The most reasonable Opposition leader in the upcoming Parliament is an avowed separatist who would very much love to break up the country. The other two federalist opposition parties on the other hand are being silly, on the part of the NDP, and acting more like the Bloc Quebecois of old in the case of the Conservatives. I guess that would qualify the current political scene as wacky.
Of course the two federalists parties are doing this because they have very serious problems that they are trying to distract people from examining too closely.
In the case of the NDP, they have been reduced to the fourth party in Parliament and they are desperate to appear relevant. So Mr. Singh talks big, like the mouse that roared. There are two possibilities for why Mr. Singh is appearing so belligerent.
One reason put forward by many is he is inexperienced and a lousy tone deaf politician who does not realize just how irrelevant he is.
The second possibility is Mr. Singh notices the parallels between the NDP election platform and the Liberal election platform. So he will make all sorts of noise about voting against the Throne Speech now so that when the Throne Speech contains alot of promises similar to the ones pushed by the NDP he can "grudgingly" vote for it and claim that it was his tough stance that "forced" the Liberals to make those promises. It really is one of the oldest tricks in the book in minority government situations. Of course, it would be BS but our media would not point that out and the NDP would seem relevant for a short time. Unfortunately, it would only work once and only on a aspirational document like a Throne Speech. Once it came down to the nitty-gritty details, following the passing of the Throne Speech, recklessly taking a tough stance would risk an election that the NDP certainly does not want.
So which is it? Is Mr. Singh a fool or is he pursuing a canny strategy to give the perception that the NDP "wins" an early victory in the new Parliament? We will know in a few weeks.
Mr. Scheer knows that his leadership is on the line and you can already see the outlines of a strategy for him to hang onto it. He is going to join the Premiers of Saskberta in their bitching about what a raw deal they are getting from Canada so that he can sew up the votes of Conservatives in those provinces. He will also continue to cultivate the social conservatives in Central Canada to push him over the 50% he will need in April. And that will be a victory for him in his mind. If he wins 50% +1 he will call it a victory and stay on as leader, even though such a result would indicate a deeply divided Conservative Party.
Such a strategy has a good shot of succeeding because there is no obvious successor to him besides Mr. Mackay.
Mr. Kenney is the premier of a province where Conservative governments have been rogering ordinary Albertans for more than 50 years and where those same ordinary Albertans always say "Thank you sir, can I have some more?" Mr. Kenney has the power to exercise his ideological Conservative instincts with virtual impunity for the next four to eight years and I find it very unlikely that he will give that up for a less than 50/50 chance to become PM of a government that would have to be much less Conservative because of the nature of running a country as culturally and geographically diverse as Canada. He would have to water down his Conservatism as PM where he can keep it in its pure form as Premier of Alberta. As well, his statements and actions against Eastern Canada is making him more unelectable by the week in Eastern Canada. If he keeps this up for the next six months, his chances of becoming the PM would likely be much reduced even if he were to win the Conservative Party leadership.
Mr. Ford is the Premier of Canada's biggest and richest province. If he were to run as leader of the Federal Conservative Party he would have to give that up. Running Ontario is too big of a job to be done part-time, even for just a few months. Again I cannot see him doing that for a less than 50/50 chance of being PM. He is becoming increasingly toxic in Ontario which is exactly the province where the Conservatives have to make a breakthrough in order to win an election. Like Mr. Kenney, he has a good thing going in Ontario and he is the favourate to win the next election in Ontario. His government will lose seats for certain but probably not enough to remove him from government.
In the case of both of these men it may be a case of a "bird in hand being worth more than two in the bush."
So that leaves who? Mr. Mackay, Ms. Mulroney, Mr. Chong?
If Mr. Scheer is removed and one of them wins the outrage in Western Canada towards the Conservative Party would be quite the sight to see. That might make the nascent Wexit Party a force in the next election. The irony of the Conservative Party of Canada being kneecapped by a new "Reform" Party would be funny. The irony of Mr. Mackay being shafted by another "Reform" Party again would be delicious.
Then again, if Mr. Scheer's strategy succeeds it will only be after Canadians have watched him play head cheer leader to the Kenney and Moe show, for six months, which will reduce the Conservatives chances of making the needed breakthrough in Ontario and points East during the next election. So, he might hang onto to the leadership but at the price of severely damaging the electoral chances of the Conservative during the next election.
Personally I believe he will hang onto his job for one big reason. Mr. Harper takes politics personally. He was greatly disappointed in losing to a Trudeau in 2015. The apparent front-runner for the CPC if Mr. Scheer is removed is Mr. Mackay, Mr. Harper's main rival for the leadership of the Conservative Party when it was formed. I would hazard a guess that Mr. Harper still believes the Conservative Party is his party, as it has been since its inception 15 years ago. His fingerprints were all over the Conservative Party platform during the last election and I believe he would not be pleased to see Mr. Mackay take over "his" party. The reason would largely be personal but as well, unlike Mr. Scheer, Mr. Mackay cannot be trusted to maintain the purity of the Harper brand of Conservatism. He might just change it so that it will no longer be the Harper Party. So, it would not surprise me that behind the scenes Harper operatives are working to assist Mr. Scheer in his goal of maintaining the party leadership.
Minority government always lead to wackiness in Canadian politics as the various parties try to adjust to the new reality. So far the two federalist opposition parties are the ones showing the most strain in making that adjustment while the governing Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois seem to be taking it in stride. That could change in the coming months, which can happen in a minority government, so the next few months will be interesting to watch.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Federal Election 2019: Some Final Thoughts - Just some random meanderings?
Three days after the election and the reaction has been predictable.
First, the idea that the Liberals are weak because they are in a minority government is laughable. They are 13 seats short of a majority. That means that all of the Opposition Parties would need to vote against the Liberals to bring down the government. That is not going to happen for quite some time and when it does it might be because the Liberals want it that way.
The Conservatives are the most horny for another election because they believe, wrongly, that they would win it. However, it is going to be interesting to see what they do when the Liberals introduce the tax cut they ran on as the first order of business when the House resumes. Then the Liberals will also introduce some measures that the Conservatives would be hard pressed to vote against. Let us remember that when a government has a majority no one pays attention to votes in the House. Now that we have a minority every confidence motion is going to be hyped to the max and how the parties vote will be examined and parsed every which way you can think of. The Conservatives reflexively voting against Bills that have broad support will be noticed. Then there is a question of whether Andrew Scheer stays on as leader of the CPC. He obviously wants to but others in his party may decide otherwise.
The NDP is beyond broke. They carried a debt from 2015 into the 2019 election and spent every spare dollar they had this time. They are on a downward trajectory with regard to their vote and number of seats. It has already been said but they do not want another election for at least two years, probably longer. I do not think it happens often, for minority governments, but it is conceivable that the next election will take place on the next legally required day in the Fall of 2023.
The Bloc will want time to consolidate their gains so that this election is not one-off for them. They will not want an election any time soon either.
The Green Party is irrelevant as is JWR. Indeed, JWR is a female version of John Nunziata.
Second, the chances of the Liberals winning the next election is a shade more than 50-50 unless the Conservatives do what needs to be done to renew their party. The Conservatives are suffering the same delusions that the Liberals did after 2006. The Liberals did not renew their party until they were finally crushed in 2011. Before that they were just the Chretien/Martin party with different leaders. Mr. Trudeau does not receive enough credit for the bottom to top renewal of the Liberal Party that he oversaw after winning the leadership of the Liberals. Indeed, he was quite ruthless in turfing the old guard in the years leading up to the 2015 election. That is one reason why they went from Third to First. The Conservatives have not done this exercise yet. They are still the Harper Party, as it has been since it was formed in the early 2000s, and to believe the voters they need to win again are unaware of this is naive at best.
Then there is the fact that when the next election takes place Ontario will have witnessed up to four years of Doug Ford government. The Conservatives kept him in suspended animation somewhere for over two months but the next time we go to the polls that will not really help. The voters of Ontario will not forget 3 or 4 years of Doug Ford mismanagement just because he disappears for few weeks the next time.
Finally, one of the reasons why the Liberals won is because they have created a very well oiled election machine. That machine is intact and they will be doing what is necessary to be ready for the next campaign, whenever that may be. For example, I stated in my last post that they identified and pulled alot of Liberals in ridings, previously held by the NDP, in Quebec. They still have these databases. They will use them again. They will also be targeting the 6 ridings in Ontario held by the NDP. The relative success of the NDP in the election papers over the many structural problems that party has and Mr. Singh has done nothing to address those during his time at the helm of that party. The Liberals are going to try to take advantage of that.
Of course, something could change this dynamic, such as a serious economic downturn or some kind of Liberal scandal, manufactured or otherwise, but as long as the Conservatives do not go through the effort of renewing itself they will have difficulties.
Third, Alberta separatists are full of crap. Nuff said. My only critique is of people actually engaging these yahoos by stating the obvious facts about the impacts of such a separation. Stop giving these bozos oxygen. They are not worth it.
Fourth, it seems that after every election there is a renewed call for electoral reform. Hell, even some Conservative are talking about it because the Conservatives did win more votes than the Liberals. It is all crap as well. I have argued many times why electoral reform will solve the problems of the FPTP voting system by creating other equally serious problems. There is no method of voting that is "more democratic". They are all ways to elect democratic governments. They are all effective at doing so. They all have their problems and imperfections. In the end it is a wash.
So the next few years are going to be interesting and infuriating. It will be non-stop campaigning by all of the parties but in the end the most likely outcome will be the Liberals implementing the bulk of the agenda they outlined in their election platform. It will just be more noticeable this time, which might not be such a bad thing from their point of view.
First, the idea that the Liberals are weak because they are in a minority government is laughable. They are 13 seats short of a majority. That means that all of the Opposition Parties would need to vote against the Liberals to bring down the government. That is not going to happen for quite some time and when it does it might be because the Liberals want it that way.
The Conservatives are the most horny for another election because they believe, wrongly, that they would win it. However, it is going to be interesting to see what they do when the Liberals introduce the tax cut they ran on as the first order of business when the House resumes. Then the Liberals will also introduce some measures that the Conservatives would be hard pressed to vote against. Let us remember that when a government has a majority no one pays attention to votes in the House. Now that we have a minority every confidence motion is going to be hyped to the max and how the parties vote will be examined and parsed every which way you can think of. The Conservatives reflexively voting against Bills that have broad support will be noticed. Then there is a question of whether Andrew Scheer stays on as leader of the CPC. He obviously wants to but others in his party may decide otherwise.
The NDP is beyond broke. They carried a debt from 2015 into the 2019 election and spent every spare dollar they had this time. They are on a downward trajectory with regard to their vote and number of seats. It has already been said but they do not want another election for at least two years, probably longer. I do not think it happens often, for minority governments, but it is conceivable that the next election will take place on the next legally required day in the Fall of 2023.
The Bloc will want time to consolidate their gains so that this election is not one-off for them. They will not want an election any time soon either.
The Green Party is irrelevant as is JWR. Indeed, JWR is a female version of John Nunziata.
Second, the chances of the Liberals winning the next election is a shade more than 50-50 unless the Conservatives do what needs to be done to renew their party. The Conservatives are suffering the same delusions that the Liberals did after 2006. The Liberals did not renew their party until they were finally crushed in 2011. Before that they were just the Chretien/Martin party with different leaders. Mr. Trudeau does not receive enough credit for the bottom to top renewal of the Liberal Party that he oversaw after winning the leadership of the Liberals. Indeed, he was quite ruthless in turfing the old guard in the years leading up to the 2015 election. That is one reason why they went from Third to First. The Conservatives have not done this exercise yet. They are still the Harper Party, as it has been since it was formed in the early 2000s, and to believe the voters they need to win again are unaware of this is naive at best.
