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.
2 comments:
I hope you're right about the outcome too.
One thing that concerns me is the way the Cons have been trying to energize their base. They've gone too far and become completely unglued to the point where Trudeau faced a security threat at a campaign event and had to be fitted with a bulletproof vest.
An article pointed out that this is their strategy, even to make Scheer go ballistic at Trudeau during the debates because he's often called "Blandy" and the advisory team needed him to go after the "enemy" with more fervor. There's negative campaigns and there's the full-blown Trumpian psychosis that the Cons have ginned up among their supporters. They don't care about policy. They're trained like Pavlov's dogs to hate Justin Trudeau and his family, even his children, his ailing mother and his deceased younger brother. The Cons have Republican advisors; they saw this politics of rage work in 2016 against Hillary Clinton and they're hoping for the same outcome in Canada. The problem with that is once you create a monster you can't control it when it becomes fully unleashed. Donald Scheer in orangeface.
I hope Trudeau wins of course, even if it's a minority government like his father in 1972. But one thing is certain, regardless of the results at the ballot box, this has been a "change" election in a different way that I don't think Canada will ever recover from. The American sickness has spread north. 😟
Modern Conservatism is in its death throws. Climate Change, increased automation and the rise of China as the pre-eminent economic and military power in the world is going to change the West and its place in the world forever. Modern Conservatism has no means to deal with one of these let alone all three so it is only a matter of time, years not decades, before they will become irrelevant.
Like all rigid ideologies they cannot adjust to the new realities coming at them like an out of control train. They can see it coming and they know the implications for them and for attaining and maintaining power so they have no choice but to resort to less democratic means to maintain their power base.
They will squeeze every last bit they can out of the political and economic systems before fading into irrelevancy. We just happen to have the misfortune of being alive during this transition.
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