Episode 1286: The only poll that counts

Zain 0:01

This is a strategist episode 1286. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and guys, we

Zain 0:10

have done the unthinkable. Yeah, it's not Corey opening up his can of shitty ginger soda. No, no, we have done the unthinkable, Carter. What have we done? We

SPEAKER_03 0:19

guest on the show. show yes wait what

Zain 0:21

what this is this is mind-blowing and he is also first of all he's a he and secondly he's white it's dan arnold our our campaign pollster now you might be wondering guys wait wait wait wait what campaign pollster listen for a long time we've been accused of not taking this show seriously for for mailing it in uh for phoning it in uh in steven carter's case there actually been times where carter has tried to phone in on the show uh refusing to use his podcast mike well carter we're getting fucking serious okay because you know what we're doing carter this

Zain 0:52

this is a zane velgey for

Zain 0:54

for leader of the alberta ndp polling briefing episode that is right we have dan arnold many credentials uh of which uh include being the prime minister's pollster yes he actually was now the chief strategy officer at polaro big polling company he's coming to us Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, you're not

SPEAKER_03 1:13

not forgotten in this, with

Zain 1:17

that has results not just on all the candidates that are running for the Alberta NDP leadership race, but for the candidate, Carter, that's going to win the Alberta NDP leadership race. This is so exciting. And that is, of course, Zane Velger right in front of you. Dan, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

Thanks for having me. I've been a fan of the pod since the Chester days, so I'm really excited to be here. It's a deep cut. It's a deep cut, Corey. Corey, this

Zain 1:41

this is not a joke. There are some

Zain 1:42

people who actually think this is a complete pile of horseshit. Everybody thinks this is a pile of horseshit. And to prove that it's not a pile of horseshit less than two minutes in, they can actually access the full results of the polling that we're going to be talking about here, can't they?

Corey 1:55

Yeah, but not until tomorrow. So, like, anybody who's actually keen enough to listen will still think this is a pile of horseshit until, you know, midday Monday. That

Zain 2:03

That is true. True. These people will actually not believe us for a good full 24 hours, which is generally the nature of our episode. But Dan, you actually have done some polling on the Alberta NDP leadership race, have you not?

SPEAKER_03 2:17

This is a real poll, which we did, among real

Corey 2:21

real candidates. Listen, I have to ask you, when do you do media stuff normally?

Corey 2:27

normally? Or let's just say there's fights in a boardroom. Or

Corey 2:29

Or that. that when's

Corey 2:32

when's the last time you have to underline this

Corey 2:34

this is a real poll like is that something that you let's see how

SPEAKER_03 2:37

how the presentation start like i know you guys don't believe it this is legit this is something we actually did with real people on a real uh survey okay

Zain 2:44

okay very good uh

Zain 2:45

uh does it have a methodology that you want to make up or tell us that happened to prove that it's a real poll yeah

SPEAKER_03 2:52

i mean we look this is this is 1500 albertans uh we fielded this poll uh february 8th to 15th. So as the NDP race was kicking off,

SPEAKER_03 3:01

um, online panel, but sampled, uh, and quotas set up for region, gender, age, income, you name it.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Um, so yeah, this will be, this will be representative of how Albertans feel about a lot of prominent Albertans and Zane Velji. So it's very exciting. Yeah.

Zain 3:16

Yeah. And so I want to, once again, I feel like, you know, I should have thought about this before the episode is that a lot of this episode is going to be us trying to push a rock up a hill to convince people that this is real, okay?

Zain 3:28

everyone to pause right now and Google Dan Arnold polling and make sure that this is not just... Now, Dan is someone that we are very close to and acquaintance of ours, a friend of ours, right? But also a kick-ass real person slash pollster, okay? If you could just quickly just Google Dan Arnold. Okay, you see that? You see that beautiful face? That guy actually does real polling

Corey 3:47

polling and that's who's talking to him. Dan Zane and I once stayed at the same hotel. Elliot Spitzer had that thing with the call girl. in washington dc listen not just that

Zain 3:57

we stayed in the same

Corey 4:01

the call girl wasn't there though not at the same time you're

Zain 4:06

carter do you want to get it out here yes yeah

Carter 4:07

yeah i just want to say dan and i actually worked on a campaign together it was a it was a fantastic campaign please

Zain 4:12

please did i get into it dan

Carter 4:15

dan you remember the campaign we worked on together why don't you tell the people about it okay

Zain 4:18

okay hold on let's okay Okay, let's now open a second packet.

Carter 4:21

packet. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I

Zain 4:23

I will let him speak. But before I let him speak, I will also validate, verify, bring up for people that maybe a couple of days before the Alberta election here, the four of us were having lunch, if I'm not mistaken. And there was an idea of doing a mini documentary series on this election campaign that Dan is about to mention.

SPEAKER_03 4:45

That's true. Yeah, I believe that was the eight-part series, Oral History of the Al Noor Kassam Mayoral Campaign. What

Carter 4:50

What a classic. Not

SPEAKER_03 4:51

Not quite as good a candidate as Justin Trudeau. If I'm going to put them head-to-head in terms of raw political skill. But, you know, we had a good run on that campaign.

Carter 4:58

campaign. Did Justin Trudeau just throw money at you? No,

Carter 5:01

No, he did not. He was a pretty good candidate.

Zain 5:04

And there's very few candidates that could throw laundered

Zain 5:07

laundered Kenyan money at you to run their campaign. I

Carter 5:10

I was going to say there's no proof, but he admitted it. A lot of people

Corey 5:13

people would say, man, Zane's being libelous here. No, he actually admitted this to reporters partway through the campaign.

Corey 5:22

Good work, guys. Oh, my God. Thanksgiving

Carter 5:23

Thanksgiving Day Massacre. So

Zain 5:26

Dan's a real pollster. This is a real poll. That's good.

Zain 5:30

and 30 seconds in. Dan, do

Corey 5:32

do you want to

Zain 5:33

tell us what this result?

Corey 5:34

result? Zane, I don't want to tell you. I don't want to tell you how to do your job. But you might

Corey 5:38

might have undercut his credibility a bit with that Alnort bridge. into the main content.

Carter 5:45

That was my fault. Everyone's got to cut their teeth

Zain 5:48

teeth somewhere, okay? Everyone's got to cut their teeth. That's true.

Zain 5:50

Okay, Dan, you have a real poll done by Polera, 1,500 Albertans. You want to tell us a bit about the methodology and then maybe start with like, give us a state of the race. What are some of the top line findings that you have?

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Yeah, so let's just talk about the big question that I think any leadership candidate wants to ask themselves before they decide if they're going to jump in or not is do I even want to win this thing? I think actually the best decision Pierre Poliev has ever made in his political career was

SPEAKER_03 6:14

was to take a pass on the 2020 Conservative leadership race, when

SPEAKER_03 6:18

when he probably would have ended up losing the next election and waiting till the time was more opportune

SPEAKER_03 6:21

opportune for him to run two years later. So, you

SPEAKER_03 6:24

you know, the question is, like, does the NDP even have a chance to win the next election in the post-Rachel Notley era? And that's something, you know, Zane, you and many prominent candidates, I'm sure, need to think about.

SPEAKER_03 6:33

So we did ask people on this poll, how

SPEAKER_03 6:36

how are you going to vote in the next election campaign? campaign. Are you likely to vote NDP no matter who the leader is? That was about a quarter of Albertans. So, you

SPEAKER_03 6:43

you know, as a base compared to historically, not

SPEAKER_03 6:46

not bad for the NDP to have that to work off of. And

SPEAKER_03 6:48

And then you've got another third of Albertans who said, I might or might not, depending who the leader is. So you're close to 60% of Albertans who say, I might vote NDP.

SPEAKER_03 6:56

64% in Calgary, which we know is pretty important.

SPEAKER_03 6:59

So I think the potential is there for whoever wins to become the next premier. And if you're a star candidate who's deciding whether

SPEAKER_03 7:05

whether or not to give up a lucrative career in podcasting to run or not.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

I think those are encouraging numbers. I think there's actually some potential there.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Nothing's guaranteed. Things can change a lot in three years, and we don't know exactly how this candidate's going to do.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

But I think there's at least some potential there.

Zain 7:22

Okay. You guys jump in because you guys will have questions. I'll have questions, and then we'll get to the heart of the matter, which is, how the fuck is Zane Velji doing? Corey.

Corey 7:32

got to say, an accessible voter universe of 60%, I know not measured in a traditional accessible voter universe sense is, it's not bad. No, really. You know, I would actually think that that's a bit higher than I would have expected simply because we live in such bloody polarized times where people are just, you know, they're with you or they're against you. And hey, Zane, you

Corey 7:52

you know. So far, so good. Podcaster v. Podcaster. So far, so good. I'm getting excited so far.

Zain 7:56

Well, she had a, she had a, well, we probably have more listeners. Carter, any questions, any questions from you? And I wanted to ask Dan, were you surprised by six out of 10 people being open to

Zain 8:07

to voting for the NDP in this next election? But Carter, I'll let you go first.

Carter 8:12

No, I have no questions for Dan at this point. Thank you very much, Zane.

SPEAKER_03 8:16

Dan, lay it on me. Were

SPEAKER_03 8:20

To some extent. I think there's a perception out there that Notley was pulling up the NDP brand. And I mean, she's always pulled ahead of the party brand. But I think there's

SPEAKER_03 8:28

there's enough of a lasting legacy there that there are these people that are open

SPEAKER_03 8:32

open to it, which is, you know, all I can really hope for are three years out from an election campaign.

Carter 8:36

Zane, I now have a question. Yeah,

SPEAKER_03 8:37

Yeah, of course you fucking do. Go ahead.

Carter 8:40

How did this compare to any numbers that you may have generated prior to the last election? What was the NDP voter universe, say, prior to the

SPEAKER_03 8:50

Yeah, I mean, we'd ask the question a little bit differently then, but generally speaking, I'd say in a similar universe. So,

Zain 8:59

Thank you. Okay, Dan, where are we going from here? Do you want to give me the break? Do you want to break my heart? Do you want to elate me with how well I'm doing? Is that where we're going next, Dan?

SPEAKER_03 9:09

Yeah, well, I mean, you said so far so good for Zane Velji. Now we'll get to the part that's maybe not as all rosy for Zane Velji. Well, it's just an opportunity,

Zain 9:16

Yes, exactly. This is why we need strategist Ed Polter.

Zain 9:21

That interaction right there just proved why. Okay, go ahead, Dan, please.

Zain 9:25

We've really taken a shit on

SPEAKER_03 9:26

on Dan. We'll talk about familiarity and impressions of the different candidates here. So let's

SPEAKER_03 9:32

let's talk about, do Albertans know who these people are? Daniel Smith and Reginaldi, pretty good benchmarks. You've got 80% of Albertans who say, I

SPEAKER_03 9:40

I know something about

SPEAKER_03 9:41

about each of these individuals here. So that's kind of the high watermark eventually you'd probably want to get to.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

Among the declared candidates, Sarah Hoffman, 23%, say they know something about her. that's more than double where Ganley and Pancholi are at, at 9 and 7 percent.