Then there is the fact that when the next election takes place Ontario will have witnessed up to four years of Doug Ford government. The Conservatives kept him in suspended animation somewhere for over two months but the next time we go to the polls that will not really help. The voters of Ontario will not forget 3 or 4 years of Doug Ford mismanagement just because he disappears for few weeks the next time.
Finally, one of the reasons why the Liberals won is because they have created a very well oiled election machine. That machine is intact and they will be doing what is necessary to be ready for the next campaign, whenever that may be. For example, I stated in my last post that they identified and pulled alot of Liberals in ridings, previously held by the NDP, in Quebec. They still have these databases. They will use them again. They will also be targeting the 6 ridings in Ontario held by the NDP. The relative success of the NDP in the election papers over the many structural problems that party has and Mr. Singh has done nothing to address those during his time at the helm of that party. The Liberals are going to try to take advantage of that.
Of course, something could change this dynamic, such as a serious economic downturn or some kind of Liberal scandal, manufactured or otherwise, but as long as the Conservatives do not go through the effort of renewing itself they will have difficulties.
Third, Alberta separatists are full of crap. Nuff said. My only critique is of people actually engaging these yahoos by stating the obvious facts about the impacts of such a separation. Stop giving these bozos oxygen. They are not worth it.
Fourth, it seems that after every election there is a renewed call for electoral reform. Hell, even some Conservative are talking about it because the Conservatives did win more votes than the Liberals. It is all crap as well. I have argued many times why electoral reform will solve the problems of the FPTP voting system by creating other equally serious problems. There is no method of voting that is "more democratic". They are all ways to elect democratic governments. They are all effective at doing so. They all have their problems and imperfections. In the end it is a wash.
So the next few years are going to be interesting and infuriating. It will be non-stop campaigning by all of the parties but in the end the most likely outcome will be the Liberals implementing the bulk of the agenda they outlined in their election platform. It will just be more noticeable this time, which might not be such a bad thing from their point of view.
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Federal Election 2019: Final Result - Liberal Minority Government
Election 2019 is in the books and the Liberals won the most seats. They did not win as many seats as they would have liked but they still won the most. Now they will govern until they decide to engineer their own defeat or until all of the Opposition Parties believe they have an opportunity.
The three historical voting patterns that I outlined in previous posts came to pass. A first term government was re-elected as they have been for the last century. Ontario voters decided to vote for opposite party to the one governing Ontario. There is a Conservative government in Ontario so Ontario voters chose a Liberal federal government. The NDP did poorly so the Conservatives did poorly as well. I have been saying since 2015 that the Liberals were the prohibitive favourate to win this election and they won. My assessment also included the idea that they would be elected to a majority government and I was wrong about that but like many others I did not expect the Bloc Quebecois to double its popular vote and triple its seat count over the course of a 6 week campaign.
After the 2015 election the Liberals knew that they would be hard pressed to achieve the same success in the West that they did during that election. They knew that they could lose more than 10 seats and maybe more, putting a future shot at a majority government in danger. However, they also saw a fading NDP in Quebec holding over 20 seats that they could target to make up for the lost seats out west.
So the Liberals undertook an effort the begin identifying every Liberals they could find in those ridings and worked very hard to get them to the polling stations on Monday night. They poured resources, effort and time into those ridings and although it may not look like it that effort paid off to a certain extent. If you look at the vote count for all of those ridings the Liberals came in second in each of them and the vote count for the Liberals in each was higher than in 2015. If the Bloc would not have taken off like it did the Liberals would have swept all of those ridings handing them a comfortable majority government.
The Liberal campaign was a success. They won the election. It obviously could have been better. It was focused and disciplined and it never made a major misstep. After the brownface incident was passed the Liberal campaign became rather boring. I found the campaign to be rather unconventional. They had the ability to spend to the limit in this election but I did not see as many TV advertizements as I would have expected. Not that I watch alot of TV but when I did I tended to see three different Conservative ads to one Liberal ad and the Liberals ad did not change often. It is probably reasonable to assume that they decided to focus on the ground game. The media was not very friendly to the Liberals during the election so not counting on the air war was probably a wise choice.
The Conservative campaign was a mess. Canadians' opinions of Mr. Scheer actually become more negative over the course of the campaign. The campaign was designed to energize the base and count on a split in the progressive vote but very little effort was made to appeal to voters beyond the base. The results speak for themselves. I would note that some are saying that the Conservative campaign was somewhat successful because it increased their seat count. The problems with that argument is the increase came in places where the Conservatives are traditionally strong. Alberta, Saskatchewan, rural Manitoba, rural Ontario and rural Maritimes. They did not make any inroads in areas and regions where Conservatives are not traditionally strong. Indeed, they actually lost seats in Quebec and in Urban Ontario. Plus more importantly they DID NOT PREVENT THE LIBERALS FROM WINNING A MAJORITY GOVERNMENT. It was the Bloc Quebecois that achieved that feat. If the Bloc support would have been a little softer then the Conservatives would just be a larger Opposition Party facing a majority government across the aisle of the House.
The NDP achieved the objective they set out to achieve at the beginning of the election. Namely, to maintain official party status. The NDP campaign was essentially to do very little for the first four weeks and hope that Mr. Singh could perform well enough in the debates to convince enough Canadians to save the NDP. It worked but before the NDP get too excited they should remember that in 2011 the NDP won over 30% of the popular vote and over 100 seats. In 2015, they won around 19% of the vote and around 40 seats and this time they won 15% of the vote and around 20 seats. That is a trend that should make the leadership of the NDP very nervous. A piece of trivial knowledge for you. If pollsters would have been correct about their level of support in the election their residual strength in Quebec would probably have lead to a split in the non-Liberal vote in many of the NDP ridings that were targeted by the Liberals. So it was the sudden strength of the Bloc and the weakness of the NDP that denied the Liberals a majority government.
The Green Party conducted the same campaign as they have been conducting since Ms. May took over the leadership of that Party. They achieved the same result. It reminded me of that old definition of insanity.
Mr. Bernier blew it. If you are going to be a party leader act like one. He did not and he paid the price.
The Bloc proved once again that the Quebec electorate is the most fickle and unpredictable in the country. You can never count on them to do what conventional wisdom expects. Some claim it is Bill 21 was the problem and there could be something to that but I believe it was just Quebec voters being Quebec voters. The Bloc campaign was not that stellar. A good performance by their leader during the debates gave them a boost as would be expected. However, it happens a great deal that a boost as a result of a good debate performance does not translate into votes when the election occurs. This time it did.
So now the Liberals will govern and implement their agenda in a minority government situation. Fortunately for them it is a strong minority government where they only need the support of one other party to maintain the confidence of the House so they should not have an unreasonable amount of trouble pushing their agenda. Indeed, the place they may have the most trouble could be the Senate. In the House the other parties may have a whole host of reasons, at any one time, not to force an election. But the Senate, which does not have to worry about the government falling is they reject or amend a Commons Bill, could make a minority government work much harder than they may normally work to get their bills through the Senate.
It is going to be a interesting few years.
The three historical voting patterns that I outlined in previous posts came to pass. A first term government was re-elected as they have been for the last century. Ontario voters decided to vote for opposite party to the one governing Ontario. There is a Conservative government in Ontario so Ontario voters chose a Liberal federal government. The NDP did poorly so the Conservatives did poorly as well. I have been saying since 2015 that the Liberals were the prohibitive favourate to win this election and they won. My assessment also included the idea that they would be elected to a majority government and I was wrong about that but like many others I did not expect the Bloc Quebecois to double its popular vote and triple its seat count over the course of a 6 week campaign.
After the 2015 election the Liberals knew that they would be hard pressed to achieve the same success in the West that they did during that election. They knew that they could lose more than 10 seats and maybe more, putting a future shot at a majority government in danger. However, they also saw a fading NDP in Quebec holding over 20 seats that they could target to make up for the lost seats out west.
So the Liberals undertook an effort the begin identifying every Liberals they could find in those ridings and worked very hard to get them to the polling stations on Monday night. They poured resources, effort and time into those ridings and although it may not look like it that effort paid off to a certain extent. If you look at the vote count for all of those ridings the Liberals came in second in each of them and the vote count for the Liberals in each was higher than in 2015. If the Bloc would not have taken off like it did the Liberals would have swept all of those ridings handing them a comfortable majority government.
The Liberal campaign was a success. They won the election. It obviously could have been better. It was focused and disciplined and it never made a major misstep. After the brownface incident was passed the Liberal campaign became rather boring. I found the campaign to be rather unconventional. They had the ability to spend to the limit in this election but I did not see as many TV advertizements as I would have expected. Not that I watch alot of TV but when I did I tended to see three different Conservative ads to one Liberal ad and the Liberals ad did not change often. It is probably reasonable to assume that they decided to focus on the ground game. The media was not very friendly to the Liberals during the election so not counting on the air war was probably a wise choice.
The Conservative campaign was a mess. Canadians' opinions of Mr. Scheer actually become more negative over the course of the campaign. The campaign was designed to energize the base and count on a split in the progressive vote but very little effort was made to appeal to voters beyond the base. The results speak for themselves. I would note that some are saying that the Conservative campaign was somewhat successful because it increased their seat count. The problems with that argument is the increase came in places where the Conservatives are traditionally strong. Alberta, Saskatchewan, rural Manitoba, rural Ontario and rural Maritimes. They did not make any inroads in areas and regions where Conservatives are not traditionally strong. Indeed, they actually lost seats in Quebec and in Urban Ontario. Plus more importantly they DID NOT PREVENT THE LIBERALS FROM WINNING A MAJORITY GOVERNMENT. It was the Bloc Quebecois that achieved that feat. If the Bloc support would have been a little softer then the Conservatives would just be a larger Opposition Party facing a majority government across the aisle of the House.
The NDP achieved the objective they set out to achieve at the beginning of the election. Namely, to maintain official party status. The NDP campaign was essentially to do very little for the first four weeks and hope that Mr. Singh could perform well enough in the debates to convince enough Canadians to save the NDP. It worked but before the NDP get too excited they should remember that in 2011 the NDP won over 30% of the popular vote and over 100 seats. In 2015, they won around 19% of the vote and around 40 seats and this time they won 15% of the vote and around 20 seats. That is a trend that should make the leadership of the NDP very nervous. A piece of trivial knowledge for you. If pollsters would have been correct about their level of support in the election their residual strength in Quebec would probably have lead to a split in the non-Liberal vote in many of the NDP ridings that were targeted by the Liberals. So it was the sudden strength of the Bloc and the weakness of the NDP that denied the Liberals a majority government.
The Green Party conducted the same campaign as they have been conducting since Ms. May took over the leadership of that Party. They achieved the same result. It reminded me of that old definition of insanity.
Mr. Bernier blew it. If you are going to be a party leader act like one. He did not and he paid the price.
The Bloc proved once again that the Quebec electorate is the most fickle and unpredictable in the country. You can never count on them to do what conventional wisdom expects. Some claim it is Bill 21 was the problem and there could be something to that but I believe it was just Quebec voters being Quebec voters. The Bloc campaign was not that stellar. A good performance by their leader during the debates gave them a boost as would be expected. However, it happens a great deal that a boost as a result of a good debate performance does not translate into votes when the election occurs. This time it did.
So now the Liberals will govern and implement their agenda in a minority government situation. Fortunately for them it is a strong minority government where they only need the support of one other party to maintain the confidence of the House so they should not have an unreasonable amount of trouble pushing their agenda. Indeed, the place they may have the most trouble could be the Senate. In the House the other parties may have a whole host of reasons, at any one time, not to force an election. But the Senate, which does not have to worry about the government falling is they reject or amend a Commons Bill, could make a minority government work much harder than they may normally work to get their bills through the Senate.
