it no no one likes it we should start we're gonna start calling it uh okay the area around
Corey
42:02
the suburbs isn't that what historically people have called no the suburbs in a
Carter
42:10
can we clip this part out that was just embarrassing um
Annalise
42:14
carter and i had the same response there too that's unusual that
Carter
42:16
that was embarrassing okay so there's there's seven seats in the in the horseshoe uh the area around the you know the cities around let's
Corey
42:23
let's think let's workshop a new name yeah
Corey
42:25
we'll put it in the later
Carter
42:28
think that they're probably going to win uh they're
Carter
42:31
they're probably going to win four of them they being the ndp it's going to be you know st albert moranville st albert uh and the two sherwood park seats and then the two Two that are kind of iffy are Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville and Leduc-Beaumont. But those ones have such big gaps that are required to be, you know, changed.
Carter
42:49
changed. Like Leduc-Beaumont would require a 30-point swing from the last election. So if we're looking at the polling, it just doesn't feel like that would be overtaken. So I have them leaning. Those are my two seats, lean NDP. Those are
Annalise
43:04
are two in your 10. Lean
Annalise
43:08
In the 10. We're talking about year 10 here. And
Carter
43:11
And then the remaining eight, I have leaning NDP.
Carter
43:15
So Calgary Cross, for example, is right in the middle of the Northeast segment. And now the Northeast, high visible minority population, very strong relationship with Irfan Sabir, sitting MLA, who's done a very good job of mobilizing the Northeast. and the numbers that I'm seeing in the Northeast show that the Northeast is probably going to go almost entirely NDP. Calgary Cross is a little bit different just because it has, it's a little bit different makeup in terms of visible minorities and such, but it probably will go to the NDP. I think that it will, but I'm not putting it in as for sure. Then we started getting into less less comfortable. Calgary Bow, Calgary Glenmore, Calgary North, Calgary Acadia. Those four Calgary ridings are super pulley. They very easily could go to the NDP, but they also could
Carter
44:11
could theoretically go back to the UCP. Right now, we've got Calgary Acadia, obviously Tyler Shandro, super embattled UCP person, minister, MLA minister. Drew Farrell is bringing a bunch of negatives into Calgary. Bo should be relatively a lock, but isn't. Calgary Glenmore, Whitney Izzik is a fairly successful sitting MLA for the UCP. Najwan is spectacular as a candidate for the NDP. but it's just it's a long get and then of course calgary north who knows uh it's just it's kind of right in the middle of white town it's it's not really the same as everywhere else up at the north um and i said that the ndp had strathcona sherwood park i i i should rectify that i have strathcona sherwood park leaning ndp carter
Annalise
45:10
carter i'm getting flashbacks to the live show bro i'm
Annalise
45:14
you had the powerpoint you're super
Carter
45:16
listen guys this is what the fucking patrons pay for this is what the patrons i have two more seats that are the least likely for the used ndp to get but i still think lean that way and it's calgary northwest and calgary foothills calgary foothills is the home riding of uh jim prentice uh before he had his spectacular uh leaving of politics i almost said blow up but that would have been completely inappropriate appropriate so
Carter
45:41
no i moved away from it that's why i didn't say it um but the then you have um calgary
Carter
45:47
calgary northwest which i was in on the weekend we talked about it yesterday on the pod cory i think that it feels like it's going to go towards the ndp um talking to people in northwest talking to the ndp talking to the ucp it feels like that one's certainly on an edge so
Carter
46:02
so that's where my eight ridings are leaning ndp and my leaners uh into
Annalise
46:11
pretty good strong strong conclusion there carter let
Annalise
46:14
let me tell you this dying to jump in let me
Carter
46:17
me tell you that i'm
Corey
46:18
i'm just dying the
Carter
46:19
the ndp need to win six of the eight that they're that i believe are leaning towards them it's a big fucking hill so
Carter
46:25
so i am not here today predicting an NDP government, but I am saying that there is a possibility that the NDP could certainly win this.