SPEAKER_03 9:57

So Hoffman, the best known of the three who've declared.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Nenshi would dwarf them. He's at over half of Albertans who say they know something about him.

SPEAKER_03 10:05

And even just as a comparison point, Don Iveson's only one in four Albertans. So even by the kind of mayoral standards, Nenshi does have a brand that reaches outside of

SPEAKER_03 10:13

of Calgary. He's tied with Hoffman and Edmonton in terms of familiarity

SPEAKER_03 10:16

familiarity level. So he's got a lot of profile there um

SPEAKER_03 10:18

um as for zane a surprisingly high four percent of alberta yes they know a few things about zane belgi which

SPEAKER_03 10:25

which is i will say outside of the polls margin of air the margin of air is uh about two percent here so uh

SPEAKER_03 10:31

uh that is a uh a real number of people who at least claim to know something about zane belgi um

SPEAKER_03 10:37

um obviously those uh those bench signs and che have boosted his profile to some extent

Corey 10:43

done some work but

SPEAKER_03 10:44

but i think you may want to think about expanding beyond just that market to get his numbers a bit higher in the rest of the province. He's only at 2% outside

SPEAKER_03 10:51

outside of Calgary and Edmonton. So that's an area where Albertans don't know a lot about him. Hey,

Corey 10:55

Hey, Dan, sorry to jump in, but what percent of people generally say the moon landing was faked? Just as a benchmark here?

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Well, I mean, I do this a lot on surveys. I'll test fake news stories. I do a question more testing policy awareness. Have you heard about the Treaty of Algeron, which

SPEAKER_03 11:09

which is a treaty between the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Empire, of course. and

SPEAKER_03 11:14

and you usually get about uh you know five to ten percent of canadians who say that they are familiar with that so zane is a little bit below the evalgeron levels right now um but you know as you said there's room for growth right room for growth yeah for

Zain 11:28

for growth like a like a drake song okay here we go okay dan um what surprised you here you got you got notley and smith 80

Zain 11:38

80 ish percent eight out of ten alburns right if i'm reading this correctly nancy at over 50 50%. Did the Nenshi numbers surprise you? Did the numbers for Hoffman, Pencioli, or Ganley surprise you, the declared candidates? Like, give me your sort of bit of analysis here around just sort of overall familiarity here. What kind of took you by surprise, or what do you think is interesting?

SPEAKER_03 12:00

I mean, I'm not surprised that Nenshi's numbers are high. Even, you know, I'm in Ottawa, and even in Ontario, he's actually, like, people

SPEAKER_03 12:06

people know who Nenshi is to some extent. He's got a lot of profile, so that's not shocking that his numbers are high. They are higher among older they're Albertans. So, you

SPEAKER_03 12:13

you know, that's something where people who are maybe

SPEAKER_03 12:15

maybe younger aren't quite as familiar with the history there.

SPEAKER_03 12:17

You know, I think, you know, seeing Hoffman ahead of Ganley and Pancholi, maybe not surprising, but it does, you know, I think, speak to just the higher profile that she's got compared to her

SPEAKER_03 12:27

her caucus colleagues just from her background.

Corey 12:31

Yeah, you know, it's interesting to me, obviously, both Hoffman and Ganley were in the government. Hoffman was for for sure, a higher profile minister. She was the deputy premier, and she was the minister of health,

Corey 12:44

which is just a bigger job than minister of justice. But I was a little surprised by that cleave, right? Like, that's a big divide. You know, Racky Pancholi wasn't a minister. Zane Velji isn't a minister yet. I just kind of, I'm surprised Hoffman's is so high, to be honest, just using Ganley as a yardstick.

Zain 13:02

Yeah, it's interesting, Carter. And like, you've seen this this before, like the fact that someone dominates a geography, but it's not just like the fact that she's been a minister, and I'm now entering Dan's terrain. But Carter, what do you kind of look at that from a strategist perspective, when you see your competition effectively having, at least declared competition, having such an advantage on you in that regard? And I know that's not the full picture. Dan, we'll get to that in a second. But just in terms of familiarity, Carter, like when If you were to just look at the stat alone, where would your mind go?

Carter 13:34

Well, my mind is always very interested in name recognition, because once you know someone, you're bound to have some sort of an opinion. And the next set of things that Dan is testing is, you know, what do you think of this person? And so the higher the name recognition, the more likely people are to have an opinion about you. And

Carter 13:52

And then there's going to be a ratio. For Nenshi, I think it's two to one. I'll let Dan get into the details. But I'm...

Corey 13:57

I'm... Spoilers, man. I'm

Carter 13:58

I'm really intrigued with how

Carter 14:01

how high Sarah Hoffman is in terms of her name recognition and what that bodes for her campaign. People think in a campaign that high name recognition is really good, and there's a degree of truth to that. You'd rather be Nenshi than Zayn Velji, I mean, on every level. But nonetheless— Let's unpack that. Let's unpack that. nonetheless you've got the opportunity to reintroduce yourself to people and to have people like you um whereas a lot of people don't like nahad denchi they already know him and they know they have an opinion that they do not like him in fact about 20 times the number of people who like you don't like nahad denchi so

Carter 14:42

so that's a big i'm gonna hold that over him

Corey 14:44

him that's good yeah

Carter 14:44

yeah i think that's a big thing yeah that's a big stat yeah

Corey 14:48

yeah like i do i do want to say like Like familiarity, for sure not everything. In fact, I would argue in a leadership race, not even like in a top five things, if it was, Ken Dryden might have done a little bit better in the 2006 liberal leadership race. You know

Zain 15:02

know what? This is interesting. And Dan, I'll get you to chime in on here, too, before we kind of jump to the next section, because I think this is interesting what the guys are throwing out there. Often, we don't have access to what Dan's providing us today. Just let's be totally clear. No, I mean, Stephen and I do all the time. You don't. You don't. You generally don't. It's new for you. People call us. I don't. You generally don't. No, no, they really don't, Carter. But you don't have a chance to often have the depth that you want in your question line, right? Let's just be totally honest for a second. Sometimes you pick up fragments because you don't have the budget, you don't have the expertise available on hand. You pick up fragments from an omnibus, for example, on familiarity, and you have to go with it. If you two were going simply on familiarity, and Dan, I'll get you to chime in on this on the back end. I'll ask Corey and Stephen first. First, if all you saw was what Dan lays out here in the familiarity numbers, how would you be starting to think of making a case here? Because you both say it's important, but not everything. Corey, if this is the only data point, how do you start slicing it from here?

Corey 16:00

If it's the only data point, it doesn't mean very much to me at all. I think it's one of these things that you need to use as a crosstab, right? You need to understand, okay, these people know them. That actually affords us probably a better comfort that these numbers mean something thing once you actually get into those like what do you feel about the individual right pretty tough at four percent to say it means too much a lot easier to say at 80 if it means something right but let's put it this way familiarity is

Corey 16:26

very misleading on its own potentially because there's also the question of notoriety like if you uh if

Corey 16:32

if you looked up paul bernardo his familiarity would be very high do i think he's going to win the ndp leadership race simply because he's got high high familiarity? No, absolutely not. But it is, you know, all things being equal, probably better to be known than not, for sure. But it's not everything. You have to be very careful. Carter, if

Zain 16:50

if this was an omnibus question, you got just one of one, how would you would you be largely discarding it? Or would you be starting to think about it in some way as being an important data point for you?

Carter 17:00

Almost every campaign I do, I do have five question omnibus and familiar name name recognition and uh you know uh impressions are where we go with the with that omnibus i generally don't do the who are you going to vote for question because it's useless at that time but um

Carter 17:17

um that you know get

Carter 17:19

get your socks up

Carter 17:20

now had nenshi was name recognition was like in the margin of error when we started um in

Carter 17:27

yeah in 2010 um you

Carter 17:29

you know uh gondek name recognition was seven seven percent um you

Carter 17:35

you know seven percent i mean it's it's zane

Carter 17:38

zane velgey numbers yeah um

Carter 17:40

um in fact zane velgey did much better than than gondek did in the campaign uh

Carter 17:46

uh at the start of the campaign and the same was true with allison redford the the lack of name recognition numbers doesn't say you're going to finish there it says you have a different job to do right uh and that That job is name recognition as well as trying to push some sort of, you know, sales campaign as well. You have to introduce yourself to the electorate.

Corey 18:09

I think that's a really important point about it just changes the job that you need to do, right? In some cases, it's getting people who are familiar with you and like you to buy memberships. In other cases, it's allowing you to craft a story of a candidate and then finding people that that story appeals to. And actually, your point about where Nahed Nenshi was in 2010, your point about where Jyoti Gondek was in 2021 is

Corey 18:32

is super important as well, because there is something to be said for having a lower familiarity in some cases as well, because it allows you to

Corey 18:40

to construct a story. I agree. Like, listen, I think one of the realities of somebody at the top of that list, like Danielle Smith or Rachel Notley, people feel things about them. They think they know them. They have opinions about them. And it's hard to change those sometimes. And, you know, the opportunity that some of the other candidates lower on the list have is they can craft the story for them and introduce themselves in a way that is advantageous for the thing they're doing right now. Right? Everything can be crafted for the thing they're doing right now in a way that more known commodities simply do not have available to them.

Zain 19:14

them. Okay, Dan, do you want to react to the question about familiarity? And then I'll let you kind of take it to where you want to go next, whether you want to break it down by region, which you have in your full report, or you want to take us to the part that might actually break my heart.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

Yeah, I mean, on familiarity, I think it's safe to say that familiarity is an advantage. It's not a requirement. Stephen's obviously shown in his campaigns. you can take somebody from Zane Velji levels and bring them to the top.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

But on the other side of it, I do remember in 2015, I'd be doing focus groups for the Liberal Party in the lead up to that election campaign. And one thing we'd always do is we put pictures of the leaders on the wall and

SPEAKER_03 19:51

ask people on sticky notes to write down, what

SPEAKER_03 19:53

what do you like about this person? What do you not like about this person? And

SPEAKER_03 19:55

And the first couple of times I did this, half

SPEAKER_03 19:57

half the group would put up their hands and say, well, who's the guy with the beard up there? Because they had no idea who Tom Mulcair was. They'd never seen him before.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Whereas Justin Trudeau, they had literally known him since he was in diapers, and that builds some level of connection with the individual, and it makes it easier in that respect. When

SPEAKER_03 20:14

he stop wearing diapers?

