The Role of Data in Modern Election Campaigns

In 1997 I worked for a Member of Parliament of an Ottawa riding (The Boss) and I would go to work each day to do my job as a Member's Assistant and then, since my job was as much on the line as The Boss's, I would go volunteer at the campaign office in the evening.

Whenever we went canvassing there was always one member of the team who was responsible for recording whether a person we spoke to would support The Boss or not. They recorded this on a piece of paper on a clipboard. After each canvass that paper would be handed off to the data entry team at campaign HQ so that they could enter it into the computer. That was our database for pulling the vote on E-day. A few days ago when the Conservative candidate visited my neighbourhood I noticed someone with a tablet filling this role.

I provide this little anecdote to demonstrate that data and its analysis has been an important part of election campaigns for decades. With the increase in computer power and capabilities it has become one of the keys to winning a modern election.

With modern computing power, some of the extremely powerful data analytics software available on the market and well trained data scientists a political party can determine the probabilities of how an election will turn out at the riding level. Forget about the national, provincial or regional levels. Think about what all of the seat aggregators produce but on steroids. 

So before this election was called the Liberal data team would have had reliable probabilities for every riding in the country. Since 170 is the magic number they would have identified at least 180 ridings where the Liberals had at least a 75% chance of winning (A large chunk of them would have been in the 85%+ range). To allow for some slippage they would then have identified another 20+ ridings where they had at least a 60% chance of winning. If they were unable to meet these objectives the PM would not have called an election. Being in power with a minority is better than risking an election unless you believe you have it essentially locked up. 

The data team developed these probabilities using a whole host of data collection methods. Quantitative methods such as polling, but at the riding level and qualitative methods such as focus groups just to name two. They then would have crunched the numbers to come up with the probabilities and data analysts would have provided the "picture" to the party decision makers.

In addition these same teams would have tested all of the different policy proposals that have been released by the party and they would have tested the potential reaction to the early election call. 

Once the election is called the data team has to switch to monitoring progress. For the ridings where they identified lower probabilities of winning they would continue to collect data, from polling and other data sources to look for changes in those probabilities. For the safe ridings they would probably not regularly poll them. They would use that money on less safe ridings. However, remember the tablet I mentioned in my anecdote? All of the data collected during canvassing would be uploaded to party HQ where the data analysts would see if there were any serious signs of trouble in those 180 seats with the 75% probability of winning. If they did that would be flagged. In addition they would be testing the reaction of voters to the daily announcements and actions and words of each of the party leaders.

All of this would be done and a daily dashboard would be produced to be presented to the people running the campaign, which would include the PM. Now here is the rub. This data analysis would not just tell the decision makers the probabilities of victory for their party but it would also provide the probabilities for the other parties. So the Liberals know where they stand each day but they also know where the other parties stand. The Conservatives, who have a similar operation, have the exact same information.

I do not know all of the intricacies because I am not part of the team but this is a general description of the importance of data to modern elections. 

Of course, there are limits to what data can tell you and it is not uncommon for people to misinterpret what the data is telling you.  As well, although these data can provide probabilities that does not constitute a guarantee. There is always a chance the probabilities could be wrong. We can never discount that possibility.

However, I will continue to point out that one of the reason why the Conservatives were so hysterical about the early election call was their data teams were showing the same things the Liberal team was showing. The Liberals had at least a 60% probability of winning more than 180 seats. As well, I will also continue to point out that although the public polls are saying the Liberals are losing support neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives are showing signs that their own data analysis teams are in agreement with those polls. 

The Anti-Vax Protesters

The reason why these protesters are so angry is because they know that they are going to lose. They will either have to suck it up and take the two needles or they will be left out of society.

The momentum in the private sector to deny unvaccinated people access to goods and services is growing. Private companies know that if someone contracts Covid while they are in their establishment they will be sued. For small businesses that would mean going out of business. For big business that would mean bad press and a smaller bottom line. That momentum will only increase as vaccine passports and mandates are instituted. 

As a result the anti-vaxxers are becoming rather frightened and desperate. Hence the over-the-top displays that we are starting to see at Liberal events. If, as expected, the Ford government announces the institution of a provincial vaccine passport then that fear and desperation will only intensify. 

Over 75% of Canadians are fully vaccinated and that percentage increases every day. These people are definitely in an ever shrinking minority but that does not mean that they will go quietly. The election provides them with the perfect way to vent their anger and they are going to use it. It will not help them but they will still do it.

Election 2021: On the Cusp of Week Three

Week two of the campaign is coming to an end and what can we make of it?

Well, you cannot talk about week two without talking about the polls. Although, as Jackie, someone who visits this blog from time-to-time, has pointed out it is just three polling companies that are driving the polls right now. They are the three that are doing rolling polls every night and publishing their estimates the next day.

These polls have not been good news for the Liberals. Two of them are rather gruesome while the third shows the Liberals basically where they were at the end of the 2019 election. Are these polls a reflection of reality? (Probably not) Two of these polling companies have estimates that, if they were true, would result in a Conservative victory but the polling companies are still saying that their seat models are showing a Liberal minority government. Say what? I know that the Liberals have the best voter efficiency of all of the parties but what you are describing is out of this world voter efficiency. Your commentary on your own polls is out of whack and the question then becomes, why. Do you not trust your own data? (They don't) It is interesting that neither of the two polling companies that have published gruesome results for the Liberals did rolling polls in the previous two elections. However, the one that has done them since I cannot remember is showing very different results, results that would truly indicate a Liberal victory with their voter efficiency. 