Corey
46:34
Yeah. So I, I mean, I have a hard time arguing against that conclusion. I'm being the voice of polls here for a minute here because the polls basically say the same thing. Like, if you're going to look at them and if you're going to take a more basic seat projection, which I will say right off the top, Fournier, you know, Scribshaw, all of the people who are doing seat projections i i appreciate much more the view of calgary that you take from being a calgary-based practitioner for a long time and the nuances and bluntly i know you're not saying it but i'm going to say it you talk to a lot of people in both campaigns i do too and what you've said roughly matches the assessments i've heard from people on both sides okay that's
Carter
47:12
that's what it's based on it's not based on me just you know blowing some you know looking at a set of numbers on a spreadsheet and pulling a fucking projection out of my ass because i don't know uh you know acadia and cross uh i can't even tell the two apart which is like some of the projections that we see yeah
Corey
47:31
yeah i mean unnecessary shots fired but okay but
Carter
47:34
but that's my that's my modus operandi modus operandi really
Corey
47:38
did kind of tee that up for you but here's what i would say
Corey
47:42
like i can't dispute anything you said in terms of like is it is it possible absolutely it's possible. Polls say that too. If you look at the basic seat projections, they would say
Corey
47:52
probably some variant of 75% chance UCP wins, 25% chance NDP wins based on the poll of polls, you know, including some results that are not particularly strong for the NDP, which seem to be really living there in a big way right now. But you know, even with the quote unquote bad results, it's saying it's a one in four chance for the NDP. So how in the world could I dispute what what you're saying at this particular moment. I would argue that because of those seat by seat nuances, it's probably better than what they see because of everything that you've just articulated, not disputing that. I do want to say the danger of doing what you have done without the data that you have, and maybe even with the data you have, Stephen, is that there has never been a losing campaign in a close race in the history of losing campaigns in close races that have not seen the the signs that they're going to win, right? Yeah, the polls say this, but the vibe's good at the door. Yeah, the polls say this, but did you see how many volunteers we had out? Something's happening in that neighborhood. These are the cries of losing campaigns everywhere. And you've got to be very careful not to let polls lie to you. My second rule of polling here. And you've really got to take the numbers for what they are. And it's really important because you talked about one of the jobs in the last week being the resource allocation. That's 100% true. And we We haven't really spent a lot of time in what that looks like, but it is sending volunteers. It is getting phone banks towards areas. It is putting money at the last minute into, you know, the limited advertising options you have in that space. And if you start getting the wrong picture of things, if it starts to get cloudy, you're going to make wrong decisions. So you've got to be pretty clear eyed about these things as you move forward.
Carter
49:31
Yeah. I mean, I think that, um, you
Carter
49:34
know, I think that one of the things that's going on with with the polls that I'm really struggling with, is just the simple volatility, right? We had, at one point, Janet Brown came up with a poll and the NDP was up by eight. And everybody went, wow, that's crazy, because every other poll at that time had the UCP up. Then
Carter
49:52
Then about three weeks later, Janet poll came out, Janet poll, Janet Brown came up with another poll, completely inverted. So essentially a 16-point swing in three weeks. And those of us that were watching the election And I count us among them. I mean, maybe not so much you, Corey, but Annalise and I have been just hanging on this. And what we've seen in those intervening weeks did not lead us to believe that there would be a 16-point swing in the campaign, right? Right. There was no major announcements that really ticked. There was no there was no reason for the voters to significantly shift. And Abacus has seen the same types of shifts exactly inverted. And Leger and Keto, Keto Maggie from Main Street, who had the huge miss in in
Carter
50:42
in our mayoralty election years ago, for which he produced he produced kind of a paper about explaining why the miss occurred. heard and those types of things. Very interesting read. You should absolutely go and read it if you want to see how sometimes, you know, polling does go awry.