It is going to be a interesting few years.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Did the Kinsella Gambit just make Mr. Bernier relevant for the long term?
So it has been revealed that the Conservative campaign allegedly hired Warren Kinsella, a known political fixer, to work to undermine Mr. Bernier and his party by using "dirty tricks".
Mr. Scheer does not confirm or deny it and it probably will not have a really big impact on the election in the short term. However, he should know that it will not go away. There is only a day-and-a-half left in the campaign but he will be dogged with questions about this until the end. When you are running a campaign you never want to be tagged with the idea that you might have run a dirty tricks scam on one of your opponents as being the last thing discussed about your campaign.
One impact it could have is this could push the needle over just enough for Mr. Bernier to win his seat. He is in a tough fight with a Conservative and this may get him enough sympathy to swing the seat in his favour.
That would not be good news for the Conservatives in the long term because it would mean that Mr. Bernier would still be around, his party would still be around and he will be able to take the time to continue to build his party. Regardless of who leads the Conservatives after October 21 that would not be good news. A seat in the Commons and the time to use that seat to build an actual party for the next election is not something to give Conservative strategists warm and fuzzy feelings.
He still has to win the seat. If he does not he fades into obscurity. If he does then he has an opportunity to make himself more relevant in the future, provided he has the political smarts to do so.
I am certain that the Conservatives did not have that outcome in mind when they allegedly decided to hire Mr. Kinsella.
Mr. Scheer does not confirm or deny it and it probably will not have a really big impact on the election in the short term. However, he should know that it will not go away. There is only a day-and-a-half left in the campaign but he will be dogged with questions about this until the end. When you are running a campaign you never want to be tagged with the idea that you might have run a dirty tricks scam on one of your opponents as being the last thing discussed about your campaign.
One impact it could have is this could push the needle over just enough for Mr. Bernier to win his seat. He is in a tough fight with a Conservative and this may get him enough sympathy to swing the seat in his favour.
That would not be good news for the Conservatives in the long term because it would mean that Mr. Bernier would still be around, his party would still be around and he will be able to take the time to continue to build his party. Regardless of who leads the Conservatives after October 21 that would not be good news. A seat in the Commons and the time to use that seat to build an actual party for the next election is not something to give Conservative strategists warm and fuzzy feelings.
He still has to win the seat. If he does not he fades into obscurity. If he does then he has an opportunity to make himself more relevant in the future, provided he has the political smarts to do so.
I am certain that the Conservatives did not have that outcome in mind when they allegedly decided to hire Mr. Kinsella.
Monday, October 14, 2019
Federal Election 2019: Final Week - Now it is up to the swing voters
We are now exactly seven days from the election. This is the period of time when the non-aligned swing voters of the electorate will begin to make up their minds. As I have stated before these are the voters who are not partisans for any party. They tend to be disengaged most of the time, taking in politics by osmosis as opposed to actively following it. They only make up about 15% of the electorate but they always decide the final outcome of any election.
One characteristic of swing voters is they are invariably centrists. If they were ideologically inclined in either direction they would be partisans for one of the political parties. Another characteristic of swing voters is they invariably swing either to the Liberals or the Conservatives. It is true that a small number may swing to the NDP but they are not many. It was these voters swinging hard to the Conservatives that gave Mr. Harper his majority in 2011 despite the surge for the NDP. It was these voters swinging hard for the Liberals which allowed them to leap frog the NDP and go from the third party to a majority government in 2015. It was these voters swinging hard to the Progressive Conservatives of Ontario that handed Doug Ford his majority in 2018. A third characteristic of the swing voters is they tend to stick with a party over more than one election. It is not that they particularly like the party they vote for it is more like political inertia. They stuck with Mr. Harper from 2006 to 2011. It is probable that they will do the same thing this time and stick with the Liberals.
The whole point of the national election campaign is to convince this 15% of the electorate to swing towards a particular party. All of the parties have been trying hard for the last 6 months to swing them into their column.
This is one of the reasons why I ignore polls. They cannot determine how these voters will vote. So all of their polls and seat projections are done without knowing how 15% of the electorate is thinking. They are quite useless in this sense.
To this point the Liberals have hung onto their base. As well, if the crowds that come out to see the Prime Minister are any indication their base is rather enthusiastic about voting Liberal. Mr. Trudeau no longer has that rock star appeal but people still like to be seen with him. I would point out though that for this election he has not been as inspiring as he was in 2015. That could be a function of being in power for four years or it could be something else but either way it is something that was missing this time around. The Liberals built a pretty effective election machine for 2015 and they have had four years with which to build upon it. They have known for a long time that their electoral fortunes go through Ontario, Quebec and BC so they have paid particular attention to building their election organization in those provinces. It is interesting that despite the media's focus on the "threat" by the NDP and the BQ the Prime Minister has spent most of the last couple of weeks going to ridings held by NDP and Conservative candidates. It has been 10 days since the public polls detected the "surge" by the Bloc in Quebec but Mr. Trudeau has not set foot in the province, except for Gatineau for the two debates, since the day after the TVA debates. It could be that their internal data is telling them that the support for the NDP and the Bloc is a kilometre wide but a millimetre deep.
With the economy being in good shape it is not a huge worry for the swing voters. As a result they have the luxury of thinking about other issues and it has been shown a great deal that right now that issue is climate change. That particular issue is front and centre on the minds of alot of people, including those who will probably vote for the Conservatives. The Liberals have been effective in pushing their plans to address climate change, although there is still room for improvement in that effort, something they should address during this final week.
The Conservatives have hung on to their base. Although I am not certain that they are as enthusiastic as Liberals. Mr. Scheer makes his announcements to empty rooms and soccer fields and he has only had one rally where the crowd was large and enthusiastic. Their campaign has lacked any kind of buzz and Mr. Scheer has been less inspiring than Mr. Trudeau. Their election platform is a study of "political tin ear syndrome". Climate change is the issue front and centre on the minds of the electorate and their platform focuses on balancing the budget. Leaving aside that deficits are not a big deal for much of the electorate to begin with if you are going to make eliminating deficits a defining plank of your platform you have work real hard to convince voters that it is a big deal before springing it on them. The Conservatives did none of that. Announcing over $50 billion in cuts, when the economy is good and when Climate Change is a key issue for much of the electorate is not a winning proposition. I think many Conservatives know this. The little foray by Peter McKay was no accident.
The Conservative strategy is clear though. Secure your base and hope for a split of the progressive vote. It is a good strategy but in order for it to work you still need to convince those swing voters to vote for you. They have tried real hard to convince them not to vote for the Liberals but I am not certain they have done enough to convince them to swing to their party. I am not certain they have done enough to overcome the electoral inertia of the swing voters.
Kudos for the NDP for making themselves relevant in the second half of the campaign, although I am not that certain that they did it all themselves. I think the media, which likes a good horse race and of which a large portion of it has become the propaganda arm of the Conservative Party, have been hyping up the "surge" of the NDP.
The same holds true for the Bloc.
So all of the above should be a strong indicator that I believe the Liberals still hold the edge in this campaign. This does not feel like a change election. As well, I have stated here before that the Liberals have three historical voting patterns on their side. I have not seen anything yet that would seem to indicate that Canadians will break those patterns this time.
Over the next week the swing voters are going to decide who they want to lead the government. They could swing either way. However, I believe they will swing towards the Liberals this time giving them government on October 21. I believe that the probability of a Liberal majority is less than at the beginning of the campaign but it is still too high to completely dismiss the prospect of one.
All that being said I could be completely out to lunch and we will have to wait until the evening of October 21 to know for certain.
One characteristic of swing voters is they are invariably centrists. If they were ideologically inclined in either direction they would be partisans for one of the political parties. Another characteristic of swing voters is they invariably swing either to the Liberals or the Conservatives. It is true that a small number may swing to the NDP but they are not many. It was these voters swinging hard to the Conservatives that gave Mr. Harper his majority in 2011 despite the surge for the NDP. It was these voters swinging hard for the Liberals which allowed them to leap frog the NDP and go from the third party to a majority government in 2015. It was these voters swinging hard to the Progressive Conservatives of Ontario that handed Doug Ford his majority in 2018. A third characteristic of the swing voters is they tend to stick with a party over more than one election. It is not that they particularly like the party they vote for it is more like political inertia. They stuck with Mr. Harper from 2006 to 2011. It is probable that they will do the same thing this time and stick with the Liberals.
The whole point of the national election campaign is to convince this 15% of the electorate to swing towards a particular party. All of the parties have been trying hard for the last 6 months to swing them into their column.
This is one of the reasons why I ignore polls. They cannot determine how these voters will vote. So all of their polls and seat projections are done without knowing how 15% of the electorate is thinking. They are quite useless in this sense.
To this point the Liberals have hung onto their base. As well, if the crowds that come out to see the Prime Minister are any indication their base is rather enthusiastic about voting Liberal. Mr. Trudeau no longer has that rock star appeal but people still like to be seen with him. I would point out though that for this election he has not been as inspiring as he was in 2015. That could be a function of being in power for four years or it could be something else but either way it is something that was missing this time around. The Liberals built a pretty effective election machine for 2015 and they have had four years with which to build upon it. They have known for a long time that their electoral fortunes go through Ontario, Quebec and BC so they have paid particular attention to building their election organization in those provinces. It is interesting that despite the media's focus on the "threat" by the NDP and the BQ the Prime Minister has spent most of the last couple of weeks going to ridings held by NDP and Conservative candidates. It has been 10 days since the public polls detected the "surge" by the Bloc in Quebec but Mr. Trudeau has not set foot in the province, except for Gatineau for the two debates, since the day after the TVA debates. It could be that their internal data is telling them that the support for the NDP and the Bloc is a kilometre wide but a millimetre deep.
With the economy being in good shape it is not a huge worry for the swing voters. As a result they have the luxury of thinking about other issues and it has been shown a great deal that right now that issue is climate change. That particular issue is front and centre on the minds of alot of people, including those who will probably vote for the Conservatives. The Liberals have been effective in pushing their plans to address climate change, although there is still room for improvement in that effort, something they should address during this final week.
The Conservatives have hung on to their base. Although I am not certain that they are as enthusiastic as Liberals. Mr. Scheer makes his announcements to empty rooms and soccer fields and he has only had one rally where the crowd was large and enthusiastic. Their campaign has lacked any kind of buzz and Mr. Scheer has been less inspiring than Mr. Trudeau. Their election platform is a study of "political tin ear syndrome". Climate change is the issue front and centre on the minds of the electorate and their platform focuses on balancing the budget. Leaving aside that deficits are not a big deal for much of the electorate to begin with if you are going to make eliminating deficits a defining plank of your platform you have work real hard to convince voters that it is a big deal before springing it on them. The Conservatives did none of that. Announcing over $50 billion in cuts, when the economy is good and when Climate Change is a key issue for much of the electorate is not a winning proposition. I think many Conservatives know this. The little foray by Peter McKay was no accident.
The Conservative strategy is clear though. Secure your base and hope for a split of the progressive vote. It is a good strategy but in order for it to work you still need to convince those swing voters to vote for you. They have tried real hard to convince them not to vote for the Liberals but I am not certain they have done enough to convince them to swing to their party. I am not certain they have done enough to overcome the electoral inertia of the swing voters.
Kudos for the NDP for making themselves relevant in the second half of the campaign, although I am not that certain that they did it all themselves. I think the media, which likes a good horse race and of which a large portion of it has become the propaganda arm of the Conservative Party, have been hyping up the "surge" of the NDP.