So how are the parties reacting to these polls? The PM took the day off. According to the polls the proverbial wheels are flying off of the campaign bus and he took the day off. This was a planned day off, by the way, because if this would have been a last minute decision, where planned events had to be canceled, our balanced, non-biased media would have discovered that fact by now and provided their usual balanced and un-biased take on that decision. The polls have been troubling long enough to allow for planning events for today without making them look like they were thrown together at the last minute, which would also be noticed and yet he still went ahead with his day off? Over the past two weeks I have not seen any indication that the Liberals have been rattled by what the public polls are saying. They are getting on with getting on.

How about the Conservatives? Erin O'Toole is still warning Canadians about a Trudeau majority. Say what? Dude, the polls say that such a majority if off of the table and a couple of polls are saying you might actually win this thing. What are you talking about? 

As for the media and the "professional" political commentators I would just point out that a certain former Liberal operative, who will never miss an opportunity to bash Mr. Trudeau, has also said the Liberal majority if off of the table. He has not gone to the next level despite the  gruesomeness of a couple of the rolling polls. 

I know that I have been saying this for weeks if not months but modern election campaigns are driven by data. Gone are the days when some "Rainman's" political instincts were the only factors impacting political decisions. While those political instincts are still important, data and its analysis has become its equal in making political decision.

Both of the major parties have data analytics teams working for them. They are collecting and analyzing a tremendous amount of data each day, using the latest data analytics techniques and providing the two leaders with accurate snap shots on a daily basis. As an example, the polling companies doing the rolling polls are interviewing 400-500 respondents each day, from across Canada. The data analytics teams of the two parties are doing that in hundreds of ridings each day and gathering data from other sources besides. What they are telling the two parties is probably much different from what the public polls are telling us. And I think the pollsters and pundits know this which is why they are hedging on what their polls are actually saying.

Enough about polls. What how has week two gone otherwise?

The Liberals book ended their week with a couple of health care announcements. The first one was to promise to hire more healthcare workers and reduce wait times. That announcement was made in Halifax, which just had an election that revolved around those very issues. Most of rural Nova Scotia voted to change their provincial government and the Liberals went to Nova Scotia and essentially said that a Liberal government would be a willing partner with the new provincial government in achieving its key election promise. That is not flashy but it is brilliant. What was funny was that announcement was preceded by a video of Erin O'Toole agreeing with the idea of more privatization of Canada's health care system. I believe it was just a way to show the contrast between the two party positions but then Twitter put a warning label on the video, the media noticed and made it an issue. That lead to the video being viewed hundreds of thousands of times and having Erin O'Toole dodge questions about his view on privatization until he could no longer dodge them. He finally had to admit that what was said in the video is accurate, he would allow more privatization. I wonder, knowing that the Liberals realize the media is hostile towards them, if they did not plan it that way. Did they pawn the media and create what could be THE wedge issue for this campaign in the process? If they did bravo.

One final note. I noticed that the DPM has been going around the country campaigning with Liberals. She is not just sticking to her own riding but campaigning on a level just below the PM. As well, I have noticed the the Liberal Party has been allowing individual election candidates make some of the more mundane election announcements. With a hostile media that is the kind of campaign you need to have. These efforts will not be noticed by the national media but they will be noticed by the local media, which are usually much less hostile towards any of the political parties.

As for the Conservatives they have not really had a spectacular campaign so far. If the media was not pulling for them they would be nowhere. Erin O'Toole is a one man band. As well, so far he has come down on the wrong side of around a half-a-dozen issues, including admitting that he would allow more privatization of Canada's health care system. That provides plenty of material for the Liberals to use over the next three weeks and there are probably a few people in the Conservative camp wondering when the next shoe will drop.

The preliminary round of the election is over. All of the campaigns will switch gears and begin the real election this week. It should be an interesting three weeks.

Mr. Trudeau's Announcement about Vaccine Passports

Documentation that you can carry with you, either on your phone or in your wallet, proving that you have been fully vaxxed will be necessary for us to return to something resembling the normalcy we all enjoyed before March 13, 2020.

Unfortunately, there are too many provincial governments in this country that have resisted them for a number of reason, but mostly because they fear the backlash of the anti-vaxxers that make up a sizable chunk of their electoral base.

So the Prime Minister did what all Prime Ministers do when they want the Premiers to do something. He offered them cash. It is as Canadian as maple syrup, tar sands oil and mowing the lawn during a snow flurry.

Will it work? For some yes. For others maybe not.

The Tasks at Hand

Mr. Trudeau and Mr. O'Toole are attempting to accomplish two different tasks. Mr. Trudeau wants to win a majority government while Mr. O'Toole wants to replace the Trudeau government with a government lead by him and if he could do that with a majority of his own he would love that.

It should come as no surprise that Mr. Trudeau has the easier task. That would seem to be counterintuitive looking at the polls for the past week but if you look past the top-line numbers it does seem to be true at this point in the campaign.

If you look at all of the polls, without focusing on just one, you will note some interesting results.

In BC the polling averages indicate that if an election were held today the Liberals could gain up to 8 seats. For the sake of this exercise let's split the difference and call it 4 seats.

On the Prairies it is 7 additional seats so let's call it 3.

In Quebec the Liberals could win up to 20 additional seats so let's call it 10.

In the Eastern Provinces they could win 4 additional seats so let's call it 2.

So when the election was called the Liberals had 155 seats. Adding the number of possible additional seats to that gives you: 155+4+3+10+2=174 seats. A slim majority.

Looking at Ontario the polls indicate that the Liberals could win anywhere from 60 to 80 seats. Again, let's split the difference which means, 70 seats, 7 seats off of their current total in that province.