Carter
51:02
You know, he's basically got the NDP losing in the popular vote, but is making predictions that he's going to eat his hat if the NDP lose. So, you know, there's all kinds of movement and shifts and things like that going going around and so what i have tried to do is take information coming from both sides and look at it and say what does my experience tell me in these areas now i will say this i did the same thing with kent hair in 2000 whatever when did kent lose uh
Carter
51:33
uh 2015 or whatever no
Carter
51:37
19 whenever he lost feels like longer ago but
Carter
51:40
but what i was doing wasn't necessarily saying these
Carter
51:44
these areas are where we're going to do this this thing what i'm doing is benchmarking so when the results are coming in and you're not hitting those benchmarks you know exactly what you need to have and when you don't have them you go oh we're screwed dave wasserman in the united states is a lot of this where if this particular poll does not hit this particular number then we know we're dead and i'm doing a little bit of that with these seats if when we're watching the election night at the the national on uh on 10th avenue on uh election night on monday right monday annalise yeah
Carter
52:16
our annalise's company's hosting it i'm told there's going to be free alcohol um there's not there's
Carter
52:24
let's just set the record straight they're trying to
Corey
52:26
to bankrupt our co-host here this is just
Carter
52:28
just you know it's fun for me i'm uh i'm a rabble rouser um
Carter
52:32
but i think that you know if
Carter
52:35
if we start to see these things come in and all of a sudden sudden Calgary Northwest is a blowout for the UCP, then I think that we can accurately make the assessment that night. It seems like that path for success has now been removed. And that's one of the things that you want to have on election night is know all the different paths for success for the UCP and all the different paths for success for the NDP. And all I can tell you at this particular moment, for certainty, is I'm really, really comfortable in saying I don't think anybody's going to get over 50 seats i don't
Carter
53:09
don't think that either of these parties has the capacity to get over 50 seats and that is probably the only prediction i
Carter
53:15
i am prepared to make tonight i
Corey
53:18
mean that's an interesting one in its own right because of course that sets us up for a pretty wild time uh where very few mlas can hold the government hostage regardless of who the it's
Carter
53:28
it's going to be a gong show who
Carter
53:29
who you know i think if the ndp wins it'll be relatively constantly constant it'll be
Corey
53:33
be more stable but
Carter
53:33
but if the if the ucp wins we can put we could do a live podcast starting monday night and
Carter
53:40
and we may be still on the air when daniel smith is ousted as the leader i'm
Carter
53:45
i'm just saying that that could happen on monday night it
Carter
53:48
it is do that real can
Annalise
53:49
can you guys speak to that though um and thanks for that tidy conclusion there on your predictions carter i really really appreciate it but
Carter
53:58
top notch grade a yeah
Annalise
54:00
yeah but the the fact of like i don't know if people totally comprehend if if it is as close as people's predictions like what what that actually looks like and what that means can you walk
Annalise
54:14
walk us through it so people
Carter
54:16
people vote for all kinds of different reasons right and one of the ways that people vote is they vote for the winner and so when they're looking at polls or they're getting closer to it they they just go with the flow if they've got a you know a large number of blue signs in their neighborhood they'll just vote blue because you know i've always liked jim jim seems to have you know a blue sign up there um let's follow along right margaret drives past his house and margaret goes oh my god that's
Corey
54:42
that's fantastic i love jim i'm gonna vote the way by
Carter
54:45
by the way my margaret voice 100 times better than your margaret voice but
Corey
54:50
but oh my god i'm gonna i can't dispute that
Carter
54:53
for the you know the blue guys because danielle i mean i don't like her but jim does and jim's so much more educated about this stuff than i am um
Annalise
55:01
um margaret's voice is changing a lot holy cow carter she's
Carter
55:09
why do you gotta be so mean to me i
Carter
55:11
i try and make it entertaining entertaining.