Carter 20:14

diapers? When was that? Was that

Zain 20:20

guys, in polling, in polling, words are important. So the question is actually phrased, when did he start to wear diapers again? Right? So that's how you phrase the question. That is mean. We

Corey 20:31

We weren't being mean. You

Zain 20:32

You were being mean. me you were being so much nice why is the candidate even here in this polling debrief session and why is he moderated and once again to be clear zane velji is not the same person as zane velji for leader it's a character i play okay uh dan where do you want to take us let's talk about how

SPEAKER_03 20:48

how people feel about the uh the candidates here since as stevens mentioned like they may know them and if they don't like them that's not really good for you right so let's

SPEAKER_03 20:56

let's take a look at how albertans feel about them and we're still talking at this point about about the

SPEAKER_03 21:00

the general public. So this is almost more discussion about how

SPEAKER_03 21:02

how much of a chance these people have if they win the leadership, how much have they maybe what's their starting point for active leadership in terms of the next general election. We'll get to kind of how

SPEAKER_03 21:11

how likely NDP voters feel about them, I think, a bit later. But, you

SPEAKER_03 21:14

you know, in terms of the general public, how do they feel about the candidates here?

SPEAKER_03 21:18

We ask this question a little bit differently. Most polls ask just are you favorable, unfavorable, approved, disapproved?

SPEAKER_03 21:24

But I think politics is more more about emotions and we want to get the emotional feel towards these candidates. So ask people, if

SPEAKER_03 21:30

if you thought about this person winning NDP leadership,

SPEAKER_03 21:34

how would you feel? Would you be excited, comfortable, frustrated,

SPEAKER_03 21:37

or angry? So excited is kind of, you

SPEAKER_03 21:39

you think of somebody who's excited about this person winning, they might be somebody who actually goes out and buys a membership and supports them. Comfortable, I think of that as more somebody who says, yeah,

SPEAKER_03 21:48

yeah, maybe I'll vote for them in the general election, right? They'd be okay. I wouldn't have a problem with that. And then obviously the other ones are more negative emotions emotions on

SPEAKER_03 21:55

What I found really interesting here is of the three declared

SPEAKER_03 22:00

they are almost all even on those positive emotions. If you add the excited plus comfortable together,

SPEAKER_03 22:05

Ganley's a 23, Hoffman 22, Pancholi 21. So no real difference between the three of them in terms of those positive emotions. And

SPEAKER_03 22:13

And they've all got three or 4% who are excited and the rest just in that comfortable bucket right there.

SPEAKER_03 22:18

To our previous point, though, So Hoffman does have higher negatives than the other two. She's close to 20% either

SPEAKER_03 22:23

either frustrated or angry, whereas Ganley and Pancholi are down around 10% each there.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

So she does start with a bit of a higher negative ceiling, which would be something she would have to overcome. And obviously, after you win the leadership, you can rebrand,

SPEAKER_03 22:35

rebrand, you can reintroduce yourself, you can maybe overcome that. But

SPEAKER_03 22:38

But that is something that's a bit of a negative to start with.

Zain 22:41

Gotcha. So this is the conversation on how you feel if each of these candidates have won still still to the gen pop, just so we're absolutely clear. Those are the three declared candidates. Guys, any reactions before Dan kind of moves it on? And Dan, do you have that number for one Zane Velji?

SPEAKER_03 23:01

The number on everyone's lip. So for Zane Velji here, we have 2% of Albertans who would be excited if he became the next Alberta NDP leader.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

We have 11% who would be comfortable. We

SPEAKER_03 23:13

have 7% who'd be frustrated and

SPEAKER_03 23:16

5% who are angry. So a pretty even split on the positive and negative emotions there.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

It skews a bit more positive than negative in Calgary and Edmonton. It skews a bit more negative in

SPEAKER_03 23:26

in rural Alberta than positive. So again, you've got some work to do there.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

And I will say Zane's number is a lot better among younger Albertans, 18 to 34-year-olds, 20% actually with positive emotions

SPEAKER_03 23:37

emotions towards him there, They are in a bit higher among immigrants and racialized Albertans as well, too. Zane

Corey 23:43

Zane Velji is the future. Oh, man.

Zain 23:46

clear, the second half of this episode is where we build out the strategy for me.

Zain 23:50

Okay. That's right. So we're clear. Second and third half. Yeah, exactly. Did you guys capture that, just so you're clear, on the Zane Velji number? The rest of it is kind of bullshit. Who cares about these other candidates? I mean,

Corey 24:01

mean, but I just want you to know. So actually, here's the problem. Here's the problem that both Zane Velji and Sarah Hoffman have. have um and we didn't mention the the nench yet but his ratios like his ratios are pretty similar to the three or you know ganley and and uh pancioli as well right because they're basically two to one like to not right and what i think is really interesting about that is the person who's not like the others there and that's sarah hoffman who has the higher negatives there yeah

Corey 24:32

because one of the things that i think is fascinating because if you do want to forecast this dude this is jen popped over yeah to a general election in the future one

Corey 24:39

one of the things that i think is fascinating about that is sort

Corey 24:43

sort of adjusted for people know you and people will know the party leader by the time we get to the next election they're all kind of in the same place right like familiarity is something you're gonna get if you're party leader but

Corey 24:55

but sarah hoffman's not in the same place sarah hoffman has higher negatives than the rest of them saint velji also Also higher negatives. Something to work on. But you know what, buddy? I don't think it's disqualifying for you or Sarah. I just think it's an interesting thing to note. And maybe both campaigns will have to consider the deep unlikeability

Corey 25:14

unlikeability of Zayn, at least. Yeah,

Carter 25:16

Yeah, I mean, I think that trying to be likable, Zayn, might be something you take an active interest in. Yeah, you might have

Corey 25:21

have to go for asshole as a brand. Fuck. Okay, yeah, well, we— I've already done that. Likable's not accessible to you. Maybe you just can't be likable. Yeah, I've been trying for

Zain 25:29

for 36 years. maybe it's time to put on a different fucking hat fuck these people of Alberta okay yeah I should run the Pallister campaign in Costa Rica hey

Corey 25:40

hey other campaigns don't clip that fuck these people of Alberta things yeah for sure yeah maybe

Zain 25:49

hundreds of hours of content is not helpful to my candidacy

Zain 25:54

okay Dan that's very interesting the guys did bring up nancy did you want to comment on on his numbers like they are in line with that ratio but was there anything there you wanted to talk about before you jump on maybe to i'm assuming next is like the membership tranche and what members think but anything you wanted to close out here before we move on to the to the next part yeah

SPEAKER_03 26:13

yeah we should have mentioned nancy there so then she's got 41 with positive emotions 22 negative so still that two

SPEAKER_03 26:19

two to one ratio kind of where ganley and pancholi are but because he's better known you know that's a bigger base of people who have of positive emotions and i will say the

SPEAKER_03 26:27

the excited number for nenshi

Corey 26:29

nenshi and negative and negative dan yeah that's true higher

SPEAKER_03 26:32

as well too can

Corey 26:33

can it get even worse when we go negative in the zane velji for leader campaign zane

SPEAKER_03 26:37

zane velji for leader may have some dirt on uh nenshi for leader as well too so risks

SPEAKER_03 26:43

i will say the one thing that stood out for nenshi though uh 17 excited so he does have a a very strong ability to excite much more so than the other candidates were kind of the three or four percent range so that's obviously something you can build off to uh you know put into a leadership give

Zain 26:57

give my excited my excited was two and my comfortable was 11 is that right okay

Zain 27:01

okay yeah okay okay so i i don't i don't have i

Zain 27:04

don't have it it's

Zain 27:05

it's what i'm hearing i don't know what

Zain 27:06

what now i haven't been flexing it but i don't have it just so we're clear okay um dan

Zain 27:12

dan where are we going next do we go do we want to go to the membership and talk about that yeah

SPEAKER_03 27:16

yeah let's let's let's talk a bit about the base of people who actually vote in a leadership race because you know ultimately you

SPEAKER_03 27:21

you can still win a race if nobody Nobody in the general public knows who you are if you sell a lot of membership forms, right? So we

SPEAKER_03 27:27

we did ask people if they would buy a NDP membership to participate. You've got 13% of Albertans who say they either have a membership, definitely

SPEAKER_03 27:35

definitely will buy one, or probably will buy one.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

Now, I will say people always overstate their level of wanting to do anything when you ask them on a poll. 80% of people say, I'm

SPEAKER_03 27:45

I'm definitely going to vote on election day. And there's lots of data to show that

SPEAKER_03 27:48

that doesn't happen. But even if you ask them, you know, are

SPEAKER_03 27:51

are you going to buy healthy peanut butter or are you going to switch to Flair Airlines or whatever the question is, people are always going to say, oh,

SPEAKER_03 27:57

oh, yeah, I'll do that. And then they don't always follow through. So I'm not saying that, you know, 400,000 Albertans are going to sign up and buy an NDP membership. Hey, Dan, do you know who doesn't follow through?

Zain 28:06

Airlines. Okay, keep going.

SPEAKER_03 28:10

But I will say this does give us a good group of people who at least are in that headspace where I'm, you know, I'm thinking about it. I'm interested. interested, kind

SPEAKER_03 28:18

kind of the NDP base, if you want to think of it that way.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

And we can kind of look at the ratios then between different parts of the province. So interestingly,

SPEAKER_03 28:25

interestingly, and maybe not surprisingly, but 17

SPEAKER_03 28:28

17% of people in Edmonton say, I'll

SPEAKER_03 28:31

I'll likely sign up and vote, 13% in Calgary, 8% in the rest of Alberta. So I think that's a good ratio to think about if you're a campaign trying to figure out what's

SPEAKER_03 28:39

what's our ROI on going to different parts of the province.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

Average person in Edmonton is probably more likely to sign up than an average person in Calgary, than an average person in rural Alberta. So that's something to consider there.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

And then demographically, this is something that did stand out to me. Young people, a lot more interested in buying a membership. You got 20% of young people who say, I'm

SPEAKER_03 28:57

I'm likely to buy a membership. It's 10% or less with all the other age groups that we slice the data by.

SPEAKER_03 29:02

Racialized Albertans also twice as likely to buy a membership than white Albertans. So if

SPEAKER_03 29:08

if you've got a candidate who

SPEAKER_03 29:10

who appeals to young people and to racialized voters- I heard about

SPEAKER_03 29:13

guy like that. Maybe

Carter 29:14

Maybe that's the pathway there to think

Carter 29:16

There was a guy like that, yeah.