The same holds true for the Bloc.
So all of the above should be a strong indicator that I believe the Liberals still hold the edge in this campaign. This does not feel like a change election. As well, I have stated here before that the Liberals have three historical voting patterns on their side. I have not seen anything yet that would seem to indicate that Canadians will break those patterns this time.
Over the next week the swing voters are going to decide who they want to lead the government. They could swing either way. However, I believe they will swing towards the Liberals this time giving them government on October 21. I believe that the probability of a Liberal majority is less than at the beginning of the campaign but it is still too high to completely dismiss the prospect of one.
All that being said I could be completely out to lunch and we will have to wait until the evening of October 21 to know for certain.
Friday, October 11, 2019
Did Andrew Scheer just blow the election?
So Andrew Scheer dropped the Conservative Party Platform today and it is not pretty. Depending on who you talk to it contains $35 to $53 billion in budget cuts for the Federal Government. That is over 5 years but anyway you slice it cutting that much money in that short amount of time cannot have any impact but a negative impact.
Of course, the Conservatives want to do this to "balance the budget".
When I first heard the news my gut said, "Holy crap, he just threw the election away." but then my intellect took over and I thought about it for awhile.
It is very true that a rather substantial part of the electorate do not like deficits and debt. For the most part they do not like it because they equate government debt with household debt, which is completely wrong but trying to convince them of that is like talking to a block of wood. Fortunately, they are mostly part of the Conservative base to begin with so they would vote for the Conservatives regardless of what was contained in the Platform.
However, there are a few of what I call the non-aligned swing voters that are centrist but lean to the right. Under normal circumstances these voters might decide that this is a good idea as well but for the experience in Ontario. Many of these right leaning centrists voted for Doug Ford and many of them are experiencing some buyers' remorse.
The voters of Ontario tend to choose governments of different political stripes in Ottawa and Toronto and this Platform document might just remind them of the wisdom of that practice.
So what does this do to the election?
I believe it will shake the electorate out of its apparent stupor to begin with and not just in Ontario. The Conservatives released this Platform late on Friday before a long weekend, probably to reduce the chances of anybody hearing about it but that is rather stupid considering we are in the last nine days of an election campaign. People are going to hear about it and that is for certain. The Conservatives essentially gave their chief opponent a bat with which to beat on them for the next nine days, which is plenty of time for Canadians to learn about the implications of the Conservative Platform. The Liberals will be selling investing in Canadians while the Conservatives will be selling divesting in Canadians. Most Canadians are going to choose the former.
Of course, the question then becomes whether those voters focus their votes on the one party that can actually prevent the Conservatives from implementing their proposed cuts, namely the Liberals. I believe the answer is yes.
As an aside let's understand that the Liberals knew going into this election that their victory would go through Ontario and retaining their majority would go through Quebec. As a result they have developed a strategy to target all of the winnable seats in those two provinces and they have been implementing that strategy since at least June, probably earlier. They poured resources and effort into those ridings to identify as many Liberals as they can. They will have a GOTV effort in those ridings that will reduce the number of swing voters needed to put them over the top in those ridings. That is the reason why the Liberals have only made passing comments to Quebecers about not voting for the Bloc and the reason why Mr. Trudeau has not rushed into Quebec to attempt to shore up their support. I would bet a substantial amount of money that their internal data is telling them they are still on track to win a majority government despite what the public polls and the media are saying. You always have to remember that a national election campaign is like an iceberg. The leader's tour is just the tip. It is what is happening out of sight that wins campaigns.
There is a very good probability that the Conservative Party platform will make the Liberal's implementation of that strategy easier. Left leaning voters that were dabbling with the idea of voting for some other party but the Liberals are going to look at the Platform and freak. The argument that only the Liberals can stop the Conservatives from implementing their plans will resonate with alot of left leaning voters. The argument that only the Liberals can stop the Conservative cuts will probably also resonate with many of those Quebecers that are dabbling with the idea of voting for the Bloc. The Liberals argue that Quebecers would be better served by a large contingent of Quebec MPs on the government benches instead of the Opposition benches. That message probably would have resonated with the ever so pragmatic Quebec electorate before October 21 anyway but the Conservative Platform may just cause it to resonate more.
I have stated before, in this space, that the ballot question is going to be "Do Canadians want a change of government?" I do not believe so. There is no "throw the bums out" vibe this time around. The radical change from the status quo that the Conservative Party Platform represents may reinforce that.
So to answer the question in the title of this post. I believe the answer is No and yes. No because he was a long shot to win to begin with and yes because this could very reduce his chances to near zero but we will know for certain in nine days.
Of course, the Conservatives want to do this to "balance the budget".
When I first heard the news my gut said, "Holy crap, he just threw the election away." but then my intellect took over and I thought about it for awhile.
It is very true that a rather substantial part of the electorate do not like deficits and debt. For the most part they do not like it because they equate government debt with household debt, which is completely wrong but trying to convince them of that is like talking to a block of wood. Fortunately, they are mostly part of the Conservative base to begin with so they would vote for the Conservatives regardless of what was contained in the Platform.
However, there are a few of what I call the non-aligned swing voters that are centrist but lean to the right. Under normal circumstances these voters might decide that this is a good idea as well but for the experience in Ontario. Many of these right leaning centrists voted for Doug Ford and many of them are experiencing some buyers' remorse.
The voters of Ontario tend to choose governments of different political stripes in Ottawa and Toronto and this Platform document might just remind them of the wisdom of that practice.
So what does this do to the election?
I believe it will shake the electorate out of its apparent stupor to begin with and not just in Ontario. The Conservatives released this Platform late on Friday before a long weekend, probably to reduce the chances of anybody hearing about it but that is rather stupid considering we are in the last nine days of an election campaign. People are going to hear about it and that is for certain. The Conservatives essentially gave their chief opponent a bat with which to beat on them for the next nine days, which is plenty of time for Canadians to learn about the implications of the Conservative Platform. The Liberals will be selling investing in Canadians while the Conservatives will be selling divesting in Canadians. Most Canadians are going to choose the former.
Of course, the question then becomes whether those voters focus their votes on the one party that can actually prevent the Conservatives from implementing their proposed cuts, namely the Liberals. I believe the answer is yes.
As an aside let's understand that the Liberals knew going into this election that their victory would go through Ontario and retaining their majority would go through Quebec. As a result they have developed a strategy to target all of the winnable seats in those two provinces and they have been implementing that strategy since at least June, probably earlier. They poured resources and effort into those ridings to identify as many Liberals as they can. They will have a GOTV effort in those ridings that will reduce the number of swing voters needed to put them over the top in those ridings. That is the reason why the Liberals have only made passing comments to Quebecers about not voting for the Bloc and the reason why Mr. Trudeau has not rushed into Quebec to attempt to shore up their support. I would bet a substantial amount of money that their internal data is telling them they are still on track to win a majority government despite what the public polls and the media are saying. You always have to remember that a national election campaign is like an iceberg. The leader's tour is just the tip. It is what is happening out of sight that wins campaigns.
There is a very good probability that the Conservative Party platform will make the Liberal's implementation of that strategy easier. Left leaning voters that were dabbling with the idea of voting for some other party but the Liberals are going to look at the Platform and freak. The argument that only the Liberals can stop the Conservatives from implementing their plans will resonate with alot of left leaning voters. The argument that only the Liberals can stop the Conservative cuts will probably also resonate with many of those Quebecers that are dabbling with the idea of voting for the Bloc. The Liberals argue that Quebecers would be better served by a large contingent of Quebec MPs on the government benches instead of the Opposition benches. That message probably would have resonated with the ever so pragmatic Quebec electorate before October 21 anyway but the Conservative Platform may just cause it to resonate more.
I have stated before, in this space, that the ballot question is going to be "Do Canadians want a change of government?" I do not believe so. There is no "throw the bums out" vibe this time around. The radical change from the status quo that the Conservative Party Platform represents may reinforce that.
So to answer the question in the title of this post. I believe the answer is No and yes. No because he was a long shot to win to begin with and yes because this could very reduce his chances to near zero but we will know for certain in nine days.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Federal Election 2019: 10 Days to Election Day - The final sprint to the finish
As a write this the final French language leaders debate is ongoing. These debates are organized by the media for the media and they rarely have the impact the media would have us believe but the last one is usually the starting line for the final sprint to the finish in every election. After tonight the parties will step up their efforts until it reaches a frenetic pace during the final weekend of the election.
One thing about this period is polls become even more unreliable than usual. For the most part public opinion begins to change fast and that rate of change increases as we get closer to election day. As a result, polls which often take at least a day or two to collect, process and publish cannot keep up. Remember that the last polls of 2015, published about 48 hours before the polls closed were "predicting" a Liberal minority government.
So if you want to see how the election is shaping up over the next 10 days watch the parties. The two main parties and maybe the NDP have pollsters and data analysis experts on retainer during elections. They conduct polls, although for gaining useful information instead of advancing a media narrative plus all of the parties have central databases that are fed nightly by the local campaigns. They take that data plus some other data, such as social media metrics, and model the probable results of the election down to the riding level. They are similar to the seat projection models used by the media but the parties have much better quality data than the media has so their models are much better quality as a result.
Of course, the parties do not make any of their data public. They keep it to themselves and they use it to refine their message and to determine where they need to focus their efforts. However, one can gain some insight into what they are seeing by watching the parties in general and the party leaders in particular.
At this stage of the campaign those managing it are going to put the leader where they believe they can do the most good. That is where the leader can either save a seat from falling to the other parties or where there is a possibility of picking up a seat currently held by another party. So for the next 10 days watch where the party leaders campaign. As well, watching what they say can also be a good indicator.
An example would be the fact that Mr. Trudeau campaigned in the Carleton Riding today, a riding that has been held by Pierre Poilievre since 2004. I found that interesting. That has been a safe Conservative riding for 15 years. It is true that it is very close to Gatineau, where the debates are occuring but that can be said of over a dozen ridings around Ottawa. He could have gone to Glengarry-Prescott-Russel, which according to the media seat projections is a Liberal Riding that could change hands this time or there are other ridings in Quebec where the media is saying the Bloc could defeat a Liberal incumbent. He did not do that. Instead he campaigned in what has been a safe Conservative seat. Either he really wanted to buy that pumpkin from a farm near Manotick or maybe their data is indicating that the ridings the media say are vulnerable are not so vulnerable and that the Carleton riding could be a candidate to change hands this time. It is true the local Liberal candidate is running a particularly strong campaign and we have not seen anything of Pierre Poilievre during the whole election. This is not to say that the Carleton riding will switch. It is just to say that there are plenty of places to buy pumpkins in the National Capital Region and it is curious that Mr. Trudeau's handlers had him buy one there.
Oh yes, remember the media is stating that the Bloc is on the rise in Quebec threatening the Liberals. So what is Mr. Trudeau's play. Go to British Columbia tomorrow morning. I bet the Bloc never saw that coming.
It is harder to find out where Mr. Scheer was because finding his itinerary on the Conservative Party website is much harder but it should be noted that Mr. Scheer blew the dog whistle very loudly yesterday in Quebec while the various Proud websites brought up the fear of Sharia Law again. It is curious that they have decided to do this at this stage of the game and a clue as to why might be the news that Mr. MacKay appears to be gearing up for a leadership race for the Conservative Party after the election.
This was stated by a senior Conservative "friend" of Mr. MacKay's, who apologized soon after. However, it should be noted that he apologized. He did not retract the statement. Make no mistake. This was not a error on the part of the source. If the person is a senior Conservative he would have had the media sense not to make those kinds of statements to a reporter. This was a deliberate act designed to do what? I am not certain right now but it does seem that at least some of the Conservative Party do not believe Mr. Scheer will pull out a victory in 10 days.