So when we take the seat gains above and apply the Ontario losses we get: 174-7=167, a strong minority government. If the Liberals just beat the mean in a couple of regions they find themselves back over the majority government mark and beating the mean significantly puts them into comfortable majority territory. 

Let's contrast that with the task Mr. O'Toole has ahead of him.

The polls indicate that if an election were held today the Conservatives would lose between 6-12 seats in the West. As above we will split the difference and call it 9 seats. As well, it would appear he could lose up to 4 seats in the Eastern Provinces. We will call it 2.

When the election was called the Conservatives had 121 seats. So looking at their losses that gives the Conservatives: 121-11=110 seats. Looking at where they might gain the current polls are indicating that they may gain up to 5 seats in Quebec, let's call it 3. As well, they may gain from 5 to 15 seats in Ontario which we will call 8 additional seats.

So taking their totals with all gains and losses accounted for we have: 110+11=121 seats, essentially back to where they started. 

As an aside, it is interesting that the only part of the country where the Liberals are down is Ontario. In all other provinces and regions in the country the Liberals are either at their 2019 levels or higher while the Conservatives are mostly at their 2019 levels or lower. I would be curious to know why Ontario is the outlier here. Are they a harbinger of things to come in the rest of the country? Or will they eventually come back into line with the rest of the country in the last weeks of the campaign?

So just looking at these numbers it is obvious that after two weeks of the campaign, dominated by bad public polls for the Liberals, the Liberals are still closer to achieving their objective than the Conservatives. Currently the Liberals can afford to lose some seats in Ontario as long as they can pick up seats in the other regions and provinces and still obtain their majority. At the very least they, if the election were held today, they would retain government. The Conservatives on the other hand would need to virtually sweep Ontario and Quebec, while limiting his losses elsewhere, to win government.

Could the Conservatives change the math by September 20? Of course they could. Is it probable that they will change it? I would say no at this point. 

Either Justin Trudeau or Erin O'Toole are going to feel very helpless during the week of September 13

As I have stated before the ballot question for the election is: is this election a change election?

I do not believe it is for all of the reasons I mention in that blog post.

However, if Canadians have decided that they want to change governments this time, and if that is the case the decision has already been made at the unconscious level, then there is nothing that Justin Trudeau and the Liberals will be able to do about it.

On the other hand if Canadians have decided that they do not want to change governments then it is Erin O'Toole who will be powerless to do anything about it.

The Erosion of Western Democracy

The reaction to the video where Erin O'Toole answers in a straight, one word affirmative to a very straightforward question of whether he agrees with more privatization of Canada's health care system has been instructional. But more on that in a minute.

I had a discussion with a friend about the rise of China in the world and I expressed my opinion that I believed that the size of its economy would overtake that of the United States in my lifetime. My friend said it is possible but he stated that it probably would not happen because China does not have a mechanism for channeling anger at the government. Therefore, if they hit serious bumps in the road the Chinese government will suffer an existential crisis and that would cause a vicious circle of lower economic output, which would cause further unrest thus deepening the political crisis, and so on.

I said that is definitely a possibility but the problem with that argument is the West no longer has a reliable safety valve for rising anger and unrest in the West either because of the increasing failure and the increasing loss of faith in western democracy so they could find themselves in the same vicious cycle. That loss of faith is caused by modern Western democracies inability to actually allow ordinary citizens to improve their lot. There is empirical evidence to suggest that my generation is worse off, economically, than my parents' generation and there is more empirical evidence that the generations coming after mine will be even worse off. We can see this coming. It is a plain as the nose on one's face but we seem to be helpless in preventing it. The reason for this is the failure of democracy.

This brings me back to the video mentioned in the first paragraph of this post. Fifteen, maybe even ten years ago, if the leader of a Federal political party would have made those statements during an election campaign his campaign would be finished. The media would have jumped all over it and they would have focused on what he said and they would stay focused on it for days. What was the reaction of the media and chattering classes to Erin O'Toole's video? They focused on Twitter flagging the video.

The Canadian health care system is a point of pride for Canadians. The vast majority of Canadians do not want it falling into private hands. Yet here is a federal politicians disagreeing with the majority and so far I have not seen any consequences.

Why? The answer is simple. The ruling class in Canada and the other Western democracies have completely lost touch with those that they rule. I include the main stream media as part of the ruling class, which is not where they should be because the media is supposed to challenge the ruling class not be coopted by it. 

So if Erin O'Toole were to become PM (he won't) and allows the introduction of further privatization in our health care system, despite the vast majority of Canadians who are against it, that would lead to a further erosion in the faith in democracy. We want to keep our health care system public, we voted, it became more private, therefore democracy does not work.

This erosion of faith will have serious consequences for the people of the West. We are already seeing it with the election of Donald Trump and his continued popularity, Brexit, the rise of far-right and neo-Nazi parties in Europe and the rise of authoritarian governments in some of the former Warsaw Bloc states. These outcomes to the failure of democracy will only get worse and Canada will not escape them.

Although PM Trudeau, President Biden and some other Western leaders are fighting a rear guard action they have been unable to restore faith in democracy and that will inevitably lead to authoritarian governments taking over current democracies, especially when the full impacts of climate change and automation start to be felt among ordinary people. With democracy failing, authoritarianism will be the only way to keep order.

Note, I am not trying to single out Mr. O'Toole. He is just another example of how out of touch our ruling class is with us. There are many more of other political stripes so he is by no means unique. The reaction to his video just demonstrates the continuing trend of our ruling class becoming further out of touch with those that they are supposed to be ruling.