Zain 29:20

interesting. Okay, so we talk about the membership. So 70

Zain 29:24

70% of this public out, right, Dan? Won't buy. They're not engaged. We

SPEAKER_03 29:28

We don't care about them. I mean, there's 18% who say, I might buy a membership. We're just throwing them out. Because if you say, I might buy a membership, there's no way you're going to buy a membership. So we're only going to look at the people who say definitely, likely, or have one. Even they're probably not going to follow through. But at least that gives us a group to look at as kind of our target voters and see how they feel about the candidates. Hogan,

Zain 29:47

when you guys look at that as folks, you know, trying to make this elemental, trying to, like, in a voter universe perspective, does this give you hope? Is this interesting? Are you neutral on it? How are you even, like, analytically looking at this from a strategist perspective? Carter, you want to go first on this?

Carter 30:04

Yeah, I'm going to pretend Dan's not here. But any time you take a polling number and multiply it by two other variables, you are getting into the land of the imagined, right? How

Corey 30:13

How scary are you, sir? I'm going

Carter 30:14

going to defend your

Corey 30:15

your honor, Dan. I

Carter 30:17

But Dan's right in

Carter 30:18

in that he's wrong.

Carter 30:22

Because he knows that 400,000 memberships aren't going to be sold.

Corey 30:25

Dan and I spent

Corey 30:27

spent some time in the Elliott Spitzer room. I

Carter 30:30

I was also there. Let me tell

Corey 30:31

tell you this. And I can't let you know I was also

Zain 30:34

there. Let me tell you this. I was on the floor. that room was like a thousand dollars and cory had no idea it was going to cost that much we were he was about to buy us all hotel rooms and then he bought us one and i changed my mind yeah

Carter 30:46

was a very weird projection okay

Carter 30:49

okay jesus this is we're the rails because we're off the that's fine

Carter 30:55

it's fine it's all good so

Corey 30:56

we're just we're just establishing that we have history here and you You can't disparage Dan like that. I'm

Carter 31:00

I'm not disparaging Gawal Noor. What a great campaign. Hey, what I'm

Carter 31:06

I'm trying to say is... Your guy's logo

Corey 31:08

was a green stop

Corey 31:14

Okay, I'm sorry. You were

Corey 31:15

were saying important things.

Zain 31:17

we did an eight-part series on the Elder Kassab for Mayor campaign, paid four

Zain 31:25

episodes would have to be about the green stop sign who

Zain 31:30

came up with it did it work did we pull it you probably did you had the money i'm sure you did with the cognitive dissonance of a green stop sign at the barbro lrt station whose mind did that change did they stop to look at it was that

Corey 31:44

that the point how many accidents did you guys would stop to

Zain 31:47

to read it was

Carter 31:49

was that the whole mental model carter anyways i'll tell you something we were doing better than we were comfortable with that's just leave it there okay

Carter 31:58

okay you leave it there you

Corey 32:00

you were saying you were actually saying something that kind of you

Zain 32:03

you were railing on dan a bit and i saved dan from that that you've what you said dan is right in the sense that he's wrong can you explain

Carter 32:10

well and so because this is a picture of today right this is a picture of today and the the numbers like for example nancy has the most um the largest vote field of almost 140,000 votes the same could have been said for rick mciver in 2010 the same would have been said for um jeremy farkas in 20 uh 2021 whatever the hell year that was um all of these things blend together after a while this

Carter 32:37

this isn't the end this is the beginning and at the beginning nancy's vote total is the highest, but we know that 400,000 people aren't going to buy memberships, right? What I found when I dug through the data and was looking at the actual raw numbers, people who are most likely to

Carter 32:54

say that they're going to buy a membership, you

Carter 32:57

you know, like Zane Velji had like nine people say that they're definitely going to buy a membership. Like for me. That number was only, yeah, that number was only 15 for Nenshi, right? right? Likely to buy a membership, highly likely to buy a membership. Zane Velji is still somewhere in the, you know, where

Carter 33:17

where is Velji here? Eight, right?

Carter 33:21

Again, Nenshi's only in 15. These are differential numbers. These raw numbers tell us a story that actually it's not as good as Nenshi thinks it might be. It could be if he gets in the race, but the longer he delays, the more likely zayn velji is going to be able to increase zayn velji's name recognition and that's where the campaign shifts if zayn velji gets his name recognition out there and all hell breaks those cory do you have something to add to that i

Corey 33:50

i have something to cory and then and i'll get steven who's become after that go ahead cory steven's

Corey 33:56

steven's become a polling nihilist i think just because we have small samples as we get into the cross tabs isn't like a bad thing and it's still interesting here i'll tell you my own view though is like when i saw these results it was like oh that's super interesting i've never actually done a question like that in previous leadership campaigns i've worked on i've never kind of thought about it to

Corey 34:17

to be clear this is the question of

Zain 34:18

of people purchasing yeah

Corey 34:19

yeah yeah yeah well and like who um you know the not even that but kind of the analysis of this is what the likely voter universe would be i think it's super interesting right but But it does sort of lead to an obvious follow-up question, which is, where do memberships come from? And they don't kind of grow out of the ground, you know, just as water falls because the ground had seeds in them. You know, somebody's got to go and harness these memberships. And often in a leadership campaign, that's, you

Corey 34:46

you know, we'll have to get into this, I think, in the next half. Effort. Generally speaking, well,

Corey 34:51

well, it's not just that. But, you know, when you go and sell a membership, in

Corey 34:56

in practical terms, there are sources of memberships. There are going to be people who just sort of come on a website and say, oh, I like that guy. I'm going to buy a membership for him.

Corey 35:02

Not actually how most leadership memberships are sold. And how

Corey 35:07

how it generally happens is you have people who are leaders in communities or even people who just want to hustle who will go out and sell 10, 20, 30 memberships at a time. And, you know, those are not massive numbers, but in aggregate, if you've got a good field campaign, that builds something. Takes time, takes a lot of effort, but ultimately those conversations on kind of the end of the fractals, which is actually kind of the bigger multipliers, right? right, where you've managed to find 300 people who will go out and sell 10 memberships, right, or whatever, those tend to be more along the lines of, hey, Bob, you're a good friend of mine. Will you buy a membership and vote in this? Hey, Bob's wife, you're

Corey 35:45

you're standing next to Bob right now. Do you think you could do me solid and buy that membership as well? Hey, now that I think about it, Bob, don't you have a brother? Can't Bob, your brother, buy a membership as well? And so, So I think it's super interesting, but I think that memberships actually come from campaigns. And I don't mean to be kind of simple about that, but it

Corey 36:06

it takes effort and it takes going out there. And one of the things I find super fascinating about these numbers, and we'll get into it, is there's a lot of campaigns who have, including

Corey 36:14

including the Zane Velji campaign, who have kind of credible numbers there. And so if you had a organization that could go out and sell a bunch of memberships and know and and have a universe of that size that you can then harvest that's

Corey 36:27

that's fucking fascinating especially when you start thinking about the roll-ups there dan

Zain 36:30

dan do you want to respond to either carter's comment or cory's comment and it seems like they're nationally leading you towards the the vote field question i don't know if that's where you want to go next or if you've got a pit stop elsewhere but i'll let you react to them and then if we go to vote field or somewhere else i'll let you drive yeah

SPEAKER_03 36:47

yeah let's let's throw that out there so i think i agree completely actually with what Stephen, even though he said I'm wrong because I'm right or right because I'm wrong or whatever it was, you know, I don't agree with that.

Corey 36:57

Don't give him that.

Corey 36:58

He'll be saying that again later. It'll be annoying.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

But, you know, ultimately we're talking about kind of potential here with the base and potential only matters if you actually get someone to sign up. And there's also people who

SPEAKER_03 37:10

who will sign up who aren't excited by any of these candidates here. If Zane Velji for leader runs. Those are your guys.

SPEAKER_03 37:16

Stephen will sign up his family, even if they hate Zane Velji. to vote for Zane, right? So we're

SPEAKER_03 37:22

we're kind of just looking at sort of the potential to excite the base and then what

SPEAKER_03 37:26

what you do with that potential and how that kind

SPEAKER_03 37:28

kind of spreads virally beyond that is, you know, what makes a winning or losing campaign.

SPEAKER_03 37:33

But I think it is interesting because, you know, we do have 13

SPEAKER_03 37:36

13% of the sample here that we can look at, which is still going to be close to 200 people and get

SPEAKER_03 37:41

get a sense of just how that base feels about these candidates.

SPEAKER_03 37:45

The number that we came up with here was this vote field, which is basically just the people who are excited within

SPEAKER_03 37:50

within that group there. So the people who

SPEAKER_03 37:53

I'm likely to buy a membership, or I'm definitely going to buy a membership, and

SPEAKER_03 37:56

and I'm excited by this candidate. So I think that gives you a bit of a proxy for how

SPEAKER_03 38:00

how they feel about them.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

For these numbers here, we came up with about 140,000 for Nenshi in that area, about

SPEAKER_03 38:08

about 50,000 or more for Pancholi and Ganley. Hoffman was a bit behind them. Zane Velji for leaders, still had 30,000 people. You got 7% of the NDP base who

SPEAKER_03 38:19

who said, I'm excited about the idea of Zane Velji becoming the next NDP leader. I

SPEAKER_03 38:24

I will point out, though, Zane Velji did have the highest negatives of all the candidates. You had to have about a quarter of people in this NDP base who

SPEAKER_03 38:34

who said, I would be frustrated or angry if Zane won for leadership. So those are people.

Corey 38:38

That's our brand. Those are people

SPEAKER_03 38:40

are in my membership. ship wasn't

SPEAKER_03 38:44

it's probably one out of four on this on this uh call here right now so uh that would be consistent with the uh okay there's

Zain 38:50

there's there's a lot to dig in here but carter's been gesticulating with probably all the energies he has left for the evening so carter get in here this better be fucking good because cory and i've got follow-up questions i just

Carter 39:01

wasn't saying that those small numbers were it were statistically not representative i'm saying saying that those small numbers were close to equal right that those small numbers when you do break out those 200 people that are interested in buying memberships or the the ndp universe those 200 people were breaking more evenly across this group at

Carter 39:20

at the higher i will i do intend to buy membership levels and that when you're looking at the percentages it's a little bit wonky but when you're looking at those raw numbers there is a case to be made that someone like a zane velgey with low name recognition but even with that no low name recognition high bespoke

Zain 39:39

bespoke bespoke name good i'm glad one of us one of you is working for me already the other one clipped all that carter requires a retainer before he even starts a fucking i'm not even

Carter 39:49

even i have no cash no one sent me any cash i'm not fucking helping anybody hey

Zain 39:54

hey dan dan there's one thing here before cory gets gets his chance to jump in. So, okay, just to summarize, Nenshi with 140K,

Zain 40:02

Pancholi, Ganley, 50-ish, right? 50, 52K. Me with around 30-ish. Is that right? What you said, like my

SPEAKER_03 40:10

my vote field, my vote... Yeah, and look, I mean, yeah, we had you at 31,000. Of that, people who are excited, who are within the likely NDP universe. And I'll point out, like Daniel Smith only got a little over 30,000 votes on the first ballot of the UCP leadership. Yeah, 35,000. If you find those people and

SPEAKER_03 40:26

and you sign them up,

SPEAKER_03 40:27

and you turn them out to vote, and maybe they bring a few friends with them, I mean, the numbers are there, right? Talk

Zain 40:32

Talk to me about, okay, there's two areas I want to go into. And one I think is, I think they're both fascinating. One is about this particular poll. One's like more broadly. Let's hit with a broad issue first. You tested candidates

Zain 40:45

candidates with their photo and without their photo.