Corey
55:15
a good voice. I like
Carter
55:17
Anyways, I think that with the polls being so close and changing, it
Carter
55:21
it just creates a really interesting dynamic of how do those late breaking voters make their decisions? Because all we know for sure, we've never been able to really crack the code of how late breaking voters make up their minds. But we do see certain patterns and the vote for the winner pattern is legit and in
Carter
55:41
this particular case in this particular city right now i'm not sure that the vote for the winner pattern exists in clarity so fascinating times
Carter
55:53
did i answer your question i
Annalise
55:56
don't think i'm not even trying i'm
Annalise
55:58
not even fucking i'm not even trying he wants to say to say something to uh to respond i think i answer answer your
Carter
56:04
your question every time and
Carter
56:06
the listeners will i'm gonna i'm gonna put it in the discord right now i'm gonna ask yeah
Corey
56:11
it's you you it's good zagging sometimes
Carter
56:13
sometimes here yeah i
Corey
56:15
i i mean i don't know i i feel like i want to respond to what steven said i feel like i would answer your question if i could remember it but we've no
Annalise
56:21
no response to what steven said he took us like totally down a different path totally better yeah
Corey
56:27
yeah we don't we really i mean truly we don't know know how people are going to break on these things at the last minute that is a reality that's a frustration campaigners have had forever most of the time the general rule is you say well undecideds are going to split along the same lines as everybody else but there are definitely exceptions to that rule there are definitely exceptions to that rule and sometimes you see undecideds just feel so discouraged they stay home i'll tell you something with elections alberta saying 180 000 votes cast on day one and that's not counting the special ballots is my understanding hard to imagine that that's the kind of election we're looking at here. Sometimes the undecideds break in different ways. They say, you know what, there's social pressure that I've just got to vote the way that my peer group is voting here and my peer group is up in arms. You know, that's also a possibility here. And we do have to acknowledge that one of the limitations of polling is with
Corey
57:21
with every election, and again, I don't want to be a polling nihilist. I actually, nine times out of 10 will default to the polls. I default to the polls in this particular moment too yeah i
Carter
57:30
i do but we do have to acknowledge
Carter
57:35
it's this great polling joke great polling joke we
Corey
57:39
we have to acknowledge that it's getting harder to poll and it's you know there are there are challenges with polling that get dragged into the elections as elections go on and it's a bit of an arms race you know pollsters do it one way that way starts to fail they have to make adjustments they and you know and so on and so forth it was ever thus and sometimes you have big polling misses i don't believe that's what's happening right now i believe in the final summation we'll look at it and we'll say the polls gave us this the view from the sky and on the ground it looked different because ultimately elections are about seats and ridings not about overall vote count and we have just got way too comfortable with seat projections that are not based on a ton and there's a lot of variability in provincial campaigns like if the ndp win that is the story we'll be telling ourselves not that polling was a miss not that polling was a fail but
Corey
58:27
but you know anything anything can uh kind of throw me off that you know if i have something different for breakfast i might feel different
Annalise
58:36
strong strong close there cory
Corey
58:38
cory i was doing
Annalise
58:39
really confident in your uh in your answer like well i have
Corey
58:43
have no confidence about it i'll tell you this like you want a strong answer my strong answer is i don't know what the fuck is gonna happen because if i turn off half of my brain I say the polls say this and it's going to be the UCP. And if I flip the half that's on, I say the NDP are going to win. All of the things I'm hearing, the chatter from campaigns, all of this, not just one campaign, but multiple campaigns, make me think the UCP wouldn't be stressed in the areas they're stressed if they were going to win this thing.
Corey
59:12
When I try to reconcile those two parts of my brain, it kind of breaks right now. It's a little bit of a challenge for me. And I guess we're all just going to have to find out in six days. And isn't that fun carter
Annalise
59:22
carter can you reconcile i wish i had two parts
Carter
59:24
parts to my brain
Annalise
59:28
we're gonna move into our lightning round on that note um where should we start lightning round palowski is doing a press conference tomorrow steps of the legislature noon what
Annalise
59:39
what are your predictions about uh what he what he's gonna say i
Corey
59:43
i predict my prediction oh oh jinx
Annalise
59:46
jinx Corey, you go first.
Corey
59:49
I predict that Stephen and I will be recording an episode tomorrow night to respond called
Corey
59:54
called The Deal of the Art. Oh,
Carter
59:56
it's going to be exciting.
