No time for politics

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Laura Stone

He’s been in Canada for 20 years, and became a citizen in 1992, but Jose Campos can count the number of times he’s voted in federal elections on one hand.

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Where have all the Liberals gone?

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

Paul Adams

Liberal votes are clearly scattering to the winds as the party retreats from its historic levels of support. But where are all those wayward Liberals landing? The chart below is taken from EKOS Research’s latest sounding and addresses that question.

It is a bit tricky to read, but bear with me. The banner at the top shows people who say they voted for the various parties in 2006. The columns underneath indicate where those people say they are now in terms of current voting intention.

Voter Retention

Look first at the CPC column. I said column, not row – that’s how you get confused. Among declared 2006 Conservative voters, 84% say they intend to vote Conservative again this time – the highest vote retention of any of the parties. So the Tories are holding their ’06 voters for the most part. The leakage goes in various directions: 6% to the Liberals, 5% to the NDP; and 4% to the Greens.

Note: when the Conservatives lose voters, therefore, it does not affect their opponents differentially – each of the other national parties gets a bit of the honey, meaning none of them (and certainly not the Liberal Party) emerges  from the pack on the basis of this shift. Note also: there are virtually no respondents claiming they voted Tory last time, who now plan to vote for the Bloc.

Now look at the LPC column. The Liberals aren’t doing well at all. Only 62% of those who say they voted Liberal last time are planning to repeat – the lowest retention rate of any of the parties, which is perhaps not surprising given that they are the ones whose support has eroded most since ’06.

Where have all the Liberals gone? The other parties have picked them, every one. (Apologies to post-boomers). Interestingly the wayward Liberal voters have split almost equally right and left. Eighteen percent have gone to the Conservatives. So the Conservatives have been the single largest winner from Liberal weakness. However, the 19% who have vamoosed off to the left have gone to the New Democrats in sizeable numbers, but also to the Greens – meaning their impact is dissipated.

In other words, in sum these trends benefit the Conservatives. The Conservatives have the highest retention rate in terms of their ’06 voters; they are winning over about half the wayward Liberals from ’06; and they benefit also from the fact that the half of the straying Liberal flock they haven’t captured are splitting in two different directions once they leave the old Liberal pasture.

In the case of the other parties, the margins of error are getting a little high to read too much into them, but it looks like the NDP is holding onto a large number of its ’06 voters. Surprisingly, perhaps, those who have moved seem to be heading to the Liberals. But the New Democrats, Liberals and Greens all seem to be picking up voters straying from the Bloc — in total more than twice as many heading to the Conservatives. (This fits with a thesis I first heard enunciated by Chantal Hébert, that the Bloc already had its right-leaning voters leak in 2006, and the low-hanging fruit is now the left-leaning Bloc voters.)

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and the Globe and Mail, and is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

A politician, a journalist and Rick Mercer walk into a bar…

Posted by jsallot under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

JEFF SALLOT

Politicians have been providing the raw ingredients for comedy for ages, and we are the richer for it. What would the Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes be without the biting political humour?

Many pols learn  to play along. Remember Bob Rae skinny dipping with Mercer? Or Stephen Harper reading houseguest Rick a bedtime story before tucking him in for the night for a sleep over at the official res?
Comics playing politicians can also be hilarious. Did you catch Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin the other night on SNL?

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Two interesting pieces

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Keith Boag had an interesting piece last night on The National in which he argued two things:

1. That despite the very real economic issues in the Canadian economy  and turmoil in the financial markets, unemployment remains low in historical terms and that the two elections in recent decades that have turned on economic issues — 1984 and 1993 — both occurred in periods of high unemployment; and
2. The Canadian government actually has relatively few levers to deal with the sources of economic instability at the moment — at least at a macro level. (Of course, it is possible to spend money on particular sectors — intervening at the micro level, as it were; and it is possible to act to alleviate the consequences of economic distress.) He doesn’t address this, but I think there is some evidence that voters increasingly understand that governments have fewer economic levers than they once did, which may be part of the explanation for the general fall in the salience of politics in the West.   

 In this morning’s Globe, Brian Laghi has an interesting piece arguing that the reason the the Liberals have lost their mojo may be in part because they have allowed their traditional appeal to the centre-right to atrophy, so that they have become just another party of the left. The old saw about the Liberals governing from the right and running campaigns from the left had something to it: of course the governing part is what gave them the bona fides with many voters and supporters to tilt left at election time.

[Conflict alert: both Keith and Brian are former colleagues and friends. But you know what, that shouldn’t be held against them.]

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and the Globe and Mail, and is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

A lot of people think it’s hopeless

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Matthew Pearson

Trevor Haché wants to be a locksmith.

The NDP candidate in Ottawa-Vanier is hoping to break open the ironclad lock the Liberals have had on the riding for decades.

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To vote or not to vote

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Emily Senger

Lunjia Huang thinks it’s important to vote, but that doesn’t mean she is going to do it.

Huang turned 18 in June, making her among one per cent of the Canadian population who will be old enough to vote for the first time on October 14. She also represents what some advocacy groups are referring to as a democratic crisis—young people who do not vote.

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Flickrs, twitters and Facebooks

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Dan Robson

Harper Flickrs, Dion Twitters, and Layton posts on Facebook. 

The heavy hitters of Canadian politics have tapped into the immensely popular world of online social networking, and are hoping to ride cyberspace to the ballot box this October. 

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A new campaign game

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

Thanks to Jane Taber in today’s Globe and Mail and Linda Diebel in today’s Toronto Star for giving us the material to play a new campaign game – match the person with the controversial comments he or she made that required that the newspaper grant the person anonymity.

The Players

A source

A Dion insider

The Ottawa-based Liberal veteran

A well-placed source

One veteran MP

One veteran Liberal MP

A Toronto Liberal MP

Their Comments

No sense yet of “any kind of mutiny”

“Dion is in another friggin” world.”

It’s simply too early in the campaign to write off Mr. Dion and the party.

“The ads were rejigged to suit the leader’s preferences.”

“There’s nobody – nobody in charge except Dion and he isn’t listening.” 

Mr Dion has yet “to get some traction with the public.”

“We have pros working for us, too.”

“Dion is dragging us down” 

Political duplication

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Faculty links

Another assessment of the campaign from colleague Andrew Cohen in today’s Ottawa Citizen.

Marion Dewar…hockey grandmom

Posted by padams under Election 2008

Paul Adams

Marion Dewar, the former mayor of Ottawa, who passed away yesterday, was also a Member of Parliament briefly, and her son, Paul, is now running for re-election in Ottawa Centre. She was a legend in Ottawa for her social commitment which began long before she became mayor and continued long afterward.

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