Early Election Polls

I rarely more than glance at public polls because they are generally useless at explaining what is happening unless you look at them over a long period of time, which means months, not weeks and certainly not days. And even then you need to take what they say with a grain of salt.

However, I have seen many people talk about them and I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about.

Full disclosure I worked for 18 years in the survey business so I know quite a bit on how they are developed, collected and analyzed to produce the estimates that we all look at when we read polls. I also spent a good part of that 18 years crafting the message contained in the data for survey reports. 

At any rate, the pollsters and the pundits have been saying the Liberals have lost support and the Conservatives have the momentum in the early part of the election. They base this on the fact that a week before the election call the Liberals had large single digit or small double digit leads in the polls and that shrank to being a statistical tie just days after the election call. I would ask you to read one of my previous blog entries on just what I think of that. I find such claims to be very dubious.

However, let's, for the sake of argument, take that claim at face value. Looking at the polls for the past five days the indicate that the Liberals have settled at about 34% and the Conservatives have settled at about 31% and the NDP at 19%. For the past five days the numbers have not moved more than the margin of error (MOE) around those numbers. Which means that the numbers are not moving at all. That means that no party has momentum. If the Conservatives did have the momentum before August 18 (a dubious claim) it stopped five days ago and it has not picked back up since then. Consider that the Liberals won their 157 seats with 33% of the vote in 2019 while the Conservatives won 34%. With the Conservatives down 3 points from 2019 they are not winning any more seats and the Liberal might pick up a few.

This is subject to change. Either the Conservatives or Liberals could gain the momentum as the election unfolds or these numbers could stay the same as we saw in 2019. I cannot say with certainty which one will happen but the Liberals probably have the better odds, for all of the reasons I have outlined in previous posts.

Now let us look at the regional numbers. Keep in mind that these have even higher MOEs because of the smaller sample sizes so even something that looks like a big swing, such as in the Maritimes, could be nothing more than statistical noise.

In BC the Liberals are around 30%, with the Conservatives and the NDP being around the same level. At 30% the Liberals would hang on to their 11 seats and potentially gain 6 more for a total of 17

In Alberta the Conservatives are sitting at 49%. That is 27 points off of what they won in 2019. That is massive. In any other election the media would be talking about the collapse of their vote in their main stronghold. The Liberals are where they were in 2019 so that opens the possibility of the Liberals winning 4 seats in Alberta.

In Saskitoba the Conservatives are down and the Liberals are where they were in 2019. Three additional seats are possible there.

In Ontario all of the parties are at their 2019 totals. However, it should be noted that the PPC is pushing 5% in Ontario. That may not seem like much but if they can siphon off a couple percentage points in ridings where the Conservatives only won by a point or two those will be lost seats for the Conservatives, and almost 20 of those close seats saw the Liberals come in second. 

In the Maritimes the parties are sitting at what they gained in 2019 so we probably would not see any change there.

In Quebec, the Liberals are sitting around 39% while the Bloc is 13 points back and the Conservatives and the NDP are nipping at the Blocs heels. The available pool of voters in Quebec for the Liberals is 40% so they are pretty much at their ceiling. The others are fishing in a bigger pond but the are very close to each other meaning that they would split the anti-Liberal vote quite nicely if this hold. At worst, in this scenario the Liberals equal their 2019 seat totals. At best they can gain up to 25 seats, although 10 would probably be more realistic.

So the Liberals started the campaign at 155 seats. Let's not assume either the worst or best case scenario presented by the polls for each region. Let's assume the middle ground.

So we add 3 for BC, 2 for Alberta, 2 for Saskitoba, 3 for Ontario, 10 for Quebec and 1 for the Maritimes (The NDP seat in St. Johns is open so it could fall). That is 21 added to the 155 to equal 176 seats.

So when pollsters and pundits are saying the Liberals are losing the election what the f&%# are they talking about? I personally do not believe the Liberals would win a majority with just 33% of the vote but considering what I am seeing in the current polls it is not beyond the realm of possibility. And if these numbers were the final numbers on September 20 there is no way the Liberals lose.

I will add my usual caveat that elections are crap shoots and these numbers could change to the disadvantage of the Liberals but they can also change to their advantage. However, in order to change governments they will need to change much more in favour of the Conservatives than they would for us to see a Liberal majority government.

I have provided reasons why the most likely outcome of the election is a Liberal victory, possibly a majority government, in previous entries in this blog and as comments on other blogs. Looking at the latest polls, if an election were held today the outcome would be exactly that.

Election 2021: Week One Complete

Week one of the 2021 Federal election is in the books and (imagine me speaking like Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars) it is unfolding as I have foreseen.

The Liberals are running a typical frontrunner campaign because they are the prohibitive front runner. They have been for over 18 months. It can be kind of frustrating if you were expecting them to come out guns blazing but they have done what I would have expected after calling an election during the dog days of summer. Some have said that they never gave a good answer for calling the election but no answer would have been sufficient. Everybody knows that they called the election because they believe they can win a majority government. Hell, all of the Opposition Parties and the media acknowledged just that with their over-the-top reactions to the election call. The first 7 to 10 days of their campaign is going to be like this. After that they will begin to ramp up the effort and urgency of their campaign.