Carter
59:57
It is going to be exciting. Good title. Yeah. Thank
Carter
1:00:00
Yeah. The Deal of the Art will be a live
Carter
1:00:03
live show, right? Three nights in a row. You
Carter
1:00:07
know what? It will be four nights in a row. It'll be four nights in a row because we're coming
Annalise
1:00:10
coming back on. Oh, yeah, because then it's Thursday. Yeah.
Carter
1:00:12
Because we're on Thursday.
Annalise
1:00:13
Thursday. Then you might as well just add a Friday in and then we might as well keep going. every night. I guess we're
Corey
1:00:17
a daily schedule now
Carter
1:00:18
for the rest of the election. Zane wanted us to be on there. Remember when Zane was pitching us and saying, Zane wanted us, but he didn't
Carter
1:00:24
didn't want us. He wanted you guys to do daily?
Carter
1:00:26
I can't do it, but you guys should. You guys should totally do
Annalise
1:00:29
Was this recently or a while ago? I mean, it
Corey
1:00:31
was a couple months ago. It
Carter
1:00:33
was before there was an Annalise. Oh,
Annalise
1:00:34
Oh, I do remember that. Remember we talked about it that much? Yeah, she
Annalise
1:00:38
there. And I was like, no.
Annalise
1:00:40
No, guys, I can't do it every night. Hard no. Carter, do you have any predictions for Polowski tomorrow?
Carter
1:00:45
No, I have no idea. I did get a couple of people calling me with theories, but their theories were far-fetched and poorly formed. And you know who
Corey
1:00:56
are. Drop it in the Hot Gossip channel. On Discord. That's
Annalise
1:01:00
That's the Hot Gossip. That's
Corey
1:01:01
That's what it's for. Do
Annalise
1:01:01
Do you know what's hopping on Discord? The Outdoor Channel, guys. That's the only channel I participate in.
Carter
1:01:08
literally the only one.
Annalise
1:01:09
Okay, you guys have both said, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you both said endorsements do not work. um
Annalise
1:01:16
um on that note we we are we're seeing former conservative MLA's um come out in support of the non-conservative party there was Lukasik, Lee Richardson, Doug
Annalise
1:01:28
Doug Griffiths, today Jim Foster who was an attorney general under Peter Law he kind of came out condemning Smith for for the conflict of interest stuff do do you think um I know you've said like endorsements don't work but if you kind to have this like everyday a new a
Annalise
1:01:45
new kind of person that's maybe respected in the conservative circles like does this does this send a message does this work or is this silly no
Corey
1:01:52
no i mean okay no no slight against jim who i don't know from from anybody but you remember how earlier this episode i was saying how how i had gotten old well
Corey
1:02:03
well jim was an mla before i was born you know This is not particularly relevant to the discourse. In
Annalise
1:02:09
In the 70s, yeah.
Corey
1:02:11
Yeah, and the thing is, there
Corey
1:02:13
there are a lot of former conservative MLAs. They governed the province for a very long time. There's literally hundreds of them. So to have five doesn't
Corey
1:02:21
doesn't exactly knock my socks off.
Carter
1:02:24
Okay. Carter, your thoughts? Yeah, I believe my previous answer was it will not make a difference. I would like to reiterate my previous answer. It still will not make a difference. Thank
Annalise
1:02:34
Both. Okay. Um, advanced voting, overrated, underrated. Do you guys vote advanced or do you, uh, do you do it on election day?
Corey
1:02:44
Uh, I prefer to do it election day, but I'm doing CBC radio. You know, we're going to be there when people turn on their radios to get election results because
Corey
1:02:53
because the internet's not. Yeah,
Carter
1:02:54
Yeah, no one, no one ever, you know, that's actually how most people get the results now is they, they go back, especially on the AM side, Corey, they go and listen,
Corey
1:03:02
on the radio, turn it on. It's going to be better than whatever these two have going on. No, because we're
Annalise
1:03:08
we're going to be in person. It's going to be so... There's not going to be free alcohol. Carter, stop saying that.