Over the next 10 days you should be able to discern how the election is going to turn out by watching what the parties and the party leaders are doing. They will be a much better indicator than anything the media will tell us.
One thing about this period is polls become even more unreliable than usual. For the most part public opinion begins to change fast and that rate of change increases as we get closer to election day. As a result, polls which often take at least a day or two to collect, process and publish cannot keep up. Remember that the last polls of 2015, published about 48 hours before the polls closed were "predicting" a Liberal minority government.
So if you want to see how the election is shaping up over the next 10 days watch the parties. The two main parties and maybe the NDP have pollsters and data analysis experts on retainer during elections. They conduct polls, although for gaining useful information instead of advancing a media narrative plus all of the parties have central databases that are fed nightly by the local campaigns. They take that data plus some other data, such as social media metrics, and model the probable results of the election down to the riding level. They are similar to the seat projection models used by the media but the parties have much better quality data than the media has so their models are much better quality as a result.
Of course, the parties do not make any of their data public. They keep it to themselves and they use it to refine their message and to determine where they need to focus their efforts. However, one can gain some insight into what they are seeing by watching the parties in general and the party leaders in particular.
At this stage of the campaign those managing it are going to put the leader where they believe they can do the most good. That is where the leader can either save a seat from falling to the other parties or where there is a possibility of picking up a seat currently held by another party. So for the next 10 days watch where the party leaders campaign. As well, watching what they say can also be a good indicator.
An example would be the fact that Mr. Trudeau campaigned in the Carleton Riding today, a riding that has been held by Pierre Poilievre since 2004. I found that interesting. That has been a safe Conservative riding for 15 years. It is true that it is very close to Gatineau, where the debates are occuring but that can be said of over a dozen ridings around Ottawa. He could have gone to Glengarry-Prescott-Russel, which according to the media seat projections is a Liberal Riding that could change hands this time or there are other ridings in Quebec where the media is saying the Bloc could defeat a Liberal incumbent. He did not do that. Instead he campaigned in what has been a safe Conservative seat. Either he really wanted to buy that pumpkin from a farm near Manotick or maybe their data is indicating that the ridings the media say are vulnerable are not so vulnerable and that the Carleton riding could be a candidate to change hands this time. It is true the local Liberal candidate is running a particularly strong campaign and we have not seen anything of Pierre Poilievre during the whole election. This is not to say that the Carleton riding will switch. It is just to say that there are plenty of places to buy pumpkins in the National Capital Region and it is curious that Mr. Trudeau's handlers had him buy one there.
Oh yes, remember the media is stating that the Bloc is on the rise in Quebec threatening the Liberals. So what is Mr. Trudeau's play. Go to British Columbia tomorrow morning. I bet the Bloc never saw that coming.
It is harder to find out where Mr. Scheer was because finding his itinerary on the Conservative Party website is much harder but it should be noted that Mr. Scheer blew the dog whistle very loudly yesterday in Quebec while the various Proud websites brought up the fear of Sharia Law again. It is curious that they have decided to do this at this stage of the game and a clue as to why might be the news that Mr. MacKay appears to be gearing up for a leadership race for the Conservative Party after the election.
This was stated by a senior Conservative "friend" of Mr. MacKay's, who apologized soon after. However, it should be noted that he apologized. He did not retract the statement. Make no mistake. This was not a error on the part of the source. If the person is a senior Conservative he would have had the media sense not to make those kinds of statements to a reporter. This was a deliberate act designed to do what? I am not certain right now but it does seem that at least some of the Conservative Party do not believe Mr. Scheer will pull out a victory in 10 days.
Over the next 10 days you should be able to discern how the election is going to turn out by watching what the parties and the party leaders are doing. They will be a much better indicator than anything the media will tell us.
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
Federal Election 2019: Week Four - Now the real election begins
Well with week four now in the books the real election begins. The week of the debates are usually when non-partisan voters begin to pay attention to the election. So, all of the partisans for each of the parties are going to be joined, more and more, by the non-aligned swing voters in watching this election. Many will not make a final decision until the final week and days of the campaign but they will now begin to pay much closer attention as the days go on. They will be the ones who decide this election.
The Liberal campaign has been rather boring really. That is not a bad thing, by the way, during an election. Usually the things that excite during election campaigns are things political parties would like to avoid during them. So the fact the last couple of weeks have been largely uneventful for the Liberal campaign should make them very happy. As well, the Liberal campaign has been the most relaxed. I check the itinerary of each leader each day to see where they will be campaigning. One thing I noticed was that after the TVA debate Mr. Trudeau essentially took the next day off. He hung around Montreal, went to one event early in the morning and then called it a day. I thought it was because he would be traveling for the rest of the day but his itinerary for the next day was for a couple of events in Quebec City and in the Rimouski area of Quebec. I found that interesting because that is the middle of Conservative country in Quebec. All of the talking heads indicated that the BQ performance during the TVA debates made them a threat to the Liberals but they went to a Conservative area instead of trying to fend off the Bloc and they are still not trying to fend off the Bloc even now. After Quebec City Mr. Trudeau took the next day off. No events were planned. Contrast that to his opponents who ran around the country for all three of those days. They campaigned like crazy. I keep hearing that the Liberals are threatened by the Bloc, the NDP and the Greens. I keep hearing that their majority, maybe even their grip on power, is threatened. If so they seem to have a very lackadaisical reaction to this "fact". Maybe the public polls and the pundits that use them to make their prognostications are missing something.
The Conservatives had a brutal week in what can only be described as an increasingly brutal campaign. Last week ended with revelations that Mr. Scheer lied about his work history. Ok, that is silly and bush league but it should not be too big of a deal. Then it was revealed that he lied about his education and then it was revealed that he has been hiding that he is an American citizen for 15 years. Holy crap! Any one of those would make for a bad day on the campaign trail but it would only be one or two bad days. Having these revelations come out over the course of a single week during an election campaign has the potential of being fatal to that campaign. One is a lapse. Three is a pattern and if Conservatives and their allies believe said pattern will do no harm to Mr. Scheer they could be in for some profound disappointment. I do not know how much this will impact the campaign in the end but is was a lousy way for Mr. Scheer to spend week four of the campaign. Now going into week five it would appear he is getting questions about Trump operatives who may be working on his campaign. If those questions persist that could very well be it for him and the Conservatives.
The other parties are no longer relevant. This has always been a two party race and the last four weeks have proven that. The other parties might play spoiler in some local races but their impact will probably not be as profound as the talking head are currently pushing.
A short word on the debates. I do not watch them because they are pointless. They are organized by the media for the media. They do not have as much of an impact on the outcome of the election as the media would have us believe. I always like to remind people that Mr. Harper never won a single debate during his victorious election campaigns. He came in second to Mr. Martin in 2006 and Mr. Dion in 2008. He was trounced by Mr. Layton on 2011. Despite that he won all three campaigns and very convincingly in 2011.
So with 12 days until the election the non-partisan swing voters in the country will be deciding whether they want a change in government or not. That is the real ballot question. All of the other stuff the media talks about is only there to inform the answer to that question.
There is no certain way to determine which way they will jump. We will just have to wait until October 21 but my intellect and my gut are still telling me that they will jump to the Liberals in a big way, electing them to a majority government.
The Liberal campaign has been rather boring really. That is not a bad thing, by the way, during an election. Usually the things that excite during election campaigns are things political parties would like to avoid during them. So the fact the last couple of weeks have been largely uneventful for the Liberal campaign should make them very happy. As well, the Liberal campaign has been the most relaxed. I check the itinerary of each leader each day to see where they will be campaigning. One thing I noticed was that after the TVA debate Mr. Trudeau essentially took the next day off. He hung around Montreal, went to one event early in the morning and then called it a day. I thought it was because he would be traveling for the rest of the day but his itinerary for the next day was for a couple of events in Quebec City and in the Rimouski area of Quebec. I found that interesting because that is the middle of Conservative country in Quebec. All of the talking heads indicated that the BQ performance during the TVA debates made them a threat to the Liberals but they went to a Conservative area instead of trying to fend off the Bloc and they are still not trying to fend off the Bloc even now. After Quebec City Mr. Trudeau took the next day off. No events were planned. Contrast that to his opponents who ran around the country for all three of those days. They campaigned like crazy. I keep hearing that the Liberals are threatened by the Bloc, the NDP and the Greens. I keep hearing that their majority, maybe even their grip on power, is threatened. If so they seem to have a very lackadaisical reaction to this "fact". Maybe the public polls and the pundits that use them to make their prognostications are missing something.
The Conservatives had a brutal week in what can only be described as an increasingly brutal campaign. Last week ended with revelations that Mr. Scheer lied about his work history. Ok, that is silly and bush league but it should not be too big of a deal. Then it was revealed that he lied about his education and then it was revealed that he has been hiding that he is an American citizen for 15 years. Holy crap! Any one of those would make for a bad day on the campaign trail but it would only be one or two bad days. Having these revelations come out over the course of a single week during an election campaign has the potential of being fatal to that campaign. One is a lapse. Three is a pattern and if Conservatives and their allies believe said pattern will do no harm to Mr. Scheer they could be in for some profound disappointment. I do not know how much this will impact the campaign in the end but is was a lousy way for Mr. Scheer to spend week four of the campaign. Now going into week five it would appear he is getting questions about Trump operatives who may be working on his campaign. If those questions persist that could very well be it for him and the Conservatives.
The other parties are no longer relevant. This has always been a two party race and the last four weeks have proven that. The other parties might play spoiler in some local races but their impact will probably not be as profound as the talking head are currently pushing.
A short word on the debates. I do not watch them because they are pointless. They are organized by the media for the media. They do not have as much of an impact on the outcome of the election as the media would have us believe. I always like to remind people that Mr. Harper never won a single debate during his victorious election campaigns. He came in second to Mr. Martin in 2006 and Mr. Dion in 2008. He was trounced by Mr. Layton on 2011. Despite that he won all three campaigns and very convincingly in 2011.
So with 12 days until the election the non-partisan swing voters in the country will be deciding whether they want a change in government or not. That is the real ballot question. All of the other stuff the media talks about is only there to inform the answer to that question.
There is no certain way to determine which way they will jump. We will just have to wait until October 21 but my intellect and my gut are still telling me that they will jump to the Liberals in a big way, electing them to a majority government.
Tuesday, October 01, 2019
Federal Election 2019 - Week Three Done - These are the dog days
Well, week three is pretty much in the books and not much has changed from when the election was called. The election campaign is pretty much unfolding as I stated it would here.
So far the Liberal campaign has been focused and disciplined. They have not made a misstep since it began. The brown face pictures was not a misstep it was a grenade thrown into the election by someone with an agenda. I am certain many in the Conservative camp would have liked it to do damage but Mr. Trudeau's handling of the situation made certain that would not happen. The Liberals have released their full platform so the next few days will be them hammering at its main themes, followed by debate preparation and the debates, followed by hammering on its main themes again for the final sprint home.
This week saw the Conservative campaign hit a bit of a pothole when it was revealed that Mr. Scheer is not a licenced insurance broker after all. Talk about bush league. A man who would be Prime Minister misrepresenting his credentials and work experience. Did he not think that someone would discover that and report on it before October 21? That is just stupid. The media is not focusing too much on it but it is getting out there and this late in the campaign the impression it might create may stick. Mr. Scheer still does not look like he is enjoying himself and there is still no rhyme or reason to the policy announcements he has been making. One thing I did notice was he made some announcements about reducing foreign aid and reopening the Religious Freedom Office in the last couple of days. These are two measures that would appeal only to his base. Why is he bringing them up now? The time for doing so would have been at the beginning, with this period being the time to pivot to appealing to more centrist voters. For this election he has done the opposite. He did not throw any read meat at his base at the beginning, instead coming out with vaguely centrist policy announcements. Then out of the blue, three weeks in, he massages his base a bit. I am not going to read too much into this now but it bears watching.
