E.R. Campbell said:
PPCLI Guy said:
So far, the election campaign isn’t unfolding as Trudeau hoped
ADAM RADWANSKI
The Globe and Mail
Last updated Thursday, Jul. 02, 2015
The 2015 federal election will require political parties to work harder than ever to capture the attention of the electorate. This story is part of Adam Radwanski’s new assignment looking at how the party machines across the country are preparing.
At a time when they’re under fire for using Islamic State footage of brutal executions in an ad attacking Justin Trudeau, describing Stephen Harper’s Conservatives as “restrained” might seem like a stretch.
But a rare case of the governing party holding fire against its opponents has been among the most noteworthy stories during the runup to the federal election – one that helps explain the recent struggles of Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals to get traction.
For a brief time this spring, we appeared on the verge of something approaching class warfare. That was what the Liberals seemed to be counting on, even if they wouldn’t put it in quite those terms, when they unveiled key planks of their campaign platform. Those planks included a tax increase for top income earners, along with cancellations of the Tories’ income-splitting policy and the increase in maximum contributions to tax-free savings accounts (both alleged to disproportionately benefit the affluent), to fund tax cuts for middle-income earners and an overhaul and expansion of the Canada Child Benefit.
The way the Liberals hyped that announcement in the days before it – with predictions that, after being accused of having too little policy, they would now be accused of having too much of it – made clear that they expected their promises to generate enough push-back to make it the talk of the country.
The Liberals’ expectation was clearly that, true to past form, the Tories would launch a full-fledged assault on them for wanting to raise taxes. The Liberals would reply along the lines that Mr. Harper was just standing up for his rich friends in the 1 per cent, and Mr. Trudeau looking out for everyone else. This would put them on the side of people who feel the system has been rigged against them, and buffer Mr. Trudeau’s credentials as a change agent willing to take bold positions.
To the Liberals’ surprise, though, the Conservatives didn’t play along. Sure, they made some perfunctory noises about Mr. Trudeau wanting to “raise taxes on families,” but they weren’t very loud and didn’t last long. There was no ad campaign against the Liberals’ tax plans.
Instead, the Conservatives took technical issue with whether the Liberal promises added up, made a modest effort to suggest the middle class would benefit more under their own plan, and generally did their best to make the whole thing as boring and uneventful as possible. Rather than dabbling in populism, the Liberals got stuck pulling out charts to show why their policy was a bit better than the other guy’s.
Putting a positive spin on how it played out, Liberals now say their policies are so inherently appealing to the electorate that the Conservatives knew better than to attack them, and suggest that, because of the potential contras, the Tories seem to have all but abandoned selling the tax measures in their own pre-election budget.
But in recent conversations, senior officials in their party also conceded that what is meant to be one of their signature issues has largely gone below Canadians’ radar so far. “Our collective challenge is to get people to pay attention to it,” one of them said.
“We expected them to take the bait,” the official said of the Conservatives. “Instead, it turns out we have to take the fight to them and the NDP a little more.”
The inclusion of the New Democrats, in that assessment, was telling. In the jockeying between the opposition parties to position themselves as the realest alternative to the Conservatives and pick up centre-left votes, the Liberals have been counting on highlighting Mr. Trudeau’s plans to increase taxes on the rich, and Thomas Mulcair’s lack thereof.
Setting aside that the NDP can counter that it plans to increase corporate taxes and the Liberals don’t, taxing the rich – and the various related tax reforms – has not yet gotten enough attention for most voters to know how the Liberals and New Democrats differ on it. Nor did those policies stem the momentum toward the NDP that materialized in the first half of this year.
The Liberals’ plan to “take the fight” to the other parties on tax policy may yet enable them to make good on the hype before their roll-out on that issue. Or, they may be able to strike contrasts on promises they have subsequently announced, such as democratic reform and environmental protection, or those yet to be unveiled.