Zain 40:49

love that, by the way. Can you talk to me about that? And the part that actually breaks my heart in this entire poll is I feel like I'm the one that didn't get a bump with the photo. everyone else did. Is that actually true?

SPEAKER_03 41:00

You had the smallest bump of

SPEAKER_03 41:01

all the candidates. So I did get a bump,

Zain 41:03

so it was negligible. You still got a bespoke

Zain 41:09

why do you do this? This is interesting. I don't think I've seen this particular question tested before like this. I want to talk about this. And then I want to talk about Hoffman and her vote field in a second.

SPEAKER_03 41:21

yeah so you know i think politics is just so visually driven um and there are people who maybe have heard

SPEAKER_03 41:28

heard a name in passing but then when they see the face they recognize the face or they just get a vibe from the face and they say okay that looks like somebody who i'd feel good about if they were in

SPEAKER_03 41:36

in charge um and i i when i'm working

SPEAKER_03 41:38

working on political campaigns i'm always testing images in different situations and say like is it the photo of

SPEAKER_03 41:43

of the leader with the family is it the the photo of them talking

SPEAKER_03 41:46

talking to business leaders is it the photo of them shaking hands like what is the thing that connects with people and

SPEAKER_03 41:51

and leaves them with the most strong

SPEAKER_03 41:52

strong positive feelings afterwards so what

SPEAKER_03 41:55

what we did was for yeah for half the survey respondents we just said we

SPEAKER_03 41:58

we gave them the names and said how'd you feel this person won and then for the other half we had the name and the face with it and said how

SPEAKER_03 42:03

how would you feel in that case and yeah all the candidates get a pretty

SPEAKER_03 42:06

pretty big bump there i mean you look at uh racky

SPEAKER_03 42:08

racky pancioli for example 16

SPEAKER_03 42:10

16 positive just with the name 26% positive when you put the face with the name there. So, you

SPEAKER_03 42:15

you know, I think it's a good reminder that visuals are very important. Yeah, so

Zain 42:19

so Rackett goes up 10 points, Nahid goes up 11, Ganley goes up 7, Hoffman goes up 6. I go up the least amount, but I still go up. Carter, you wanted to jump in on this particular strain of thinking. And then let's talk about Hoffman's interesting, at least to me, interestingly small vote field, only 10,000 above mine, mind if you look at this particular sort of uh methodology i

Carter 42:43

just wanted to say the science on the visuals is so strong uh people want to vote for someone who who they think is representative of their group um and you know attractiveness matters uh approachability matters you know if you're tall it matters if you've got full head of hair it matters all of these things matter um how women's style matters, everything matters. And we pretend sometimes like it doesn't. And by adding in these photographs, Dan's now been able to quantify how much it matters. And I think that's amazing. Like it really is fascinating polling information to have.

Corey 43:21

Yeah, you know, because what's interesting isn't that like the negatives become positives. It's that they move from having no opinion to having an opinion. Like from a name, they're like, I don't know.

Corey 43:31

I mean, it's also an interesting testament and how shallow people are in that even just because we know that the recognition of a lot of these individuals like from name is pretty low there's a lot of people who are willing to pass judgment just based on a name and then there's a lot who are like oh now that i see the picture i guess i have an opinion about them as well so super fucking fascinating and i you know i

Corey 43:53

i think when you think about other countries where even pictures show up on the ballots it makes me wonder how that probably changes politics for them there. Dan,

Zain 44:01

Dan, talk to me about the vote field for Hoffman here. That sticks out to me, because when you mentioned the vote field for Nenshia being like close to what, was it like 130,000, 140,000 for Racky and for Sarah, less than half of that at around 50-ish. And then for Hoffman, it's even lower, despite the fact that she's more well-known. And I think you talked about her negatives being higher. Is this a direct result of that, number one and then number two talk to me about if this if this surprised you then guys i'm sure you'll have some comments around what this kind of means regarding her path and when i say guys i mean cory and steven thereafter yeah

SPEAKER_03 44:36

yeah so i mean it did surprise me to some extent because she is you

SPEAKER_03 44:39

you know clearly better well known than uh you know racky or ganley for sure uh in terms of familiarity um i mean the vote field the only number we're using though is the excited sorry we're not really gotcha gotcha

SPEAKER_03 44:51

yeah so we're tossing note whether or not you're comfortable angry frustrated doesn't really matter we're just looking at people who are excited within

SPEAKER_03 44:57

within those and within that universe of likely ndp leadership voters and

SPEAKER_03 45:01

and she's just not exciting as many of them as uh the other candidates are right now and i mean we didn't have a lot this wasn't like a if this is a campaign poll we

SPEAKER_03 45:07

we would have asked tons of follow-up questions in terms of open ends like why do you feel this way what is missing etc etc um

SPEAKER_03 45:13

um but i think it does um you know speak to potentially some can i ask

Zain 45:18

i ask you a question dan that's going to sound stupid but i actually think is quite insightful. And I say that about the question I'm about to ask right now.

Zain 45:27

Hi, Bart, you're setting for yourself. Oh, wow. I think it's... You've seen it. You've made it. I trust it.

Zain 45:33

we assume they want excited, the membership. Do

Zain 45:36

Do we know that excitement is like what they crave at this moment? Like, maybe they just want a warm blanket of comfort. And so the root of the question is like, is excited even a helpful proxy see um in in order to judge what either the membership wants or what is particularly kind of like needed in this regard by that by that small sort of group does that question make sense ultimately that

SPEAKER_03 46:01

that was a very insightful thank you so much i appreciate

SPEAKER_03 46:03

yeah i mean you said i

SPEAKER_03 46:04

i mean i think somebody like that better if

Corey 46:06

if you keep wow somebody

SPEAKER_03 46:07

somebody like that leading off question period asking

Corey 46:12

day we do wonders i think for the uh can you imagine zane in question Hey, Nathan, what's going on, Cooper?

Zain 46:19

Cooper? Listen, my question's for the people on the other side here. Listen—

Corey 46:24

Listen— You know, there's time limits

Corey 46:26

Yeah. Someone told you that.

Zain 46:27

Edging my bets, always trying to be liked.

Zain 46:30

I think that's a flaw.

Zain 46:33

Not going hard enough.

Zain 46:34

Being like, I think what the government's trying to tell us here is that, yeah, I would not be a good leader, except that I could potentially be a great leader. I

Zain 46:44

I could be a great fucking leader.

Zain 46:46

leader. Thank you. Dan. Yeah, again, campaigns don't do that. Okay,

Zain 46:50

question was insightful, but do you have a response to the sense like, is excited even the right question to be asking when that's maybe not what people want? I think we assume it's what they want, but do we have a sense of if that's what they want?

SPEAKER_03 47:02

Yeah, no, no. And I think like, I just look at that as you need to have a strong emotion or someone's going to take the step to actually go and buy membership and eventually vote,

SPEAKER_03 47:09

vote, right? Right. And that that is a stronger emotion, you

SPEAKER_03 47:11

you know, in a leadership race. I think you need that higher bar.

SPEAKER_03 47:16

There's probably different words you could look at. And again, there's people who are going to sign up just because their

SPEAKER_03 47:20

their uncle or relative or someone asked them to sign up and they're not going to be excited. So, you know, this is kind of a proxy, but I think it's a good proxy for just like who's

SPEAKER_03 47:28

who's exciting the base. And then how

SPEAKER_03 47:29

how do you turn that excitement into something real after the fact?

Zain 47:34

you can talk about the vote field question. You can talk about anything we've heard thus far. Dan, I have a question for you, though. Do you have anything else to share with us? I have a

Corey 47:44

a vote. Yeah, go ahead, Cork. Have you done this on other races? Like, do we?

Corey 47:50

No, this is kind of like something I just wanted to try out here.

SPEAKER_03 47:53

So it felt like a good time to do this. And, you know, we'll see how it plays out at the end of the day.

Carter 47:59

What I'm hearing is that no one would actually pay for this question, and he had to do it on

Carter 48:03

on a paid strategist's fault. He's

Carter 48:08

By the way, this

Zain 48:09

this is a good time to mention that once this poll will be out, we're thinking like Tuesday-ish, you can find it on the Polaroid website, but you can also find it at zaneveljufurleader.ca, where you will be finding the entire report that Dan has put together. Okay. Dan, do you have anything else to give us? Any other tidbits, any other breakdowns, anything you found interesting? And I ask specifically for yours truly, because the second half of this conversation is us taking your insights and trying to create a path for Zane Velji in this NDP Leadership Prize. So do you have anything else to share with us? Any other tidbits? And then Carter, you've got a question after that.

SPEAKER_03 48:48

i think i think this is uh a pretty good overview here um again if we were doing this uh with a uh if the strategist uh media corporation wanted to dip into their uh their pockets and do a more in-depth poll you'd

SPEAKER_03 48:59

you'd be asking a lot of follow-up questions you'd be getting more at how they feel beyond just four words about these candidates you'd be looking at asking a real pulse yeah for

SPEAKER_03 49:08

you you would probably uh go and actually like pull the actual membership as opposed to just you know alberns in general and trying to weed it down there but i think this gives a good overview

SPEAKER_03 49:17

you know what is the challenges each leader would face after they if

SPEAKER_03 49:20

if they won the leadership race and just kind of where their starting point is and yeah

SPEAKER_03 49:23

yeah that's all i need to run through right now i'll throw a few other cross tabs about zane into the discord and people can chat about that if they want to well

Zain 49:29

well cory it seems like uh it seems like dan is trying to get some of our patreon money and i think we should probably just break it to him uh it's not going to happen dan uh we've gotten used to the taste of free polling from you just rip that free polling from you and you're never gonna have you're never gonna get money every

SPEAKER_03 49:45

every every pollster always ends their presentation with and this is why you need to do follow-up research it's uh it's

Zain 49:51

it's a good classic they started with this is a real poll and then they end it with you need to do follow-up research carter jump in with your question before before dan uh is unceremoniously uh told to to to see himself out one

Carter 50:04

one of the things i always like to look at is where how uh women are behaving in the poll compared to men behaving in the pool one

Carter 50:11

of the things i noticed is that women were far less likely to have an opinion far more likely to to let to not be emotionally engaged with these candidates and yet we know that the the most likely universe for the ndp is going to include these women so they're really uh it seems to be an opportunity for a candidate that is lesser known to target women and to really try and build up their name recognition, build up their engagement with women as a means to kind of bringing the low

Carter 50:42

low engagement structure now for women up

Carter 50:45

up to where the potential lies in that 60% plus that are considering voting for the NDP in the next election. My

Carter 50:55

My question to you, Dan, is how right am I?