The other parties are irrelevant and I will not bother talking about their campaign. Although I will say that Mr. Bernier probably missed an opportunity by pursuing the campaign he is pursuing. His natural audience is Conservative supporters, he has some charisma and he is up against a guy who has less charisma than a turnip. There is a reason why he is called "Mr. Blandy". If he would have went hard after Conservative supporters in Ontario and Quebec he might have made himself relevant. As it is, he will probably win his own seat and that is it.
So what will the next three weeks bring? Both of the main parties have managed to hang on to their bases up to now so the next three weeks will be the time of the undecideds. No one can know how they will jump but I have to say that this election does not feel like a change election. In all of the elections where we have seen a change in government you can see that change coming long before this stage in the campaign. We are not seeing it. The undecideds could surprise us still but it is not as likely as them deciding to stick to the government they have. By the way, that may be why Mr. Scheer looks so miserable. He has spent a great deal of time and effort to convince Canadians to change their government and so far he has not seen any reward for that effort.
Three weeks in I have not seen any reason to change my assessment of how this election will end, as outlined in the post I linked to at the beginning of this one. The next three weeks may change that so we will have to wait and see.
So far the Liberal campaign has been focused and disciplined. They have not made a misstep since it began. The brown face pictures was not a misstep it was a grenade thrown into the election by someone with an agenda. I am certain many in the Conservative camp would have liked it to do damage but Mr. Trudeau's handling of the situation made certain that would not happen. The Liberals have released their full platform so the next few days will be them hammering at its main themes, followed by debate preparation and the debates, followed by hammering on its main themes again for the final sprint home.
This week saw the Conservative campaign hit a bit of a pothole when it was revealed that Mr. Scheer is not a licenced insurance broker after all. Talk about bush league. A man who would be Prime Minister misrepresenting his credentials and work experience. Did he not think that someone would discover that and report on it before October 21? That is just stupid. The media is not focusing too much on it but it is getting out there and this late in the campaign the impression it might create may stick. Mr. Scheer still does not look like he is enjoying himself and there is still no rhyme or reason to the policy announcements he has been making. One thing I did notice was he made some announcements about reducing foreign aid and reopening the Religious Freedom Office in the last couple of days. These are two measures that would appeal only to his base. Why is he bringing them up now? The time for doing so would have been at the beginning, with this period being the time to pivot to appealing to more centrist voters. For this election he has done the opposite. He did not throw any read meat at his base at the beginning, instead coming out with vaguely centrist policy announcements. Then out of the blue, three weeks in, he massages his base a bit. I am not going to read too much into this now but it bears watching.
The other parties are irrelevant and I will not bother talking about their campaign. Although I will say that Mr. Bernier probably missed an opportunity by pursuing the campaign he is pursuing. His natural audience is Conservative supporters, he has some charisma and he is up against a guy who has less charisma than a turnip. There is a reason why he is called "Mr. Blandy". If he would have went hard after Conservative supporters in Ontario and Quebec he might have made himself relevant. As it is, he will probably win his own seat and that is it.
So what will the next three weeks bring? Both of the main parties have managed to hang on to their bases up to now so the next three weeks will be the time of the undecideds. No one can know how they will jump but I have to say that this election does not feel like a change election. In all of the elections where we have seen a change in government you can see that change coming long before this stage in the campaign. We are not seeing it. The undecideds could surprise us still but it is not as likely as them deciding to stick to the government they have. By the way, that may be why Mr. Scheer looks so miserable. He has spent a great deal of time and effort to convince Canadians to change their government and so far he has not seen any reward for that effort.
Three weeks in I have not seen any reason to change my assessment of how this election will end, as outlined in the post I linked to at the beginning of this one. The next three weeks may change that so we will have to wait and see.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Dude you have to participate in a climate strike march
The climate crisis is front and centre on the minds of Canadians. That is true whether you believe in it or not.
Unfortunately for Mr. Scheer most Canadians believe that we need to do something about it. Mr. Scheer proposed a plan. By most accounts it is not very good but it is a plan that he can point to. If he wants people to take it seriously he should be showing that he takes the climate crisis seriously. Marching today would have accomplished that even if he personally does not believe in it. Hell, he would not be the first politician to do or say something he does not personally believe.
Instead, while the eyes of the country were focused on the millions of Canadian marching to fight climate change he was putting pictures of himself eating pizza on Twitter. Talk about being politically tone deaf.
When the Conservatives lose the election I believe the postmortems of the election will point to this day as the beginning of the end of their hopes of gaining power.
Unfortunately for Mr. Scheer most Canadians believe that we need to do something about it. Mr. Scheer proposed a plan. By most accounts it is not very good but it is a plan that he can point to. If he wants people to take it seriously he should be showing that he takes the climate crisis seriously. Marching today would have accomplished that even if he personally does not believe in it. Hell, he would not be the first politician to do or say something he does not personally believe.
Instead, while the eyes of the country were focused on the millions of Canadian marching to fight climate change he was putting pictures of himself eating pizza on Twitter. Talk about being politically tone deaf.
When the Conservatives lose the election I believe the postmortems of the election will point to this day as the beginning of the end of their hopes of gaining power.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Why I discount polls.
I have mentioned many times, here and on other on-line blogs, that I do not put much stock in polls. The reasons are many but the biggest reason is because of their inability to adequately account for people who say "Don't know" or "Undecided" during polling interviews.
I will demonstrate. Let us say for the sake of argument that I conducted a poll of 1000 respondents. The results that I found:
I will demonstrate. Let us say for the sake of argument that I conducted a poll of 1000 respondents. The results that I found:
- 300 people who support the Conservatives
- 290 people who support the Liberals
- 150 undecided
- and the rest divided roughly equally amongst the other parties.
- 300/1000x100 = 30%
- 290/1000x100 = 29%
- 150/1000x100 = 15%
When polling companies publish their estimates in the newspapers and online these are probably the raw numbers they have. Unfortunately, nothing can really be inferred from these estimates except that no one as a clear advantage. No one can say that any party will form a strong stable government with just 30% support.
The problem is the undecideds. They have always been a problem for pollsters who want to publish for news organizations because the news organizations want something that will pop. They want something that will provide their reporters and columnists with something to write about. Unfortunately, those numbers above do not do it. It used to be the pollsters would just distribute the undecideds amongst the decideds using some kind of formula and each polling company would have its own formula for doing so. They discovered that it did not work very well. So then they decided that they would just remove all of the undecideds which is why you will always see polls indicating that their estimates are of decided and leaning respondents. When you remove the undecided you have:
- 300/850x100 = 35.3%
- 290/850x100 = 34.1%
There you go. There are some estimates that you can sink your teeth into. Those estimates can be used by the media to advance whatever narrative they choose. They can be fed into a seat projection model to show how many seats each party will receive and the regional estimates can be used to "refine" the projections. Unfortunately, they are false because you cannot remove 150 respondents from a survey of 1000, who respond with a valid response to a survey question, and produce reliable statistics.
The funny thing is the first example that I gave above probably reflects reality. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have a base of support that is about 30% of the electorate and there are probably about 15% of the electorate who could be termed non-partisan swing voters. The Conservatives have a bit of an advantage because their base is pretty solid while the Liberal base is a bit more wishy-washy but in both cases neither has enough to form a strong government with just their base. Therefore they need the swing voters to put them over the top. That is the job of the leader's campaign. The local campaigns attempt to identify and pull as many of their partisans as possible within each riding and hope the national campaign can successfully swing a sufficient number of swing voters over to them to take the seat.
Of course, the problem for all campaigns is there is no way to really know how successful they are until the votes are counted. Most of the swing voters will not make up their minds until much later in the campaign, with a significant number of them doing so only when they step behind the cardboard divider to mark their ballot. So, there is no way to predict which way they will jump. However, it is interesting that they tend to jump in one direction when the finally do make a decision. It is really quite remarkable. For some reason the swing voters collectively decide to vote one way. That is, the majority decide to vote for one party and the minority divide their votes between the rest, giving the one who earned the majority of their votes government. No one has been able to figure out why.
So that is where we stand. The two main parties are hanging on to their bases and waiting for the swing voters to make up their minds. Neither know which way they will jump but they are working very hard to convince them to jump to their side.
As I have stated before I believe they will jump to the Liberals. The main reason is the Liberals have three different historical voting patterns on their side. First term governments tend to be re-elected in this country. Since the introduction of the CCF/NDP to Canadian politics the Conservatives have only won when the NDP does well and the NDP is not running an aggressive campaign this time so they probably will not do as well as the Conservatives need them to. Voters in Ontario seem to like governments of opposite stripes in Toronto and Ottawa. With a Conservative government at Queens Park it is very possible that Ontario voters will vote Liberal at the federal level, and that is before taking into account any possible Doug Ford effect on their voting intentions.
So there you have it. The public polls are telling a misleading story because they cannot account for undecided voters. As long as that is true the polls and the different seat projection models that are fed by them are interesting to look at and debate but they are not a reliable indicator of how the campaign is unfolding and they definitely cannot be used to predict the outcome of the election.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Federal Election 2019: Week Two over - Alot of sizzle but very little steak
Week two of the election campaign got off to a interesting start with the leaking of the pictures of Prime Minister Trudeau in brown/black face at a party. That gave the media, which was bored to tears by week one, something to talk about and something they could preach about, which most media love to do. In the end I do not believe it had much impact on any of the campaigns.
For the Liberal campaign they did have to do some damage control but Mr. Trudeau's clear apology, provided within an hour of the release of the pictures went a long way towards that effort. Believe it nor not most reasonable people realize that everybody makes mistakes and that if you acknowledge the mistake and try to be better they are willing to forgive if not forget. That damage control effort lasted two whole days. By Friday their campaign was returning to normal and by Sunday it was back to being focused and disciplined as it was in week 1. As well, with the end of week two upon us they brought out their heavy guns. The announcements on another tax cut, Pharmacare and their Climate Change announcement today are going to be their signature policy planks for this election. I imagine between now and election day we are going to hear alot about all three. We may hear some more minor announcements in week three but I believe the Liberal campaign is going to begin focusing on these three policy proposals.
The leak of the pictures of Mr. Trudeau, probably with foreknowledge of the Conservative campaign, has shone some light on their election strategy. They seem to realize that they cannot win without a strong showing by the NDP and/or the Greens. Releasing a video and going all in on accusing him of being racist seems counter intuitive for the Conservatives. They have their own bigotry problems, from their current leader, some of their supporters in the media and from their candidates. As a result they were not in a great position to directly benefit from Mr. Trudeau's troubles. However, if they could use it to siphon off some voters from the Liberals to the NDP or Greens then they might benefit. It is actually not a bad strategy but if depends on the NDP and/or the Greens being able to exploit the opening presented to them. They were unable to. More on that in a moment.
