[colanderman]

Yes, if the conductor is poor, it will have losses -- but still it is not the material by which power is conducted to the load. (Rather, because its resistivity creates an E field along its length and within it, you now have a nonzero Poynting vector within the conductor -- one which points outward into the environment!)

Poynting vectors are bizarre and magical.

[BenjiWiebe]

They are definitely bizarre, and in my limited analysis of things electrical, they hinder rather than help. So much of electrical/electronic stuff can be simply modeled as flowing through the conductor, and remember a few caveats (velocity factor is caused/affected by insulation not conductor).