But the Conservatives, who have made little secret of preferring to beat down the Liberals and take their chances with the New Democrats, have done themselves a favour so far. Even the most combative can pick their battles.
E.R. Campbell said:Here is a new Predictinator from Sun News'\ David Akin ...
He writes:
"For the first time since I fired up the Predictionator machine earlier this year, it is spitting out an NDP Minority Government with the Conservatives as the Official Opposition, the Liberals remaining as the (much improved) third party.
The last few runs of the Predictionator returned the Bloc Québecois with no seats but the return last week of Gilles Duceppe has tipped the scale and now the BQ could win three under Duceppe (we still don’t know where/if he is running and
that would change Predictionator’s assessment of whatever riding that happened to be). Greens continue to elect only Elizabeth May and the other Green MP in the House, Bruce Hyer, would get replaced by a New Democrat.
One note on Duceppe: He led his party to catastrophe in 2011. He lost his own seat and the BQ won just 4 seats. Right now, Duceppe would lead his party to an even worse result!
But, seriously what does this mean?
Well, first of all, there’s a whole lot of campaigning to go so, though the model I’m using is called The Predictionator, this is not — and I hoped this would be obvious — an actual prediction of what will happen on October 19. What it is though
is a snapshot of several different datapoints that tries to capture how the actual work of generating votes and seats is going. So far as new inputs go for this week: Some new polls of federal vote intention in some regions, specifically Quebec
and Atlantic Canada. There are also four recent national polls in here. And then there is me, your trust correspondent, putting his thumb on the dial in about 60 ridings in the country where, based on my discussions with local experts, candidates,
and, most importantly of all, party workers actively engaged in those local races.
This exercise is useful to me because it helps me identify where we might see some surprise results, where there are regional shifts away from or towards a party and where more inquiries might be needed. This all helps finding stories for an
election reporter.
The Big Idea, as I reviewed the riding by riding results is that, right now, a razor-thin NDP Minority is possible because of lots of razor-thin wins at the riding level. For example, I have, in my model, Matthew Robinson, a professor at the
University of Western Ontario who is the NDP candidate in London West, winning against incumbent Conservative Ed Holder, the Minister of State for Science and Technology. But Robinson’s “win” right now is by less than 100 votes. A handful
of these ‘toss-up’ races swing away from the NDP and the Conservatives would likely form a minority.
No one is anywhere near a majority.
What had looked like Liberal dominance in Atlantic Canada is now looking less so. Trudeau and his team are still easily the most popular choice of most Atlantic Canadians but, lo and behold, the NDP could pick up their first seat ever on
Prince Edward Island. And, sure enough, I have discovered that NDP HQ has deployed resources to organize and do voter ID in the riding of Charlottetown, where I currently have Liberal incumbent Sean Casey losing by about 1,000 votes
in a riding where about 18,000 will vote.
Liberals also looked dominant for much of this year in Toronto but now, a little less so. Adam Vaughan, just elected in the Trinity-Spadina by-election, now finds himself down by 600 votes against a still-to-be-named New Democrat in the
new-for-2015 riding of Spadina-Fort York, most of which is the southern half of the current Trinity-Spadina riding. (And, yes, my model does put a value on anyone’s incumbency and Vaughan, himself, like several other candidates, also gets a
special bonus just for being who he is.) The six ridings in Scarborough, where there are currently two New Democrats and one Conservative, seemed a near lock to be swept by the Trudeau Liberals. No longer: Dan Harris and Rathika Sitsabaiesan
now hold Scarborough Southwest and Scarborough North and New Democrat Alex Wilson wins in Scarborough Centre, where the incumbent, Conservative Roxanne James, had been a likely loser in any event to the Liberals. This Scarborough result is
holding despite the entrance into the race of former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair in Scarborough Southwest.