Otherwise, the Conservative campaign has been more of the same. Throw out some random policy ideas, many of which are just recycled Harper policies, insult and attack Justin Trudeau at every turn and lie their asses off. Politics being what it is it could work but it is very risky. Attacking the other guy to convince people to vote against him is a strategy as old as democratic politics but you also have to be able to show that you are a compelling alternative. If you do not then you lose. If you do not believe me ask Tim Hudak. So far I am not convinced that Mr. Scheer is accomplishing this. Last week several picture were published showing Mr. Scheer making announcements to empty rooms and football fields. When it was questioned they indicated that they were forgoing rallies to allow potential attendees to knock on doors. Interesting spin but I remember in 2006 Paul Martin had the same problem. He had difficulty getting people out to his announcements. They were often him in a room full of reporters and that was it. The fact is rallies and well attended policy announcements create buzz and energy for the campaign and those cannot be discounted. As well, Mr. Scheer has not looked happy since the campaign started. He has often looked miserable in fact. Contrast that to Mr. Harper in 2006. Although he did not jump for joy during that election there was a bounce in his step, which was probably because he could see that he had a very good chance that he would win. Does Mr. Scheer feel the same way? I am not getting that vibe from him.
The NDP was handed a gift by the Conservatives and they were unable to exploit it. The reason is simple. They are not running a full blown campaign. As I have stated here before they are running a save the furniture campaign and it would appear they are not going to let themselves be distracted from that. If there was no Green Party they might have changed tack but they have to worry about the Greens siphoning off their votes so they seem to be keeping their focus on a campaign to maintain official party status.
The Green Party has not changed anything from week one and their campaign during week one was invisible. They may believe what the public polls are saying, which seem to indicate that may win up to 7 seats but those polls are going to change by election day and the Greens will probably find themselves back where they have always been. Five to seven percent of the vote and Ms. May being the only Green MP.
Maxime Bernier is blowing his one chance to be relevant. The Independent Debate Commission gave him instant credibility when they invited him to the debates but he has failed to exploit that. As well, I still say his best shot at winning seats was to campaign in the Conservative ridings of Ontario and Quebec but he is not doing that either. It could be he is worried about his own seat, in which case him and his party will be a non-factor come election day.
One note about the polls. As I have stated often I put little stock in the polls. However, some people do and the current state of the polls have them worried. What needs to be understood is we have seen this before.
In 2015, with three weeks to go before the election the polls indicated that the three main parties were tied with the Conservatives having a bit of an upper hand.
In 2011, with three weeks to go before the election the polls indicated that the Ignatieff Liberals had a slight lead over the Harper Conservatives. I remember how happy many Liberals were after week two of that election.
In 2008, with three weeks to go before the election the polls indicated that the Dion Liberals had a slight lead over the Conservatives. Again, Liberals were quite pleased at that time.
Of course we all know how those elections turned out. The point, of course, is that polls early in an election campaign cannot be used to predict, project, or otherwise guess the final outcome of the election. Neither can polls at the end of the campaign for that matter.
Between now and election day Canadians will decide who they want to govern them. We will not know that decision for certain until October 21. I still believe it will be the Liberals that they choose, for many reasons, but we will know for certain in a little over three weeks.
For the Liberal campaign they did have to do some damage control but Mr. Trudeau's clear apology, provided within an hour of the release of the pictures went a long way towards that effort. Believe it nor not most reasonable people realize that everybody makes mistakes and that if you acknowledge the mistake and try to be better they are willing to forgive if not forget. That damage control effort lasted two whole days. By Friday their campaign was returning to normal and by Sunday it was back to being focused and disciplined as it was in week 1. As well, with the end of week two upon us they brought out their heavy guns. The announcements on another tax cut, Pharmacare and their Climate Change announcement today are going to be their signature policy planks for this election. I imagine between now and election day we are going to hear alot about all three. We may hear some more minor announcements in week three but I believe the Liberal campaign is going to begin focusing on these three policy proposals.
The leak of the pictures of Mr. Trudeau, probably with foreknowledge of the Conservative campaign, has shone some light on their election strategy. They seem to realize that they cannot win without a strong showing by the NDP and/or the Greens. Releasing a video and going all in on accusing him of being racist seems counter intuitive for the Conservatives. They have their own bigotry problems, from their current leader, some of their supporters in the media and from their candidates. As a result they were not in a great position to directly benefit from Mr. Trudeau's troubles. However, if they could use it to siphon off some voters from the Liberals to the NDP or Greens then they might benefit. It is actually not a bad strategy but if depends on the NDP and/or the Greens being able to exploit the opening presented to them. They were unable to. More on that in a moment.
Otherwise, the Conservative campaign has been more of the same. Throw out some random policy ideas, many of which are just recycled Harper policies, insult and attack Justin Trudeau at every turn and lie their asses off. Politics being what it is it could work but it is very risky. Attacking the other guy to convince people to vote against him is a strategy as old as democratic politics but you also have to be able to show that you are a compelling alternative. If you do not then you lose. If you do not believe me ask Tim Hudak. So far I am not convinced that Mr. Scheer is accomplishing this. Last week several picture were published showing Mr. Scheer making announcements to empty rooms and football fields. When it was questioned they indicated that they were forgoing rallies to allow potential attendees to knock on doors. Interesting spin but I remember in 2006 Paul Martin had the same problem. He had difficulty getting people out to his announcements. They were often him in a room full of reporters and that was it. The fact is rallies and well attended policy announcements create buzz and energy for the campaign and those cannot be discounted. As well, Mr. Scheer has not looked happy since the campaign started. He has often looked miserable in fact. Contrast that to Mr. Harper in 2006. Although he did not jump for joy during that election there was a bounce in his step, which was probably because he could see that he had a very good chance that he would win. Does Mr. Scheer feel the same way? I am not getting that vibe from him.
The NDP was handed a gift by the Conservatives and they were unable to exploit it. The reason is simple. They are not running a full blown campaign. As I have stated here before they are running a save the furniture campaign and it would appear they are not going to let themselves be distracted from that. If there was no Green Party they might have changed tack but they have to worry about the Greens siphoning off their votes so they seem to be keeping their focus on a campaign to maintain official party status.
The Green Party has not changed anything from week one and their campaign during week one was invisible. They may believe what the public polls are saying, which seem to indicate that may win up to 7 seats but those polls are going to change by election day and the Greens will probably find themselves back where they have always been. Five to seven percent of the vote and Ms. May being the only Green MP.
Maxime Bernier is blowing his one chance to be relevant. The Independent Debate Commission gave him instant credibility when they invited him to the debates but he has failed to exploit that. As well, I still say his best shot at winning seats was to campaign in the Conservative ridings of Ontario and Quebec but he is not doing that either. It could be he is worried about his own seat, in which case him and his party will be a non-factor come election day.
One note about the polls. As I have stated often I put little stock in the polls. However, some people do and the current state of the polls have them worried. What needs to be understood is we have seen this before.
In 2015, with three weeks to go before the election the polls indicated that the three main parties were tied with the Conservatives having a bit of an upper hand.
In 2011, with three weeks to go before the election the polls indicated that the Ignatieff Liberals had a slight lead over the Harper Conservatives. I remember how happy many Liberals were after week two of that election.
In 2008, with three weeks to go before the election the polls indicated that the Dion Liberals had a slight lead over the Conservatives. Again, Liberals were quite pleased at that time.
Of course we all know how those elections turned out. The point, of course, is that polls early in an election campaign cannot be used to predict, project, or otherwise guess the final outcome of the election. Neither can polls at the end of the campaign for that matter.
Between now and election day Canadians will decide who they want to govern them. We will not know that decision for certain until October 21. I still believe it will be the Liberals that they choose, for many reasons, but we will know for certain in a little over three weeks.
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Gun Control
I had a short conversation today with someone who was unhappy with the proposed gun control policies of the Liberals. When I suggested they made great sense he immediately accused me of being an anti-gun nut in a very snide voice. Understand we had just met and we did not know each other beforehand but my disagreeing with him caused him to insult me. Figuring he was just another classless Conservative supporter I just walked away.
I could have argued with him but I do not believe it would have mattered and as I get older I realize that life is too short to argue with close minded people but that short conversation got me thinking
I grew up in rural Eastern Ontario. I started pinging away at old tin cans with my grandfather's old single shot 22, on his farm, when I was 10. I killed my first animal, with a firearm, before I got my drivers licence. My grandfather had firearms, my father had firearms, his brothers have firearms, my brother has firearms, my cousins (both male and female) own firearms, even some family pets own firearms. I would own firearms if my wife would let me keep them in the house. To this day if someone invites me to go do some shooting I almost always say "Let's go!". So by no stretch of the imagination could I be called anti-gun.
All that being said I am a big supporter of gun control and I came to that position as a result of my family. My grandfather used to say that the only thing a handgun is good for is scaring away the moose. When I asked my father if he would ever like to own a military style weapon like the AR-15 he said no because they are useless for hunting. Understand both men were as conservative as they come but they still understood the need for gun control.
I could have said all of this to the guy if I thought it would have been useful. I could have also said that my father's preferred weapon for hunting large game was a Savage .308 magnum, which he stated could bring down a full grown moose at 400 metres and a dear at 600 metres. The small 5.56mm round of the AR-15 could not do either. If you hit a large target with such small rounds you would mortally wound the animal but not kill it outright. In all likelihood it would run off to die a slow, painful death, which all hunters want to avoid, at least all of the hunters I know. I could have argued that the AR-15 and other similar weapons are specifically designed and built to kill and maim HUMANS and nothing else. Hunting rifles and shotguns can be used for kill humans but their manufacturers are looking at the hunting market.
Allowing people to own hunting rifles and shotguns, with suitable regulations in place to make certain that they are handled and stored properly makes perfect sense. Banning weapons designed specifically to kill and maim humans, such as assault weapons and handguns also makes perfect sense.
A personal disclaimer. I know someone who owns and AR-15. He has given me several opportunities to shoot it. I did and I liked it. If a re-elected Liberal government bans such weapons I will not have another such opportunity. That would be disappointing but I can live with it.
I could have argued with him but I do not believe it would have mattered and as I get older I realize that life is too short to argue with close minded people but that short conversation got me thinking
I grew up in rural Eastern Ontario. I started pinging away at old tin cans with my grandfather's old single shot 22, on his farm, when I was 10. I killed my first animal, with a firearm, before I got my drivers licence. My grandfather had firearms, my father had firearms, his brothers have firearms, my brother has firearms, my cousins (both male and female) own firearms, even some family pets own firearms. I would own firearms if my wife would let me keep them in the house. To this day if someone invites me to go do some shooting I almost always say "Let's go!". So by no stretch of the imagination could I be called anti-gun.
All that being said I am a big supporter of gun control and I came to that position as a result of my family. My grandfather used to say that the only thing a handgun is good for is scaring away the moose. When I asked my father if he would ever like to own a military style weapon like the AR-15 he said no because they are useless for hunting. Understand both men were as conservative as they come but they still understood the need for gun control.
I could have said all of this to the guy if I thought it would have been useful. I could have also said that my father's preferred weapon for hunting large game was a Savage .308 magnum, which he stated could bring down a full grown moose at 400 metres and a dear at 600 metres. The small 5.56mm round of the AR-15 could not do either. If you hit a large target with such small rounds you would mortally wound the animal but not kill it outright. In all likelihood it would run off to die a slow, painful death, which all hunters want to avoid, at least all of the hunters I know. I could have argued that the AR-15 and other similar weapons are specifically designed and built to kill and maim HUMANS and nothing else. Hunting rifles and shotguns can be used for kill humans but their manufacturers are looking at the hunting market.
Allowing people to own hunting rifles and shotguns, with suitable regulations in place to make certain that they are handled and stored properly makes perfect sense. Banning weapons designed specifically to kill and maim humans, such as assault weapons and handguns also makes perfect sense.
A personal disclaimer. I know someone who owns and AR-15. He has given me several opportunities to shoot it. I did and I liked it. If a re-elected Liberal government bans such weapons I will not have another such opportunity. That would be disappointing but I can live with it.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Federal Election 2019: Week 1 over - Nothing but Chaff
Week one is in the books and I can honestly say that none of the campaigns have provided Canadians with anything they can really chew on.