I stated in a previous post that the Conservatives were starting with exceedingly low expectations. So it should surprise no one that they have exceeded them in the first week. However, even then their first week has not been stellar. Hell, if they would have started with normal expectations they would have had a terrible first week. They came down on the wrong side of the vaccine mandate and child care issues, their pre-writ Willy Wonda ad was typical Conservative BS that will remind swing voters why they voted against the Conservatives in 2015 and 2019, their "GST holiday" has been widely panned as the gimmick that it is and Mr. O'Toole's statements on abortion and conscience rights seem to change daily. None of these issues seemed to impact them in the first week but they will haunt them as the campaign goes forward. One final thought, the biggest reason why they released their whole election platform early is because they know they are more likely to lose seat than gain them this time. They need to somehow reverse that and releasing an uncosted platform is their gambit to do it.

In 2019 the NDP did not really begin campaigning until the debates. It was very low key because of their financial situation. Although they are still heavily in debt (and will be even more heavily in debt after this campaign) they have enough resources to launch a typical NDP campaign and that is what they did. Some have said they have had a good week but the NDP usually have good campaigns. The problem for them is, although most Canadians like the NDP and their leader, most Canadians do not trust them to govern the country. That is a simple fact and it will probably not change. My guess is that after all this is done the NDP will garner their usual 15-20% of the vote and depending on how the Bloc does will be the third or fourth party again.

Speaking of the Bloc, some reports indicate that they did not have a good first week. This should surprise no one. Mr. Blanchett is now a known quantity. It will be harder for him to surprise Quebecers. That does not mean that they cannot recover but the Bloc is the party that denied the Liberals a majority government in 2019. If they fade in Quebec the Liberals path to a majority will be cleared of the last obstacle. Remember, there are two pools of voters in Quebec, one is federalists the other is Quebec nationalists and separatists. The first is about 40% of the Quebec electorate and the Liberals pretty much own it. The other is 60% but three parties are fishing in that pool. If each one of them can garner roughly the same proportion of voters from that pool the Liberals will come up the middle an win more seats. Hell if the conditions are just right they could win Pierre Trudeau seat numbers.

The Greens and the PPC were invisible which is not surprising. For the Greens the challenges that Ms. Paul has faced leading up to the election will probably not be overcome. As for the PPC they are running candidates in every riding of the country this time so they could very well be a dark horse. If the public polls are to be believed (they are not) the PPC is averaging just under 4% and they are climbing. If that happens it could be bad news for the Conservatives in ridings where they only won by razor thin margins in 2019.

I am not seeing anything on the Maverick Party out west but they are running in every riding West of the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border and if their Western separatist message resonates they could be trouble for the Conservatives.

The polls and the media are doing exactly what I believed they would do. They have created a horse race where one probably does not exist. It was pretty blatant too. The weekend before the election call virtually all of the pollsters indicated the Liberals had a high single digit, low double digit lead over the Conservatives. About nine days later they all said that the two parties were now in a statistical tie. Public opinion does not work that way. It is glacial and any negative reaction to the election call would not have been that intense. The only pollster that did not show this sudden change was Innovative Research. I know that it does not have the best reputation but it was the only company that produced a poll that was in keeping with how public opinion actually changes. Maybe they will begin to show a Liberal fade in the coming weeks, who knows, we will have to wait and see.

The one thing I did not expect was the situation in Afghanistan happening during the first week of the election. I knew that once the Americans left that the Taliban would reconquer the country but I was uncertain about the timing. The events there pretty much stomped on the messaging for all of the parties, which is probably something they all appreciate. As the government the Liberals will have to wear any bad news coming from that country but, although people will be concerned about the situation, it will not impact how people vote. Hopefully, over the next few weeks we can get as many Afghans who worked with Canadians out and then begin the process of bringing in refugees as they arrive in the neighbouring states.

I discovered a new website by Raymond Tomlin (Thanks Jackie Blue) and he has some really good insight into the election. Just click on the Election 44 link at the top of the page. He is much more bullish for the Liberals than I am so I thought he might just be a Liberal cheerleader but when I reviewed his feed for the 2019 election it is apparent he was not afraid to call a spade a spade. It will be interesting to see his take on the election as it unfolds.

Elections do not occur in a vacuum

On the day the election was called in 2015 I wrote on this blog that the Liberals would win a majority government.

That was not wishful thinking or bravado. That was just me looking at what had occurred between the 2011 and the 2015 elections and making an intelligent guess.

When the Senate Expense Scandal hit the headlines the Conservatives began to show weakness in their polls and surprisingly the Liberals were the ones who benefited. After a short time the polls were saying that the Liberals would win a majority government if the election would have been held on the day a given poll was released. This was true for around 18 months. I know that I say do not trust the polls but when scores of polls, conducted by all of the major polling companies in the country, indicate that the Liberals are in majority territory for 18 straight months the polls might be on to something. Essentially what they were saying was if Canadians were to change governments the Liberals would be the agent for that change.

After about 18 months the polls settled into a three-way tie and then Rachel Notley won in Alberta. Well that historical victory immediately boosted the federal NDP into first place in the polls and they remained there until the writ was dropped. At that time many commentators were breathlessly saying that the NDP would finally grab the brass ring and that the Liberals would be relegated to third party status again.

Of course that did not happen.

I provide this anecdote because what those commentators failed to understand was Canadians consistently indicated that the Liberals were their choice to replace the Harper government if Canadians were so inclined to make such a change. They were and they did. The minutiae of the pre-writ and writ period did not change that simple fact.

How does that relate to the current election?

Since the pandemic started all of the public polls have indicated that the Liberals have been comfortably leading the pack, with a very short period during the WE controversy where they were tied. Further, those same polls indicated that Canadians prefer Justin Trudeau to be PM, by very large margins. Again this has been true for about 18 months and all polling companies have reported this. Again, one should be cautious when trying to infer anything from public polls but when they consistently say something for that amount of time they might be somewhat reflecting reality.