Just as the Liberals are appearing to wilt in the face of NDP popularity in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, the Conservatives are wilting in Alberta. But though I have the NDP with six seats in Alberta now — one in Lethbridge, the rest in Edmonton —
all but four will be highly contested and it would not surprise me in the least if, after the count is done on October 19, that the NDP exit Alberta only with Edmonton Strathcona (the one seat they already hold there) and Edmonton Griesbach. Still,
flagging these other four tells me that the other four ridings should attract resources and attention from the war rooms of the national parties."
One wonders about the percentage of "informed" voters ...
jollyjacktar said:
Brad Sallows said:
Summer isn’t the time to predict which way the political winds blow
JEFFREY SIMPSON
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Jul. 04, 2015
Do you want to place a bet on the outcome of the Oct. 19 election based on today’s polls? Before you do, consider a little recent history.
Three men who became prime minister for long stretches of time trailed in the polls during Canada Day week. All were written off as roadkill against opponents who, in early July, appeared to have mojo.
Think back to the early summer of 1984. Liberal prime minister John Turner, having won the party leadership, had the wind at his back. That is, until the election campaign in which he and the Liberals were thumped by Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservatives, who won in a landslide.
Reflect for a moment on the situation facing prime minister Kim Campbell in July, 1993. She was a new leader, the first woman prime minister, a breath of fresh air who promised to do politics differently. Except that when the campaign ended, her Progressive Conservatives had won only two seats. They were thrashed by the Liberals under Jean Chrétien, dubbed “yesterday’s man” by his detractors.
In the summer of 2005, Liberal prime minister Paul Martin seemed destined to win a whopping majority. The economy was humming, new Liberal candidates had emerged (remember Belinda Stronach?) and Mr. Martin unveiled big ambitions for Canada. Except that when the election campaign arrived, things went downhill for the Liberals. Stephen Harper became the Conservative prime minister, a job he still holds, at least until Oct. 19.
Go ahead, place a bet if you want on tomorrow’s results based on today’s polls, but remember that polls are snapshots of today and not necessarily predictors of what will transpire tomorrow. And, by the way, campaigns matter.
If you doubt that statement, ponder recent provincial elections. Who would have predicted an NDP sweep in Alberta a month before voting day? Think of the past British Columbia election: An apparently sure thing for the NDP turned into a Liberal triumph. Or Quebec, where the smarty-pants in the Parti Québécois government were so sure of impending victory that they called an election and got slaughtered by the Liberals. Even in New Brunswick, the Liberals won all right but not nearly by as much as had been predicted when the campaign began.
Why the swings? The obvious reason is that more citizens pay attention to politics during campaigns than at any other time. A lot of people don’t think much, if at all, about political choices most of the time. They turn their fleeting attention to politics only during elections, if then.
These largely uninterested voters tend not to decide on issues or platforms, but on impressions and images of leadership, and sometimes on that vague but powerful sense that it’s “time for a change.” They are particularly susceptible to “information” conveyed by partisan political advertising, especially attack ads, which explains why parties rely so heavily on these ads that have nothing to do with substance but everything with image.
The summer before a vote is dead time, politically speaking. People have plenty better to do with their time than follow politics in a country with only one short burst of warmth and sun each year (except, of course, on the West Coast). Which is one reason why indications about which way political winds are blowing before and during the summer are not accurate predictors of what might happen come fall.
Then there are unexpected events – crises such as a financial collapse, slips of the tongue, good or poor performances by leaders in televised debates, an issue that catches fire and helps or hurts a party. Every party works hard to prevent damaging developments, but they can happen – a story out of nowhere on social media, a dumb statement by a local candidate, a tired leader who loses his or her cool, a maladroit comment that gets blown into something.
Then there is the contest between expectations and results. A leader – Justin Trudeau today – who has been knocked down a few pegs in recent months (at least in media coverage) might pleasantly surprise people if he can walk and chew gum at the same time. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is riding high these days, even being talked about as a prime minister, which means that anything he says will be scrutinized as never before.
Finally, there is Mr. Harper who, after so long in office, is who he is and what he has done. The election ultimately will be about him. You can indeed bet on that.
