OK, now it’s clear…clearer maybe

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

Paul Adams

Now that the Harris/Decima polls has fallen into the line with the other polls, it is clear that those who proclaimed, as some did on the front pages of Saturday’s papers, that the Tories won the first week of the campaign, were wrong.

In the week before the election call, the Tories had an excellent run. In the week after the call they had a gentle decline. Most of the pollsters now agree that this happened though they differ somewhat on the pace and the extent of the change. From my perspective, this is also a more satisfying conclusion because it fits better with events as we all experienced them. The Tories had at best a mixed week, and they looked better than they otherwise might because the Liberals have not yet emerged as the inevitable alternative.

This is a huge problem for the Liberals, who can normally expect to be treated by the media as the principle alternative when the Conservatives are in power. For the most part the media so far have tended to view the election as the Tories against everyone else rather than as mainly a two-way fight, with other parties snapping at the heels of the real protagonists. (The only recent exception was the run-up to 1988, when the NDP led the polls going in.)

This time, the NDP is faring quite well, especially among women, but has not yet closed the gap on the Liberals sufficiently to convince the media to treat them as potentially the new alternative party of power.

In fact, the Liberals do seem to be tumbling out of contention in some parts of the country — notably B.C., Manitoba and Saskatchewan — where they have traditionally been competitive. In much of the West, Layton and Harper are the lone gunslingers, just as both of them would probably prefer.

However, I think there is actually some sign that former Liberal supporters in Ontario have reacted to the possibility of their very own regional party — yes, the former natural governing party of Canada —  being displaced, by moving back to them, saving the Liberals from collapse at the national level.

My personal hunch on the Greens is that they may not yet have seen the benefits of last week’s debate-on-the debate and the attendant attention it drew to their leader, Elizabath May. Deciding to vote Green is a bigger jump that moving to one of the familiar parties, so the Greens may have attracted a lot of tire-kickers, who will soon drift away. On the other hand, there are a lot more people on the lot now, and some of them may still just need a little more convincing before they buy. In other words, it is worth watching to see whether the Greens get a bump this week, even though last week was their big one.

What’s going on in Quebec? Reading the papers, you’d think Duceppe was having a terrible campaign. Talk about friendly fire. But so far he’s doing better in the polls than he is in the papers.

Is this a “Seinfeld election” — about nothing. That’s what people were saying at this stage in the ’05-’06 campaign. A betting person would definitely put money on the Tories to win.  But if we really do end up where we started, there will nonetheless be a couple of parties who have had the scare of their lives, and a couple of others who will feel they had a historic opportunity that they failed to seize.

I, for one, will be seriously surprised if that happens.

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.