Further, many commentators were indicating that the Conservative base may not be as solid as in the past because many of its more extreme elements have other alternatives and quite frankly they did not appear to trust him. And it was not just the polls saying this. The actions of Mr. O'Toole himself seemed to indicate that there was some truth to these assertions. Plus even now some of his own candidates are downplaying both the party and Mr. O'Toole in their local campaigns.

Now that the election has started many have forgotten about these facts. It is as if just because the election has started that they no longer matter. They do, in a big way.

The time and events leading up to an election usually do not consciously register with people before an election. But is does register nonetheless and they do have an impact on the outcome. It might not seem that this is the case right now but as e-day approaches the impact of the time before the election was called will probably become more apparent.

Is the 2021 Federal Election a Change Election? Updated

Everybody has heard of the so called "ballot question". That is the question voters ask themselves when they cast their ballot. Many commentators assert that the political party that convinces enough voters to cast their votes for their ballot question will win the election.

Will the ballot question be about the environment, the economy, child care, vaccines or some other issue? In general it is none of these or any other issue.

I know of only one election in the last 40 years where an actual issue was the ballot question. That was 1988 when Canadians were asked to decide whether Canada should ratify the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Note that this was the agreement before NAFTA.

For every election since then the key ballot question has always been "Do I want a change in government?" That's it. Everything else was secondary and might have informed that decision but it always boiled down to that question.

In general humans do not like change. It frightens us. It confounds us. It clouds the future because you never know what the implications of change will be. The status quo, on the other hand, offers stability and predictability which we find comforting. As a result we only make changes when we are forced to or when a situation becomes so outrageous that change in the best option. However, even then we usually are not happy making the change. It is deemed necessary but for the most part we will not be too enthusiastic making it.

From a political standpoint this means that the incumbent party has the advantage in most elections. Most of the time voters are going to choose the status quo over change. The exceptions of course are those elections where the incumbent has worn out their welcome and voters decide that a change is necessary. That usually happens after a government has been in power for a very long time, which in Canada usually means eight or more years. 

Looking at all of the change elections of the last 40 years they were in:

• 1984 - when Canadians finally grew very tired of Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals
• 1993 - when Canadians grew tired of the Progressive Conservatives
• 2006 - when the scandal plagued Liberal finally convinced voters that a change was necessary
• 2015 - when Canadian said we have had enough of Stephen Harper.

Check the intervals between those elections and you will note that none of them are under the eight year mark I mentioned above. As well, for all of those cases it was obvious when those election campaigns started that there would be a change in government when all of the votes were counted. 

So that brings us back to the question above. Will this be a change election? The Liberals have only been in power for six years and there is no sign that a desire for change is strong in the country. Yes, the shine the Liberals had in 2015 has long worn off but that does not mean that Canadians are necessarily ready to pitch them to curb just yet. 

The Liberals' opponents are going to try to convince Canadians that a change is necessary but that is what happens during every election. In general, government opponents do not succeed in convincing voters to change if that sentiment was not already there. 

We will have to see if this election bucks the trend but if I had to guess I would say that it will not. Leaving aside that the Liberals have been in power for less than eight years there is also the upset and change that we have all been living through for the past 18 months. It can probably be argued that enough Canadians will decide not to add to the uncertainty we have been living under during that time by changing governments as well.

Update: Just to expand on my thought about change elections. The first election I ever voted in was the 1984 federal election. Including that election we have had 11 federal elections since then. Of those 11 only four of them were change elections. In other words change elections are very infrequent and the conditions need to be almost perfect for one to happen.

The First Couple of Days of the Election

So the first three days of the election are behind us and these are my first impressions.

It is boring as hell.

The media is doing what I said they would do and pumping up Erin O'Toole and using paid pollsters to provide the "data" to "prove" he actually has a shot at winning.

As well, predictably the media and the Opposition parties screamed about the "unnecessary" election even though they had been speculating about one for months. The stated reasons for their consternation are ridiculous at all levels. 

Although my favourite is their claim that the PM only called the election because he believes he can win a majority government. What stupidity. Of course he did. That is what PMs in this country do when they are leading minority governments. I always get a chuckle out of people when they complain about politicians acting like politicians. That is like complaining about a snow storm in January. Certainly, it might make you feel better but it is a pointless exercise otherwise.

All elections outside of the regular election cycle are risky so Mr. Trudeau would not have called one unless he was confident that he could win it and win a majority government besides. I believe the media and the Opposition believe the same thing, which is the real reason for their upset.

In all likelihood the Liberals have discovered that their support is baked in. Their base is secure and not going anywhere so they only need to find seven more percentage points of support and they will achieve their objective. With their handling of the pandemic and what is probably going to be the most coherent election platform of all of the parties they should be able to achieve that. However, when the final week of the election is upon us we will see if they are successful because that is when the non-aligned late breakers will make their decision.

The Conservatives are a mess. I am not so certain that their base is as secure as it has been for the last few elections and they seem to be totally unprepared to actually fight a pandemic election. Coming out against vaccine mandates when they are extremely popular among Canadians seems counterproductive. The same is true of baldly stating that they would cancel all of the Child Care agreements with the provinces, which may include Ontario before the election is over. Perhaps Mr. O'Toole is hoping to do what Mr. Harper did in 2006 when he announced a few very unpopular policy proposals at the very beginning of the campaign and counted on voters to forget about them by e-day. It did work for Mr. Harper but he was also up against a Liberal government operating under the weight of Adscam and the Gomery Inquiry.