SPEAKER_03 50:59

well it's an interesting point because you know we talked about young people and racialized voters being a lot more likely to want to buy membership women and men were about equally likely to want to buy membership yet women

SPEAKER_03 51:09

women a lot more likely to vote ndp so you know there is something there because there are more ndp leaning women in alberta if you can find a way to get

SPEAKER_03 51:18

get them to sign up um there's a way to grow the uh the vote field there if

Carter 51:22

if i were selling memberships in a campaign one of the things i'd be tracking is how many males and females i have and actually be trying to do little little cheats on on racialized youth and or younger younger of course being anybody under 50 in this particular poll um which by the way pisses me off like you wouldn't even fucking believe dan uh i'm now in the older segment so fuck you man like seriously yeah

Corey 51:45

yeah i'm playing the pollster okay that's

Corey 51:47

that's that's really not could have made it 55

Carter 51:49

55 and below could

Corey 51:52

I think what I think is super interesting about this poll, as I read it, Carter

Corey 51:57

Carter has alluded to this a couple of times when he was talking about, you know, recognition of the name, whether that matters or not, and how he's moved candidates forward. And it's, it just sort of dictates the actions you need to take. I think when I look at that vote universe and how it's driven by opinions

Corey 52:11

opinions that are strong or not, you know, the very excited versus the not excited, or even actively hostile numbers that some of the candidates have, such as yourself and Sarah Hoffman, right? I just, I think what's interesting for me is they're just, they're pieces, right? They're grist for the mill. And I will say, looking at this, I thought there's

Corey 52:32

there's a pretty credible path for basically everybody on this list, in my opinion. And why I say that is, A, I believe that memberships

Corey 52:40

memberships come from campaigns. And so if you've got a strong campaign, you can move forward. B, nobody

Corey 52:45

nobody is kind of in deep soup here. I even think about the Sarah Hoffman. People feel things about Sarah Hoffman. And that is actually a big part of her brand in the first week of the campaign. And she's leaned into that hard. And she's galvanized the people who may have been on kind of the same side and also received shitty comments. Like she directly spoke to this in her launch video, right? About, you know, I'm not the person that you think should run for office. I'm fat, I'm sassy, I'm bad at sort of hiding who I am.

Corey 53:14

She didn't necessarily have numbers like this, but say she did.

Corey 53:19

That strategy is pretty consistent with numbers like right

Corey 53:22

right and you know and she has had i think in my opinion some pretty good success in the first week of galvanizing a certain type of new democrat who has then gone out and said yeah fucking right sarah i'm with you and so even when you look at i think who would be perceived on first blush as the underperformer in this poll what

Corey 53:41

what i see more is pieces that a campaign then needs to pick up and build something out of and that to me is like uh that's

Corey 53:48

that's the cool thing about polling and and we We say this a lot on the pod, and maybe this is where I'll sort of throw it back to Dan, but the

Corey 53:55

the horse race numbers are the kinds of things people obsess with. The top lines are the things people obsess with. But on campaigns, you sort of look for those kernels within and say, okay, what do we do with that? Well, that's interesting. That's not quite what's expected.

Carter 54:08

This poll is not discouraging, I think, for any of the candidates. I think it articulates a path that may be more challenging for Zane Velji than for Nahed Nenshi. But keep in mind, Nahed Nenshi is not in this race yet, right?

Carter 54:23

right? If Zayn Velji was to launch tomorrow, we

Carter 54:27

we would have to work very hard, very early to increase his name recognition. But

Zain 54:31

But you could do anything.

Carter 54:34

we would put out some fucking amazing policies that would be like 40-60, right? 60% of Albertans think this is the worst policy in the world. 40% think this is the best policy in the world, right?

Carter 54:47

right? You could do something with, I'm going to go out on a consumption tax, or I'm going to enable cities to do a penny tax. You could do something like that that's got 30%, 35% support and really make inroads with your name recognition. Because believe me, everybody's going to know who you are if you're the pro-PSD guy in about two or three weeks. Yeah,

Zain 55:10

Yeah, it's just a matter of time. time okay one question for you dan before we leave you here um do

Zain 55:17

do you have any idea how

Zain 55:20

don't even know how long the notley coattails

Corey 55:23

coattails are here in

Zain 55:24

in the sense of any of these candidates just giving a bear hug to rachel notley and then just riding it out till june as a strategy we suspected that there might be some that that would take that path i'm kind of curious based on the the fact that no one's kind of made that like their strategy wholly thus far this is just my analysis i'm curious if you have anything on on not least coattails here within within the membership or the party and you may not and that's fine but i thought i'd ask while we have you

SPEAKER_03 55:52

yeah we didn't we didn't really get into how the membership or the likely universe feels about her in this poll i think from other research that's been done um you know she's always been quite popular with even the broader public relative to the party and you'd imagine what the base should be very well liked i think at

SPEAKER_03 56:09

at this stage it's more kind of candidates trying to figure out what their own brand

SPEAKER_03 56:12

brand is and how to um

SPEAKER_03 56:14

um you know put that forward and i think you know it would cut both ways in a in a general election because you know ultimately there is still some some baggage that comes from that as well too so um

SPEAKER_03 56:25

um yeah i'll be curious to see if any candidates do um lean into that a bit more than others but i would imagine uh her numbers are very Very, very

SPEAKER_03 56:31

very strong with the NDP base. Okay.

Zain 56:34

Okay. Guys, anything else before we move on?

Corey 56:40

think we should talk a little bit more about the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. Listen,

Carter 56:45

you guys can take it that direction, but I just need to say something. Dan, thank you very much from the bottom of the strategist's hearts if we had them. Don't have them. This was a spectacular opportunity for us to really dig into numbers and to share with with our audience how these numbers are crafted from legitimately one of the best pollsters in canada in fact nay the world um palera you know if you're going to if you're gonna if you're going to hire a pollster in the next little while if you are running one of these campaigns call dan at palera he is honest he'll answer his own phone he's not above

Zain 57:21

above that you call him and you ask him can i speak to eric grenier and he'll give you eric's number and and by

Corey 57:27

way um promo code dave 45 will get you five percent off your quote from that's true that's

Carter 57:34

and we get a referral fee right we do it

Carter 57:36

it is it is also 45

Zain 57:36

45 of the of the full total invoice is the referral

Carter 57:40

referral it's gonna be great it's

SPEAKER_03 57:42

uh dan anything else we're good good

SPEAKER_03 57:44

good luck with the campaign you've got your work cut out for you based on these numbers fuck

Corey 57:48

fuck i gotta tell you guys um

Corey 57:50

um first of of all steven i didn't appreciate the sincerity and telling nice things about it i agree dan is a good guy could

Carter 57:57

could you could you feel the fucking uh the acting could you feel it like the insincerity i felt it dripped i felt like the insincerity dripped like the guy's got three percent of fucking albertans with paid memberships you know how many that is that's 120 000 that's like a tenfold guys off my fucking tenfold jesus

SPEAKER_03 58:19

oh he's still here guys

SPEAKER_03 58:20

guys i'm still here i'm trying to figure out how to log out of the uh the window oh hey

Carter 58:24

hey dan thanks again man i hope you

Corey 58:28

you enjoyed this bit we were just doing as long as you want with

Zain 58:33

with our guys thank you for the free poll to

Zain 58:35

be launched exclusively with our

Zain 58:41

okay can we actually talk let me ask you a question like okay let's just say i got dan's this

Zain 58:46

this conversation you did let's just say you did just

Corey 58:49

just get dan's numbers my

Zain 58:51

question would be guys seriously should i drop out no

Zain 58:54

nah i haven't launched

Carter 58:56

haven't launched yet i

Zain 58:58

i haven't launched yet let's just give me well then you should okay i should drop out let's just say i have i have let's just say let's say i'm gonna launch this week right let's just like Like, make it real. We're having this conversation February 19th. Carter, should I drop out?

Corey 59:11

Corey, should I drop out?

Corey 59:13

Look, I think that's a complicated question that we should unpack. Because what I said, I believe, which is there's nothing here that makes me think that anybody has this locked up. In fact, when you think about those universes and you think about how memberships actually exist, you know, like, what's going to happen is there's going to be a bunch of people who go out. And they're going to get a bunch of organizers and they're going to get those organizers to sell memberships. And I

Corey 59:39

I don't actually see much to believe that anybody wins this on the first ballot. Quite the contrary. I look at these numbers and I think there's no way anybody wins this on the first ballot. ballot uh i i think that the person who you could kind of trick yourself into thinking wins on the first ballot is not hidden enchi but like the

Corey 59:56

the other campaigns are going to sell memberships they're going to be out there they're going to be doing their things and they've been doing this for longer and

Corey 1:00:02

and so this is going to go multiple ballots and anything can happen in multiple ballots as long as you can be not the person in last well

Carter 1:00:10

well and i think that the most important thing to look at right now i mean dan was kind enough to share with us some of the numbers behind the behind

Carter 1:00:16

behind the the a survey and you know he shared numbers

Carter 1:00:20

numbers for david shepherd right well you can go get some of those numbers david shepherd's not in this race he's not going to be in this race um you have the opportunity to go and get like there were ivison numbers like there's places to go and get stuff that's that's low-hanging fruit and all you need to do is come in like if if five candidates are running in this uh the three that are in and then zane velji and nahad nenshi um you know you need need to beat you

Carter 1:00:48

know raki pancholi you need to beat uh kathleen ganley you need to beat sarah hoffman and frankly beating sarah hoffman for example right off the bat isn't that isn't that hard if you get ahead of her then it's just picking the next one off and keeping in mind you can't piss any of them why would you because you need to roll why are

Zain 1:01:06

are you putting sarah at the um like just just above me just so just so i can understand what what's what's kind of causing you to kind of be like... Just the numbers. Just

Corey 1:01:14

Just the numbers that

Zain 1:01:14

that Dan was doing. Just the vote field numbers, just to be clear, right? Like where her vote field is closest to mine in that sense.

Corey 1:01:20

Yeah, it's nothing personal. I actually don't think that she would necessarily be the one who would be right there, but yeah. Keep in

Carter 1:01:25

in mind, she's got very high name recognition and yet does not excite the people who already know her, right? So is she going to excite the people who do not yet know her?