The Liberals are running a typical front-runner campaign. They are making announcements on a daily basis but I am not detecting a election theme. In 2015 they remained laser focused on the economy. They were not distracted by three weeks of the Mike Duffy trial. They made only a passing remark on the drowned boy on the Turkish beach. In short, their campaign was focused, disciplined and on message from the time the writ was dropped to the end. For this campaign they have certainly been disciplined but they have not stuck to a central message because they do not seem to have one. They would go along way to ensuring their re-election if they had such a central message and if they could tie in all of their policy announcements to that message.
The Conservatives have run the campaign that I expected, namely negative. Although I have to admit to being surprised at how shameless they have been in lying to voters. I cannot see that as being a winning strategy for a 41 day campaign. I know that many point to success of Doug Ford's and Donald Trump's campaigns. However, if anybody, including the Conservatives, believe the same tactics will work this time around they are probably in for a major disappointment. Doug Ford was up against a government that had been in power for about 16 years. They pulled off a miracle in 2014 but they were not going to pull off the same miracle in 2018. I always like to remind people that Donald Trump came in second, by a significant margin, in 2016. Only the vagaries of the Electoral College system gave him the White House. If the Conservatives do not win the popular vote they do not win the election. Their vote is just way too inefficient for them to do so in our First Past the Post voting system. So far all they have done is lie and announce recycled Harper government initiatives. That is not going to inspire voters, which is what they need to do to win.
The NDP has been invisible, as I expected. They are trying to save the furniture and they are pretty much avoiding any really big policy announcements. Mr. Singh is waiting for the debates hoping that he can perform well enough there to convince enough voters to give him and his party enough seats to maintain official party status. It is an open question of whether he will succeed.
The Greens and the PPC are proving that they are fringe parties. They have not done anything in the first week to make themselves stand out.
Ms. May is long past her best-before-date and if she believes the current polling indicating that she may win more than her own seat she is delusional. We have been down this road before. By election day voters in this country will likely revert to their habit of voting for the big three.
Mr. Bernier has not done anything except receive an invitation to the official debates, which is hardly an accomplishment by him. I have stated here before that his best strategy is to rent a bus and campaign hard in the Conservative ridings in Ontario and Quebec. He is not doing that. In fact I am not certain what he is doing even though I have been trying to find out. At this rate he will be lucky to win his own seat. I thought he might be waiting for the debates but until yesterday there was no guarantee that he would be invited.
All and all, I am rather disappointed in the first week of the campaign and that is despite my generally low expectations for the first week. However, I am particularly disappointed with the Liberal campaign. They ran a brilliant, near perfect campaign in 2015 and I was expecting something similar this time around, particularly since the 2015 campaign team is intact. Instead, their campaign has been rather pedestrian.
The Liberals are running a typical front-runner campaign. They are making announcements on a daily basis but I am not detecting a election theme. In 2015 they remained laser focused on the economy. They were not distracted by three weeks of the Mike Duffy trial. They made only a passing remark on the drowned boy on the Turkish beach. In short, their campaign was focused, disciplined and on message from the time the writ was dropped to the end. For this campaign they have certainly been disciplined but they have not stuck to a central message because they do not seem to have one. They would go along way to ensuring their re-election if they had such a central message and if they could tie in all of their policy announcements to that message.
The Conservatives have run the campaign that I expected, namely negative. Although I have to admit to being surprised at how shameless they have been in lying to voters. I cannot see that as being a winning strategy for a 41 day campaign. I know that many point to success of Doug Ford's and Donald Trump's campaigns. However, if anybody, including the Conservatives, believe the same tactics will work this time around they are probably in for a major disappointment. Doug Ford was up against a government that had been in power for about 16 years. They pulled off a miracle in 2014 but they were not going to pull off the same miracle in 2018. I always like to remind people that Donald Trump came in second, by a significant margin, in 2016. Only the vagaries of the Electoral College system gave him the White House. If the Conservatives do not win the popular vote they do not win the election. Their vote is just way too inefficient for them to do so in our First Past the Post voting system. So far all they have done is lie and announce recycled Harper government initiatives. That is not going to inspire voters, which is what they need to do to win.
The NDP has been invisible, as I expected. They are trying to save the furniture and they are pretty much avoiding any really big policy announcements. Mr. Singh is waiting for the debates hoping that he can perform well enough there to convince enough voters to give him and his party enough seats to maintain official party status. It is an open question of whether he will succeed.
The Greens and the PPC are proving that they are fringe parties. They have not done anything in the first week to make themselves stand out.
Ms. May is long past her best-before-date and if she believes the current polling indicating that she may win more than her own seat she is delusional. We have been down this road before. By election day voters in this country will likely revert to their habit of voting for the big three.
Mr. Bernier has not done anything except receive an invitation to the official debates, which is hardly an accomplishment by him. I have stated here before that his best strategy is to rent a bus and campaign hard in the Conservative ridings in Ontario and Quebec. He is not doing that. In fact I am not certain what he is doing even though I have been trying to find out. At this rate he will be lucky to win his own seat. I thought he might be waiting for the debates but until yesterday there was no guarantee that he would be invited.
All and all, I am rather disappointed in the first week of the campaign and that is despite my generally low expectations for the first week. However, I am particularly disappointed with the Liberal campaign. They ran a brilliant, near perfect campaign in 2015 and I was expecting something similar this time around, particularly since the 2015 campaign team is intact. Instead, their campaign has been rather pedestrian.
Monday, September 16, 2019
The Official Debates for the 2019 Federal Election
So it was revealed today that the independant commission that was set up to organize the official leaders debates for the 2019 Federal Election is going to let Maxime Bernier participate.
I have to admit I am torn by this decision. On the one hand giving this man a national stage to spew his hate and bigotry troubles me but on the other hand it could show Canadians just what kind of man he is and what kind of party he is leading.
When I first heard this news I imagined that Mr. Scheer and the Conservative Party would not be pleased. If they have any chance of winning they have to keep their base united and Mr. Bernier is a direct threat to that goal. Having him in the debates makes achieving that objective that much harder as it gives Mr. Bernier a chance to appeal directly to that part of the Conservative base where his message would resonate. As well, now that Mr. Bernier is included in the debates the national media could begin to pay a little more attention to them. If any as much attention as they give the Greens but any publicity that Mr. Bernier receives is probably not good news for the Conservatives.
It turns out I was correct because the Conservative Party came out with a statement of displeasure that was completely overboard in the amount of vitriol directed at the commission and it went so far as to question its integrity.
I looked up the members of the commision to see if their argument had any merit. I believed before I checked that it would not but I wanted to be certain and when I checked I was correct. The commissioner is our former Governor General, a Harper appointee, and one person in the country whose honour and integrity is above reproach. In addition one of the members of the Advisory Committee is Deborah Grey. When I read that name it sounded familier and it took me awhile to place it. I finally did. She was the first Reform Party MP that came to Ottawa in the 1989, preceding their big influx of MPs in 1993. She was roasting Mr.Chretien and his government when Mr. Scheer was still in highschool. To imply she is a Liberal stooge is way off base. Make no mistake I have little respect for Ms. Grey. Her and her Reform colleagues were some of the most classless people ever to wonder the halls of Parliament Hill. Indeed, the extreme partisanship, vitriol and total lack of class of the current group of Conservative MPs and candidates is a direct result of how the Reform Party members conducted themselves in the 1990s. However, give the lady her due. No one can legitimately imply she is somehow working for the Liberals like the Conservatives did today.
There is some speculation as to why the Conservatives reacted the way they did. The most plausible explanation is so far the Conservatives are losing the election. Looking past today to the last few weeks the Conservatives are not running a campaign one would expect from a front runner. This is odd because for the past few months the media has been telling us that they were the front runner. The media has begun to change its tune somewhat in the last week or so but as late as the last week of August I was reading media commentators indicating that the Conservatives were in the driver's seat.
If the Conservatives are losing I can assure you that they know it. The big three political parties have polling and data analysis experts on retainer for the election and they will provide each leader with daily briefings of what Canadians care about and how their campaigns are progressing. Judging by how the Conservatives have conducted the first few days of the election, including their statements on the decision to allow Mr. Bernier to partipate in the debates, I would speculate that the Conservatives are not liking what their data analysis experts are telling them.
Watching the Conservatives it is quite a contrast to the Liberal campaign which looks very much like a frontrunner campaign.
There is still alot of time before the election and alot of politics will happen during that time so things could change. I do not believe they will but there is always a chance they could. However, as of now I believe the Conservatives are in tough and the added credibility given to Mr. Bernier that comes along with his inclusion in the debates will only make their campaign tougher.
I have to admit I am torn by this decision. On the one hand giving this man a national stage to spew his hate and bigotry troubles me but on the other hand it could show Canadians just what kind of man he is and what kind of party he is leading.
When I first heard this news I imagined that Mr. Scheer and the Conservative Party would not be pleased. If they have any chance of winning they have to keep their base united and Mr. Bernier is a direct threat to that goal. Having him in the debates makes achieving that objective that much harder as it gives Mr. Bernier a chance to appeal directly to that part of the Conservative base where his message would resonate. As well, now that Mr. Bernier is included in the debates the national media could begin to pay a little more attention to them. If any as much attention as they give the Greens but any publicity that Mr. Bernier receives is probably not good news for the Conservatives.
It turns out I was correct because the Conservative Party came out with a statement of displeasure that was completely overboard in the amount of vitriol directed at the commission and it went so far as to question its integrity.
I looked up the members of the commision to see if their argument had any merit. I believed before I checked that it would not but I wanted to be certain and when I checked I was correct. The commissioner is our former Governor General, a Harper appointee, and one person in the country whose honour and integrity is above reproach. In addition one of the members of the Advisory Committee is Deborah Grey. When I read that name it sounded familier and it took me awhile to place it. I finally did. She was the first Reform Party MP that came to Ottawa in the 1989, preceding their big influx of MPs in 1993. She was roasting Mr.Chretien and his government when Mr. Scheer was still in highschool. To imply she is a Liberal stooge is way off base. Make no mistake I have little respect for Ms. Grey. Her and her Reform colleagues were some of the most classless people ever to wonder the halls of Parliament Hill. Indeed, the extreme partisanship, vitriol and total lack of class of the current group of Conservative MPs and candidates is a direct result of how the Reform Party members conducted themselves in the 1990s. However, give the lady her due. No one can legitimately imply she is somehow working for the Liberals like the Conservatives did today.
There is some speculation as to why the Conservatives reacted the way they did. The most plausible explanation is so far the Conservatives are losing the election. Looking past today to the last few weeks the Conservatives are not running a campaign one would expect from a front runner. This is odd because for the past few months the media has been telling us that they were the front runner. The media has begun to change its tune somewhat in the last week or so but as late as the last week of August I was reading media commentators indicating that the Conservatives were in the driver's seat.
If the Conservatives are losing I can assure you that they know it. The big three political parties have polling and data analysis experts on retainer for the election and they will provide each leader with daily briefings of what Canadians care about and how their campaigns are progressing. Judging by how the Conservatives have conducted the first few days of the election, including their statements on the decision to allow Mr. Bernier to partipate in the debates, I would speculate that the Conservatives are not liking what their data analysis experts are telling them.
Watching the Conservatives it is quite a contrast to the Liberal campaign which looks very much like a frontrunner campaign.
There is still alot of time before the election and alot of politics will happen during that time so things could change. I do not believe they will but there is always a chance they could. However, as of now I believe the Conservatives are in tough and the added credibility given to Mr. Bernier that comes along with his inclusion in the debates will only make their campaign tougher.
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