Their election platform document is a thin gruel of the Conservative Party's greatest hits from elections past. There is not an original thought or policy idea in the whole document. They have not resorted to the dog whistling yet but it would not surprise me when they do.

Then there was the Willy Wonka video. It was widely panned but there seems to be some school of thought that it was actually planned that way. People point to the two Kiwis that helped to get Boris Johnson elected but they seem to forget that particular election was a referendum on Brexit, which by that point was widely popular in key parts of the soon to be DisUnited Kingdom. No such issue exists for this election, except for the pandemic and the Liberals have built up a great deal of goodwill among Canadians for their handling of the health and economic impacts of the pandemic. Maybe there is some deeper strategy in that video or maybe it is just more of the same from the Conservatives who have been personally attacking and insulting Justin Trudeau since it became apparent he would become leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. At some point they may figure out that such an approach is not working and change tack. 

For the Conservatives the wild card is the other conservative parties. If they do reasonably well they are screwed. We will not know how well or how poorly they do until September 20 but it should be noted that they do not need to win seats to screw the Conservatives. They just need to siphon off enough votes from the Conservatives to cause them to lose close races against the other major parties

I am not seeing much from the Quebec media about the Bloc so I cannot say anything about them. In 2019 they were invisible until the debates so that will probably be the case again. We will have to see how Quebecers react to the debates to see just how the Bloc will impact the election.

The NDP is invisible. I suspect this election is going to be like most others and focus on the two main parties. The NDP will struggle for air time and attention. As per usual they will get more attention at the debates but I am not certain it will mean much by then. They received more attention in 2019 and they still lost half of their caucus.

The Green Party is a dumpster fire on a train wreck sitting on the deck of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Elizabeth May might win her seat but that will probably be it.

The situation in Afghanistan could have an impact but I doubt the media will be able to focus on it for the next six weeks. It will eventually be forgotten by them as they inevitably move on to something else. However, stories of some Afghans, who helped Canadian troops when they were there, being murdered by the Taliban will not be a good look for the Liberals but I doubt it would move many votes. Canadians will have sympathy for those poor souls but not enough to really motivate them to vote one way or another.

As with all elections there is room for surprises and I am certain we will have a few before it is all said and done. However, it is widely believed that the Liberals are going to win and probably win big and so far I have not seen anything that would change that belief.

The Wholly Predictable End to the War in Afghanistan

The pictures coming out of Kabul are truly horrifying but they should surprise no one because this was always how the war in that country was going to end.

When the airplanes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11 it was inevitable that the United States would respond with force. When they began to bomb Al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan I was supportive of those actions. 

Then the United States and some other countries decided to invade the country. I am not certain why. It could have been the factions fighting the Taliban convinced the United States that they could defeat them with US support. Maybe it was hubris on the part of the US administration that made them believe they could export democracy. Maybe it was just good old fashioned ideology that drove the US government the same as what drove the USSR before them. It was probably a combination of all of those factors.

The result was predictable. The US lead coalition overthrew the Taliban government but they failed utterly in destroying the Taliban. Many have compared this war with the one in Vietnam and there are indeed many parallels. The US intervention was designed to install a friendly regime but they failed to destroy the greatest threat to that regime. All they were able to do was suppress it. 

However, the failure in Afghanistan is on another level compared to the one in Vietnam. In Vietnam the US was fighting the Viet Cong, which was actively supported by the North Vietnamese, who actually sent troops into Vietnam to directly fight the Americans, and the North Vietnamese were supplied weapons and support by the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan the Taliban did not enjoy that kind of support from an outside power. Certainly, there might be some evidence of a faction of the Pakistani government providing some support but not on the scale of the North Vietnamese.

So after 20 years of futility and with no way to achieve "peace with honour" the United States just left. By some accounts some of the military units stole away in the middle of the night. It took a few weeks for the Taliban to get organized but when they finally decided to move their victory was inevitable. After 20 years they were still the only coherent political and military force in the country.

So now we are seeing the results. I am gobsmacked that Western governments are actually surprised by the speed of the takeover leading to the chaos we are now seeing. They should have seen it coming, and that includes the Canadian government, and began to take steps to rescue those Afghanis who would face retribution for collaborating with the coalition forces, weeks ago. Sure they started the process but it was ridiculously slow, bureaucratic and cumbersome. 

As it stands they waited too long and many of these poor souls will not make it out alive.

Well that did not take long

In my previous post I stated that the MSM in this country would spend much of the election pushing the narrative that the Conservatives are exceeding expectations and that they will be able to find pollsters willing to provide them with the "data" to "prove" it.

Less than 24 hours later we have seen the first instance of that narrative. CTV has reported that the "race has tightened" by quoting a Nanos poll that indicates the Liberals have lost 6 points while the Conservatives picked up 4 points and that there is a general agreement that an election is unnecessary.

Where does one begin?

I guess first of all this was predictable. My only surprise was I believed it would be the PostMedia folks who would start the narrative.

I have no idea what Nic Nanos is doing. I have always found him to be a piss-poor pundit because he often comes up with points of view that are not supported by his own data. However, I have to question his chops on this poll. Just three days before he released this poll he released one that indicated the Liberals were in the high thirty percent range while the Conservatives were in the mid-20s. Is he indicating that public opinion turned so dramatically in that three days for there to be an aggregate 10 point swing? Really? Public opinion does not work that way. The only time I have ever seen public opinion shift that dramatically, in such a short amount of time, was when the Auditor General released the report on the Sponsorship Program that triggered adscam. That report was dramatic and damning. Has anything like that happened in the last three days? No, so the dramatic swing is immediately suspect.