Carter 1:01:35

Well, here's my problem. I don't either,

Zain 1:01:37

either, really, right? The Invelgy candidacy doesn't either. So let's just talk about, But let's just, if

Carter 1:01:42

if you have no name recognition, you

Carter 1:01:44

you are so low that if we came out right away, again, you don't need to even hit 50-50 issues, right? Racky Pancholi came out with the membership issue last year. Carbon

Carter 1:01:55

I guess she's done two 50-50 type of things within the membership. 50-50 is all you need, right? You can do 30-70. You can do, you know, 35-65 because you don't need to go to 50%. You just need to get people talking about you. You need to get people aware of your name, and then you need to be an incredibly likable person, which may be where this thing falls down on its face, but we can at least try that, right?

Zain 1:02:23

Corey, is that the path for

Zain 1:02:25

In the sense that it's a series of rapid fire, 50-50, quasi-controversial policies that try to splash me in, wedge other candidates, splash me into contention, not even contention, into the orbit and

Zain 1:02:40

then try to grow from there? Is that like the root of the strategy here? And by the way, like as a side note, the reason we're doing this is not because I'm super self-involved, though I am. It's the fact that, you know, how do you kind of take something real from a pollster and a poll and try to like, you know, real numbers and try to make a real campaign strategy out of it? That's what we're trying to add the broad strokes to. Corey, what are you thinking?

Corey 1:03:04

Look, I think that what Stephen talked about is a big part of it but you also need to figure out how all of these things are going to wedge right and you are ultimately trying to make the conversation about you you're trying to split off people and you're trying to be on like a passionate side of an issue where you can start sucking up the oxygen of that particular race and um yeah like when when i think about somebody who has no name recognition be

Corey 1:03:31

aware people with no name recognition win all of them right

Corey 1:03:34

right and they win for For superficial reasons. There's obviously the famous Joe Clark becomes leader of the PCs. Nobody knew who he was to the point where the headline the next day said Joe who? This is somebody who then went on to be prime minister of the country. You have even if you were not super attuned to the liberal leadership race in 2006, you would think, where in the world did Stéphane Dion come from, right? He was going in fourth place in ballots. ballots michael ignatyev didn't come back for you right he was sitting there at the top but he just couldn't get it done because races tend to generate these dynamics where people start to like if if you're not with the front runner you're probably never going to be with the front runner we talk about this all the time right and so those votes tended to coalesce and very few ended up leading to ignatyev relatively as as things went on there happens

Corey 1:04:25

happens all the time and so what i would would say is there's an interesting opportunity if you have an organization to define yourself in a way that is splashy that wedges that can pull yourself into the conversation in a big way that is sometimes not even available to people who are higher up because we just know them like let's use not had nancy as an example if not had nancy came out tomorrow and said let's just say for fun and this is not the case but like it was assessed that what the new New Democrats wanted for leadership was

Corey 1:04:55

was a real partisan, right?

Corey 1:04:57

right? Just a real fucking partisan.

Corey 1:04:59

And now head and end, she's like, I am your guy. I am the partisan. Everyone would say, fuck you. No, you're not. Your whole brand has been not partisan. That's not going to happen, right? So there's opportunity in not being known to. And I will just keep going back to that point because I think it's an important one. But it

Corey 1:05:16

it just depends on, you know, the benefit of being where you are or a person like you in the polls, Zane, is you can go anywhere. Anywhere, if you've got the horses to do it. Okay, so

Zain 1:05:24

so Carter, you're constructing my strategy based on a series of rapid-fire, wedged policies.

Zain 1:05:33

What else? What else do I

Corey 1:05:35

I have going for me? What else should I— Now, head mangy. He didn't come back for you. You're welcome every campaign running against him. Yeah,

Carter 1:05:40

Yeah, you also have the opportunity to do things that others couldn't do. You can run against Rachel Notley in a different way. You can run against Danielle Smith in a different way. You don't have to stand up against her in the legislature at any point. So, you know, what we did with Jyoti Gondek was we went after Jason Kenney because we knew that that way we could get into the stories. We were never going to get into the stories if we weren't going after someone with a higher name recognition. The same thing we did with Nahed Nenshi when we went after Rick Hansen, who was the chief of the police service.

Carter 1:06:15

service. And Hansen was stupid enough to bite on it. um

Carter 1:06:19

um you know all of a sudden we get five days of media right like that those are the things that take your name recognition from zero to a million if you were if you went after uh both

Carter 1:06:32

both mayors gondek and so he and and and and uh daniel smith on crime and safety you would have a really solid opportunity to get your name recognition out and once we do your name recognition people are going going to fall into camps on you and if we do our job properly as people are introduced to you generally speaking they will like you right whereas you know

Carter 1:06:54

know sarah hoffman doesn't have that chance he's already been introduced to

Carter 1:06:58

nahid nenshi does not have that chance already introduced my prediction would be these numbers tell me that nahid nenshi is not going to be able to get over 50 plus one on the first ballot right

Carter 1:07:09

right that these numbers tell me that's that yeah he's going to need someone else and the problem is if you go back through most leaderships you're going to find leadership after leadership after leadership whoever's in first place can only win through attrition they can't win through roll-up and i'm not sure if if every other campaign takes an attrition it takes a roll-up style campaign where

Zain 1:07:34

where they have a dance there's

Carter 1:07:35

there's a winner here where

Zain 1:07:35

where they have a dance partner so to speak um there's

Carter 1:07:38

there's dance partners all across the floor talk to me sarah hoffman going to partner with With Nahed Nenshi? I don't know. Seems weird.

Carter 1:07:46

Talk to me. Pancholi and Ganley.

Corey 1:07:49

Well, they're all in a caucus together, I mean, is what it ultimately comes down

Carter 1:07:51

down to. They've all been New Democrats for years. Nahed Nenshi isn't

Carter 1:07:55

isn't even a fucking New Democrat. Talk

Zain 1:07:57

Talk to me about my chances to beat out the

Zain 1:08:02

the bottom of the floor. Like, to beat out last place. Let's talk about it from that perspective, right? So, like, the Nenshi strategy is an entirely different episode. It has its own interesting sort of elements to it. But talk to me, Carter, about what I need to do to get out of last place. And should that be my goal? Let's go back to 2010, Nenshi. You had the idea of third place before Thanksgiving. Talk to me about the Zane Velji headline goal here, right? I'm currently in last place. Let's say I can put up the money. Let's say I want to still do this. What should my goal be? And from like, that's as simple of like a bumper sticker. You said third place by, what was it, Thanksgiving? What is it for Zane Velji in this case?

Carter 1:08:49

I mean, you need to be into probably into contention. So mentioned in the same sentences, in the same paragraph.

Carter 1:08:58

And I'm just saying mentioned, right? You need to be mentioned in the same paragraph by the 10th of March. march if you're mentioned in the same paragraph as ganley panchuli and hoffman you're golden right chances are nancy's going to be in the paragraph above you but if you're in the same paragraph as the other three and here's the beautiful thing when you've got a big fucking star like nancy coming in he's going to be in the paragraph above and and chances are they're just going to suck you up into the into the into the main paragraph because you're going to be as legit Shit, no one's going to have numbers on this thing. This poll is the closest that anybody's going to get on numbers, right?

Carter 1:09:36

That's an interesting point.

Zain 1:09:36

point. This is the- That's an interesting point. Right.

Carter 1:09:39

And this poll doesn't say that Nahed Nenshi's going to win. No,

Zain 1:09:42

No, it says he's got the largest

Carter 1:09:43

largest vote field. It's

Zain 1:09:44

It's good. Yeah, the positive, negative. That's right.

Carter 1:09:45

He's number one, but

Carter 1:09:47

but number one is not the same as the guy who's going to win. Oh, yeah. Fair enough. And I think that that's a fascinating point. And so for me, all you need to do is get into the same paragraph. graph. By the end of March, you need to be releasing stats that show that you're beating people, right?

Carter 1:10:02

right? And those stats could be a poll of membership. The stats could be your membership sales. Fundraising.

Carter 1:10:08

Pardon me? Sorry, Corey?

Carter 1:10:11

Fundraising. All of these numbers that could show that you're in the game, all

Carter 1:10:16

all of a sudden, if you're starting to show that you're ahead of Sarah Hoffman, or you're ahead of Racky Pancholi, or ahead of Kathleen and Ganley ball

Carter 1:10:24

ball games on man and that's it that's all you need to do Corey

Zain 1:10:28

Corey is that is that all I need to do do you agree with Carter's strategy here um

Corey 1:10:34

um yeah I I think so I don't know if it's all you need to do it's all you need to do by that point right is get into the conversation and be seen as a serious contender and I think also one of the things about being the person who comes from the position where you just pulled at is you get there and there is a buzz right it's like all of a sudden you're the dark horse you're the dark horse candidate nobody saw coming who the fuck is this guy this is crazy seems so unlikable he's leaned into that as his brand he just said at a press conference i don't give a shit if you know me you will and you will respect me that's That's crazy. Who is this guy? Right? And all of a sudden, the conversation's about you. Because it is actually, there's two things in any race like this, in any polling, right, in any election, but I think particularly, and Carter, super interesting point, we're going to be in a data desert for a while, right? And the general population surveys will mean absolutely nothing. The surveys from the campaigns will mean absolutely nothing. They'll still roll. we're going to be in a jaded desert yeah of

Corey 1:11:38

course they will but like you're going to have a situation where if you can like it's position and it's uh kind of what would i say it's like you know speed and direction you know it's it's your velocity and if if your position was like you're in the middle of the pack and now you're not or you weren't in the pack and now you're all of a sudden in the conversation that matters too even if you are all of you know relatively speaking not not positionally where the rest of the campaigns are. So there's ways you can kind of craft a bit of a buzz. And all of a sudden, if you've laid the groundwork, you've gotten into the conversation by taking these 30-70 stances to begin with, those are going to be amplified, people are going to hear more about those stances. And that's your chance to then go and seize them, right? If you've got the apparatus in place, if you've got the organizers in place, if you've got the team in place to kind of follow through, then you can make it happen. Now, if you don't have the team by that that point you're

Corey 1:12:32

you're not going to make it happen because the big difference between what nahed nenshi did in 2010 and what zane proposed or what steven proposes doing for you in 2024 here

Corey 1:12:42

is it's not a gen yeah selling

Corey 1:12:45

you've got to sell memberships and that requires an apparatus you can't win by air war in a in a leadership race it just can't be done it's never i

Corey 1:12:54

don't know anyone who's ever done it you know carter you'll correct me if i'm totally wrong. No,

Carter 1:12:57

No, you're not. I

Corey 1:12:58

I can't think of one. Not

Carter 1:12:59

Not exclusive. It is always, always, always grounded. Not at

Corey 1:13:02

at all. If it was Air War, my comment I made earlier, Ken Dryden could have been the leader in 2006. Which brings me to my

Zain 1:13:09

my struggle as well, despite the fact that I have a path, Carter. How am I using these pretty measly poll numbers to build a ground troop? What am I doing? Where am I going? I do see I have a bit of a slight advantage. I'm not saying above the field, But I have a slight advantage with young and racialized folks. Am I taking down that path? Where am I building my troops from? And is my pathway to build my ground game unique?

