Are Voters Paying Attention? / Who Will Show up on April 28?

These are two questions I have heard in the last couple of days from largely Conservative commentators and pollsters.

The first question is the result of the fact we are in stage two of the election campaign. See, there are three stages in a campaign. 

The beginning is stage one and it is exciting, we see the candidates for the first time and we see the first few polls, which is all the media really cares about during an election campaign.

We enter stage two 10-14 days after the writ is dropped. This is the time of the campaign when nothing much happens. The candidates announce a bunch of policy promises, the media parse every little detail about the Liberals to try to find something to focus on and the polls become stagnant.

Stage three is the final sprint to the finish, with the debates being the starting guns. This is when things begin to move if they are going to move.

So we are in stage two. It should be noted that the question of whether voters are paying attention was asked by a pollster. His answer was no. He was saying this in context of the Liberal lead and whether it would change. He did not specifically say it but he implied that once they do begin to pay attention we might see some movement of the polls towards the Conservatives.

Funny thing is if this was an ordinary election campaign I would agree with him. Canadians do not pay attention to politics, which has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time. They do not pay attention in between elections and they do not pay attention during election campaigns. Many will not begin to pay attention until election day. However, this is not an ordinary election campaign. For better or for worse Donald Trump has made everybody stand up and take notice and he did it just before and during the beginning of a Federal election campaign in this country. So they are paying attention to him and that has raised the awareness of Canadians that we are going through an election campaign. I had an interesting conversation with someone this week who is someone who does not pay attention to politics, often to the point of not bothering to vote every time. During my wife's birthday gathering he mentioned that he would be voting for Mark Carney this time because he believed he would be best at dealing with Donald Trump. This opinion was not solicited by anybody. (I would not start a political discussion at my wife's birthday celebration, I value my life). This is anecdotal but I believe it does show that Canadians are a little more engaged for this election, probably not as much as I am but enough to answer yes to that first question. I stated in an earlier post that this election feels like the 1988 Free Trade election and that feeling has only strengthened in the last few days.

This brings me to the second question. It was also posed by a Conservative pollster and his answer again was designed to give some hope to Conservative supporters. Another of my pet peeves is Conservatives do seem to be more motivated to vote than progressives. Buoyed by their hate and anger they do tend to be more inclined to vote. 

However, that only becomes an issue if the election is close and even then only sometimes. It is what cost VP Harris the election in the US in November (which is a straw Conservatives have been grasping like a life preserver since the beginning of March) but comparing that election to the current Federal election is a stretch. I would point out that both the 2019 and the 2021 Federal elections were extremely close but Liberals came out as much as Conservatives did. That is why they won. 

With this becoming more and more the Trump election it would be very surprising if Liberals did not come out again this time. Indeed, as I stated previously, he seems to be energizing Canadians, convincing some, who have spotty records of participating in our elections, to participate this time. Turnout for the elections leading up to 1988 were trending downwards. The 1988 election bucked that trend. It would not surprise me that this election will also buck that trend. We will see on April 28.

I do not believe that many commentators and the CPC have yet to grasp that this election is different from that last few, at least the first two weeks of it have been. They have not adjusted to that reality. So while these two questions might have been valid in previous elections and they will be valid in future elections I think this time they are probably not the correct questions to be asking during stage two of this election?