Part of the explanation that we received was this poll coincided with an increase in resistance to an election over the month the poll was taken. That begs the question of why was this not reflected in the poll released three days before this one? You would think that such sentiments would be felt and measured by all Nanos polls. Maybe the polls have different methodologies and I can agree that polls with different methodologies can create differences in the estimates, even when they are conducted by the same company, but a 10 point difference? 

As well, let's look at the whole idea that Canadians are so against having an election that it would cause such a huge swing. This is not a true "snap" election. The Liberals began telegraphing it before The House rose for the summer and the media and the Opposition Parties were quite happy to assist them by endlessly speculating on when the election would begin. The conventional wisdom saying it would be sometime in September was set over a month ago. I have stated in this space many times before that political parties have data analysis teams whose job is to "take the pulse" of the electorate. Those data analysts would have been collecting and analyzing data on the attitudes of Canadians with regard to having an election right up until today. If they would have seen what the Nanos poll is saying we would not be going into an election. Incidentally, the Opposition data analysts were saying the same thing to their leadership, which is why they have been pushing the "election is a bad idea" position for the past month. Apparently, their message did not take. 

I have been saying for quite some time that the public polls that are published in the media should be ignored. They are next to useless in telling you what is actually happening and if the final polls of the election come anywhere close to the actual final results it is a coincidence. I have stated that the most probable outcome of the election is a Liberal victory, with a strong possibility that they will form a majority government, but we will not know for certain until election night and all of the polls that will be published between now and then will not change that fact.

Prediction: How the Election will Unfold

So it would appear that we will be going to the polls on September 20 or thereabouts. Then again, maybe the PM's visit to the GG is for the purpose of having some tea and a visit with our new Governor General. It would be a hoot if that were the case. (It's not)

Any election is the Liberals' to lose. They have been in power for about six years, which in normal times is usually when voter fatigue with a government begins to set in. However, these are not normal times. All of us have been going through a once in a century health emergency and we are still going through it. However, many are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and one of the big reasons for that is the federal government's handling of the pandemic. Health wise the federal government has secured enough vaccines to allow everybody over the age of 12 to be fully vaccinated. Economically, many Canadians still have their homes, businesses and livelihoods as a result of the economic supports the federal government has been providing Canadians during the pandemic. The result is the federal Liberals have built up a great deal of goodwill amongst Canadians, particularly among the non-aligned Canadians, who happen to be the voters who decide elections. In the end, if the Liberals can run a tight disciplined campaign like they did in 2015 and 2019 they should win at least another strong minority with a good chance of winning a majority government.

There has been increasing indications that the Conservatives could be fracturing. Just looking at the public polls you see some estimates with the Conservatives down to under 50% in Alberta when they are generally in the 65% range. As well, in Ontario their estimates have them below 30% while the Liberals are above 40%. Those are remarkable results although I always say we should take all public polls with a truckload of salt. However, it these numbers turn out to be true then we could see a 1993 scenario where the CPC fractures into multiple parties.

The one advantage that this gives the Conservatives is really low expectations and expect the media to work that angle hard during the election. We need to remember that the National Post took an active role in creating a unified conservative party in this country after the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada shattered in 1993. They and the rest of the media in this country will be working to make certain that the current version stays united after this one. 

As a result, the media will be pushing the narrative that Mr. O'Toole and the Conservatives are beating expectations at every opportunity. If there is an uptick in the Conservatives' and/or Mr. O'Toole's polling numbers they will wax poetically on his political prowess and acumen. The pollsters will be very helpful in this by publishing polls showing those upticks. It is a foregone conclusion that the media will name Mr. O'Toole the winner of the English debate. Indeed, I would even hazard a guess that some commentators have already written the columns, only waiting for the debate to add some detail. The objective of all of this is to convince Conservative voters that the CPC has a shot at winning so as to convince those that might stray to other conservative parties to stick with the CPC. I believe the next few weeks will be a giant "save the furniture" operation by conservatives in this country.

Realistically, I believe that Conservatives have pretty much written off any idea that they will come out on top. They just want to make certain that they will have a united Conservative Party ready to go for the election after this one. Then again, if there are any really strategically minded conservatives left they should hope for the Liberals to win a nice comfortable majority government, with a united CPC in opposition, so that the CPC can use the four years to do what Andrew Scheer utterly failed to do, renew the Party.

All of this is bad news for the NDP. The media will be focused on the Liberals and the Conservatives. They will be looking for any gaffe by the Liberals and any sign of life by the Conservatives. The NDP will be virtually ignored and they will have the added injury of the media efforts to pump up the Conservative tires convincing some voters who may be considering voting NDP to stick to the Liberals to prevent a Conservative government.

As usual the Bloc will be the wild card in this election. They denied the Liberals a majority government in 2019 and if the Liberals are returned with a minority this time it will be because of the Bloc. Quebecers are extremely fickle voters so you never know which way they will jump. However, they were beneficiaries of the Liberal government efforts for the past 18 months, there is no controversial Quebec government Bill that could become an election issue and the Bloc leader is no longer an unknown quantity. The Bloc hit its traditional high water mark in 2019 so it has nowhere else to go but down this time. My only prediction for the Bloc is the English media will determine that the Bloc will win the French debate. Again, the columns are probably already written.

Of course, elections are crap shoots so we cannot discount the notion of an upset. Politics in this country is usually not that exciting but we are living in abnormal times so anything is possible. I do not foresee such an upset but we will have to wait until all of the votes are counted to be certain.