Annalise
1:03:14
It's going to be so fun. Yeah.
Annalise
1:03:16
Everybody's going to be hammered. It's so fun. It's going to be a party. I disagree.
Corey
1:03:20
The CBC Radio has myself, and I don't know if this is public knowledge yet, but friend of the pod, Jeremy Farkas, is going to be on the panel, too. Me and Jeremy are going to be dropping
Carter
1:03:30
dropping the news. Don't oversell this. I mean, will
Carter
1:03:33
will Nenshi make a guest appearance, too? I mean, who?
Corey
1:03:36
It'll be a real hootenanny. Enough of this. Enough of this. Enough of this negativity that you're bringing here.
Annalise
1:03:42
So because you're on CBC Radio, you advance voted? I advance voted. How did that go? How did that go?
Corey
1:03:49
Not a huge line, but a line. I had to wait in a line for a little bit of time. Everything was
Annalise
1:03:52
was fairly orderly. Was it in Crescent Heights East?
Corey
1:03:55
Che, for starters. Oh my God. Yeah.
Corey
1:03:58
Annalise. Like, I don't know what Che would be. Big mistake. It's Che. and no the advanced voting was in uh at the mount pleasant community center north of here there's actually a bit of an advanced voting dead zone around my house and um yeah it's i prefer on the day because you really get a feel for it you get to see what the crowds are like i just enjoy the fact that i can change my mind up to the last minute that's always a delight for me for some reason but uh no
Corey
1:04:27
no you advance is uh is where it's at if you've got anything to do on election day for sure because you don't want to risk not voting yeah
Annalise
1:04:34
yeah carter how about you overrated underrated how are
Carter
1:04:36
are you voting um well i think that advance is the way to go because then it's it's locked in and it's done and then when they start calling you and asking have you voted yet you can say yes i have without having to lie to them now i'm not above just lying to them but it is it is never stopped
Annalise
1:04:53
stopped you before it's a little
Carter
1:04:54
little easier you know if you don't have to lie but uh And vote early, vote often. So did you vote today? Oh, God, no. I was busy. No. I had like a whole appointment today. So I couldn't possibly.
Annalise
1:05:07
Busy ignoring my phone call.
Corey
1:05:08
Isn't just personally important. It is important. I mean, we're talking, we're seeing now like, what, 180,000 votes, as I was just saying, plus all of the special ballots before that. A huge amount of the voters will have voted before this weekend comes. And if you're a campaign, you've got to be awake to that. In some ways, we've gone from an election day to an election week, and
Corey
1:05:29
and activity shifts accordingly. And there are consequences. We talked a bit about them on the pod yesterday with Zane, but there have been times where there's late breaking news that would, you
Corey
1:05:40
you would imagine, change
Corey
1:05:43
Punching out a reporter, for example. Sean Chu.
Carter
1:05:47
think the Sean Chu jumped in yesterday. If you
Carter
1:05:50
you listen to the pod once in a while, you know, it wouldn't hurt. It
Annalise
1:05:53
It came out yesterday.
Carter
1:05:55
You know, it wouldn't hurt. Even more
Annalise
1:05:56
more than 24 hours.
Carter
1:05:58
I'm just saying. Okay,
Carter
1:06:00
We're going to leave it there. Other people
Annalise
1:06:00
people pay for the privilege.
Carter
1:06:01
privilege. You know, you can.
Carter
1:06:03
We just added you
Annalise
1:06:04
We're going to leave it there. Are we? You just added me in. Yeah, we're going to leave it there. That's the end of the lightning round. That is a wrap on episode 1066 of The Strategist. Corey and
Carter
1:06:12
and I may have a couple of other questions.
Annalise
1:06:16
My name is Annalise Klingbeil. With you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey. Have you voted yet, Annalise?
Annalise
1:06:26
No, I'm going to do it on election day. Oh, okay.