Zain 1:13:39

unique? Or is it just the same one that most other campaigns will be building? Any ideas for me around how I kind of build this out? Even if I have a nice website and a good launch video, I still need to be able to do the functional things in order to put myself in that buzz worthy position. Thoughts on building my troops, Carter?

Carter 1:13:59

Yeah, you'd need to bring it, you'd need to bring a group of people, right? Like this wouldn't be one of those campaigns where you can start with six or seven people. I'd be the only campaign with a pollster. It's

Carter 1:14:08

It's just too short.

Zain 1:14:10

be the only campaign.

Carter 1:14:10

campaign. It's just too short. The runway is too short. Like when we found ourselves in this position with Gondek, we started in January, we found ourselves in this position with with nenshi we started in early may um or even april i can't recall uh specifically but when you start early um you have months and months to build this allison redford had nine or ten months uh to build up to the place where we finally had all of those people selling and and even then actually that probably was an air war campaign uh cory in the the last two weeks right

Carter 1:14:49

so i'll put that but also

Corey 1:14:50

also the most like a general election yeah

Carter 1:14:53

say because people could buy a membership right up to the literally on the spot

Carter 1:14:59

so um probably not a fair comparison but you need to bring in your your first hundred volunteers from your personal network and that might be where we fail right if you and i if you were to say okay i've got a list of 200 people that that might be interested in helping me i'd say, okay, tonight, tomorrow, the next day, you're making these telephone calls, and you need to tell me that 100 of them are in, where

Carter 1:15:23

where we're not going to be in a position where we can make this actually work.

Zain 1:15:26

Corey, it starts with my network. That makes good sense. Where does it grow from there? Where do I grow my troops from there? Is it with the slight edge I have with certain demographics? Am I going geographic here? How am I building this out?

Corey 1:15:41

You know, I think what you you need to do is make it so even a loss is a win uh right for some of those people in that next orbit out where it's like look i'm

Corey 1:15:50

i'm going to uh enter this race and i intend to try to win but even if i don't we're putting we're we're making a big fight here right like we're we're going to make sure everybody is talking about a sales tax in alberta that's going to be the thing whatever it is i don't know if that's the kind of thing that that like excites the loins of people right Yeah,

Carter 1:16:10

Yeah, like people may not, like we did it on healthcare, right? Like there's lots of other.

Corey 1:16:14

There's lots of choices. But the point would be, you can kind of pick a niche and say, you know, winning is important.

Corey 1:16:21

What I'm going to do if I do nothing else is I'm going to take over this conversation. And we're going to make everybody talk about this issue that you and I believe is the most important issue. And so that's a way to get people to kind of throw their efforts behind a campaign that doesn't look like it's got a chance without feeling like like, they're

Corey 1:16:37

they're wasting their time, right? You've got to sort of define victory in a way for that next orbit, not the Zane Stans, not the diehards who would be there for any, but like that next orbit out. Not

Zain 1:16:47

Not the 2% of Albertans that are buying the posters. By the way, if we had 2% of Albertans buying the Zane Belcher for Leader posters, we would be losing a lot of money.

Corey 1:16:57

We're at one and a

Zain 1:16:59

We would be losing

Zain 1:17:00

a lot of money. Yes, we do lose money on every poster you purchase so buy as many as you can every poster

Zain 1:17:07

even joking that is actually

Corey 1:17:08

actually true every poster we sell that is a literal we lose money on we

Corey 1:17:12

think of them as lost leaders but we've never actually led anything that's true we

Corey 1:17:15

we haven't really um yeah

Corey 1:17:17

yeah we haven't really

Corey 1:17:19

from behind to to to to take the profits nice combo nice combo of poster and mug break

Corey 1:17:25

break even oh just make a

Zain 1:17:27

a bit of money on

Zain 1:17:29

that's right buy a lot lot of posters, people. Carter, anything

Zain 1:17:32

anything else for me? Yes, sir. I think it's DeCorey's credit card, which is what makes me happy. Carter, anything else we want to talk about the strategy here? So first of all, to be clear, you're not saying that I should quit. You are saying I have an uphill battle. You are saying I am part of a soup of candidates that have this similar sort of battle, but I can overcome it, that the lack of name recognition provides me opportunity, opportunity, especially with this runway that we're offered. You have personally advised me that I need to find 50-50, 40-60, 30-70 policies, rapid succession, roll them out. You've also said that by March 10th, I need to be in the conversation. You've defined to me what that is.

Zain 1:18:16

What else do you want to add to me as advice as I take this forward, assemble my team, find my campaign manager, take this challenge on? And when I say me, I mean me or anyone like me, who's looking at, or has the privilege of looking at numbers like this, or even the assumption. No, it's you. Yeah, well, okay. I mean, I'm trying to broaden the scope here.

Zain 1:18:34

It's a lot of Zane Velji talk. What else do you want to tell me, Carter?

Carter 1:18:39

Keep in mind that victory doesn't necessarily have to be winning.

Carter 1:18:43

Victory could be, you know, you jump in on this campaign, and you ensure that Nahid Nenshi wins, or you ensure that Rocky Pancholi wins. Whoever you choose to win.

Carter 1:18:59

i just assumed you'd have i want

Zain 1:19:01

in the one world

Zain 1:19:02

world than to have sir hoffman to win right now and and you are just saying that i'm just a uh and these these are your your sentiments not mine a trojan horse for the two brown candidates that might be in the field well

Zain 1:19:12

well any any naturally i

Carter 1:19:13

i assumed that naturally

Carter 1:19:15

naturally uh obviously that would be exactly what you feel

Zain 1:19:19

feel like this was just an exercise

Carter 1:19:20

exercise to make me a racialized trojan why but

Zain 1:19:23

but why there's an undercurrent there i don't want to examine it carter oh

Carter 1:19:27

oh i hate you right now i hate you so much sometimes now that was

Corey 1:19:35

was Freudian holy shit all

Corey 1:19:38

all right look let's be clear you're hoping to get into the soup like i just want to sort of correct one thing i am you're not and so

Corey 1:19:46

like the part of the campaign is is actually not looking like you're deeply delusional about where you are in it right and so carter's comment about victories contextual is so true like if you it like let's just say there was a campaign where you just got to the soup right just which

Corey 1:20:03

which we're now describing as kind of yeah the

Zain 1:20:04

the pack exactly in the mix holy

Corey 1:20:06

holy shit would that be legendary for somebody coming from you know absolutely no you know kind of you're not an mla you're not like a prominent leader you are known to people in calgary but you're not like a guy on people's tongues right and if all of a sudden you're in the conference you should be Hey, listen, membership, strategist, patron, grow in all the time, right? Just, we'll get there. But that

Corey 1:20:30

that is, that would be huge. Like, you would be able to walk into any nomination you want. You would have all sorts of authorities.

Zain 1:20:36

authorities. In some ways, to keep on Carter's train of comparing me only to brown people, it's the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign in some ways, where you kind of go from a nobody to a dropout or someone who clearly was not going to win. But like now, any governorship, Senate candidate, whatever, like, you know, if Trump is indeed, maybe

Zain 1:20:56

maybe even if he isn't president, but

Zain 1:20:58

but if Trump is still, you know, the center of the weather system that is the Republican Party,

Zain 1:21:04

Vivek Ramaswamy is, kind of has his, you know, has his choice around what he may want to do within that infrastructure and still have institutional support to

Zain 1:21:13

to get over the top and perhaps be victorious in that sense.

Carter 1:21:17

More so than Nikki Haley. to continue our whole minority theme. I'm

Zain 1:21:21

glad it took us an hour and a half to get to this point, which is see brown candidates for example, Zane. Which is good. Carter, you get the... Listen, this is a big time. You get the final word. You get the

Zain 1:21:32

the final word on this episode. Once again, thanks to our friend Dan

Corey 1:21:35

Dan from Polaro. Can you believe how bad things have gone for him, that he's gone from advising Justin Trudeau to advising Zane Velji? Oh

Carter 1:21:44

What a tragic... Oof. man

Carter 1:21:46

people needed to really i just people needed

Zain 1:21:48

needed to know me in my diapers and he he unfortunately uh could not be there from that from from the beginning um but i mean listen i'm

Carter 1:21:55

i'm wearing a diaper right now well because that's the only way i can get through these podcasts when they're long like this well carter you

Zain 1:22:02

battle word i'm not even joking dan was indeed the i think i like i made it so sarcastic that i think some people would be like hey was was he fucking around no dan was indeed the pollster for the liberal party and then the pmo and now polar this was was a real pull. We are genuinely thanking him. And Carter, you have the final word as we wrap up this episode on the Zane Velgey strategy.

Carter 1:22:23

Zane Velgey should run. It's anybody's game right now. And I would make the same statement to anybody considering at this stage, provided they could put together a team and some money, especially if they could put together enough money to hire me and Corey.

Carter 1:22:37

That would be pretty great.

Zain 1:22:38

Corey, Zane, I want to now give you the the final word yeah

Corey 1:22:43

know it was a word we said earlier but i'm going to say it again

Corey 1:22:48

you can look at when you get a poll like this in some ways it's kind of like a rorschach test you can read an awful lot into it here one of the things is i i would be any one of those camps i'd look at it and be like oh i get it i actually feel that though for you know for like you know know absolute fact it is so open right now and it's going to be who excites this base who builds the biggest organization who is going to develop uh you know the winning team and the winning strategy to get there that's all on the table for people and so look if you're a zane velji is

Corey 1:23:22

is it a bigger lift oh fuck yeah absolutely like let's not kid yourself there are there are three very credible campaigns running around the province right now selling boatloads of memberships but it's not impossible there is still time what's

Corey 1:23:36

what's going to be interesting to see is is uh as this race shapes up and moves forward whether anybody does take that zane velji flyer right whether anybody says hey you know what i can get into the conversation right now for twenty thousand dollars and maybe i can't get to the next twenty thousand dollars or the twenty thousand after that but i can fucking talk about the things i want to talk about and we can have a pretty good time

Zain 1:23:59

That's a really interesting point from a return on investment, Corey.

Zain 1:24:05

If you have a person who is credible and clearly not just a front for something, but has something to say and

Zain 1:24:13

has 20 grand that they can put together, it's

Zain 1:24:15

it's actually a pretty decent ROI when you consider all of the other instruments available in terms of advocating your positions and your priorities to a group that, as Dan says, says has a chance of forming government, you know, is not like outside of the realm of possibility that the NDP formed the next government. A pretty decent ROI. I think that's a really good point. And

Zain 1:24:39

And on that point, Carter, we're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1286 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, joined by Dan Arnold, and we'll see you next time.

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