"Harper’s low-risk method could pay off at the polls
John Ivison, nationalpost.com, Last Updated: Apr 22, 2011 4:10 PM ET
Opinion polls from the 2006 election suggest many Canadians had a slice of politics with their Christmas turkey – the polls flipped decisively toward the Conservatives in the final week of December. If this is a precedent, it suggests we can expect some shift in public opinion after the Easter meals and egg hunts are over this weekend. How might that change look?
I’ve been on the election trail for the past month – spending a week on Michael Ignatieff’s tour; attending three platform launches and a leaders’ debate; and wearing out shoe-leather with candidates in six ridings in four cities. My conclusion is that Stephen Harper, the only leader with a realistic chance at ensuring Ottawa leaves people alone for the next four years, is set to win big.
It sounds frivolous but I’m serious. Canadians just don’t want to be disturbed at the moment. There are no pressing issues of national importance that they feel necessitate an election – other than the question of why we are having another election.
There is anger in the herbivore community about Stephen Harper’s failings – some of it is even justified. But the evidence on the doorsteps suggests it does not extend beyond the politically engaged into the suburbs, where people have to get up in the morning. They may not appreciate Mr. Harper’s abuse of Parliament but his drive to control events doesn’t affect them personally.
Mr. Ignatieff continually raises the issue of trust – “can you trust [Harper] with health care?” asks the new Liberal attack ad. But my feeling is that Canadians have grown used to Mr. Harper and believe he can be trusted to manage the country responsibly.
Most people are immune to rational argument when it comes to politics – they don’t vote for policies, they vote for leaders with whom they feel comfortable to run the country. He may not be loved but Mr. Harper gives off an aura of competence that has persuaded enough people to make a majority government a realistic prospect. By contrast, Mr. Ignatieff has come across as a chameleon figure who can be buffeted by the crosswinds of politics. Witness how his campaign has tacked in several different directions.
Mr. Harper’s relationship with the electorate is analogous to the way people around the world think about the U.S.’s role as the world’s policeman – everyone complains about the Americans but few relish the alternative. The bottom line is the desire to “kick the bums out” that we saw after the sponsorship scandal is just not there. In its absence, the result of this election is likely to be one of two outcomes – Tory majority or minority.
Mr. Ignatieff made majority government much more likely when, for reasons best known to himself, he mused on CBC about what the Governor-General may or may not do, if he and the other opposition parties bring down a Conservative minority on its budget. He played down his ambitions, but had the look of someone who’s been awake most nights thinking about it. In fact, the decision by the Liberals and NDP to spark this election only makes sense, if you believe that the real goal is to hold the Tories to another minority and then form an informal coalition of losers.
One suspects many Canadians are wary of wandering into that constitutional quagmire and will decide to resolve the issue cleanly by voting for Mr. Harper, even if they have to hold their noses to do so. The tradition in this country is that the party first past the post wins the race. The public will be unforgiving if the result of this election is overturned at the first opportunity by power-hungry politicians, who decide to ignore the outcome because it goes against them. It might be constitutionally sound but Mr. Ignatieff would have no moral authority to form government if he loses the election – particularly if the gap between the two big parties runs to 50 or so seats.
Despite the prospect of sound and fury, the election thus far has been marked by public indifference. Mr. Harper has run a dull, front-runner campaign, more focused on avoiding mistakes than exciting voters. He has emphasized continuity and stability over change, working on the principle that voters will vote for you if you don’t irritate them into voting against you. Such a low-risk approach relies on the traditional Canadian prejudice for the customary and suspicion of the unfamiliar.
The one tangible attempt by the Tories to grow their market share has been in what they themselves term “very ethnic” ridings. Potential gains are the result of long-standing Conservative policy decisions. I visited Vancouver South, where 50% of voters are Chinese Canadian, and the Chinese head tax apology has helped boost the chances of candidate Wai Young. I stopped in York Centre in Toronto and Mount Royal in Montreal, where the large Jewish vote is on the move because of Mr. Harper’s support for Israel. These are long-term investments – as former Conservative minister David Emerson told me: “It’s like selling a Chevy to someone who’s bought Fords all his life.” But there is progress and in many cases the Tories are pitching to communities whose values align closely with their own.
If the Tories’ efforts have been lacklustre, they have been aided greatly by their rivals. First, the Liberals needed to find billions of dollars to finance their spending plans and opted to end “tax giveaways to the wealthiest corporations.” Having made that decision on corporate tax cuts, it was logical to pitch leftward to try to woo NDP voters, leaving the centre-right “John Manley Liberals” susceptible to Tory advances. The platform that subsequently emerged was long on spending but short on investment and barely mentioned job creation.
The gamble was that Mr. Ignatieff would campaign well, close the gap in the polls with Mr. Harper and be seen as the progressive standard-bearer. The first week of the election went well for the Liberals. The leader exceeded expectations, dribbling out a series of attractive policies aimed at making life easier for the middle-classes.
The Grits saw an early bump in the polls, at the expense of Jack Layton’s NDP, but that momentum was not sustained. Mr. Ignatieff performed solidly in the leaders’ debates but one poll suggested only half as many people thought he looked and sounded more like a Prime Minister than Mr. Harper. In the end, the Liberals discovered people are more worried about the economy and stability than they are about ethics and accountability.
With Plan A in tatters, the Liberals have scrambled to find a Plan B and now Mr. Ignatieff’s “campaign of hope” is borrowing from Mr. Harper’s “campaign of fear” by running nasty attack ads in the Conservative mould that suggest the Tories will savage health care.
It’s not quite clear at this point what the Liberal ballot question is. The Grits have been reduced to saving as many of their MPs as possible. Mr. Ignatieff was in traditional Liberal territory in Montreal Thursday and is heading to the Grit heartland in the Greater Toronto Area with former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, next week.
The second development is the revival in enthusiasm for the NDP – what columnist L. Ian MacDonald called, tongue-in-cheek, “Jack-mania.” In reality, Mr. Layton will be lucky to come back to the House with the same number of MPs with which he left – 37. The party has traditionally had trouble maintaining its support above 20%.
But there was a brief moment in time when it looked as if the Liberals might siphon off large numbers of New Democrats in a “Stop Harper” movement – as they did during the last weekend of the 2004 election, when the NDP saw three percentage points of its support melt away.
It was only after Mr. Layton started attacking the Tories and Grits with equal vigour as the “same old, same old parties” that his support firmed up, particularly after the leaders’ debates, where he questioned Mr. Ignatieff’s attendance record in the House of Commons. Once it became clear that the Liberals were in no real danger of winning, potential switchers settled back with the NDP as the most authentic voice of the progressive left.
Mr. Layton’s stock has risen in Quebec, in particular, where a CROP poll for La Presse put the NDP ahead of the Bloc, with the Liberals apparently in free-fall. If borne out on May 2, it would see big Grit names tumble to defeat on the Island of Montreal, including two potential future leaders, Martin Cauchon and Justin Trudeau.
The NDP surge is unlikely to translate into a flood of seats in la belle province – its support is spread wide and thin – but it is helpful to the Conservatives in their battle to keep the 11 seats they hold around the Quebec City area. As Mr. MacDonald noted, every vote the NDP takes from the Bloc is one less the Conservatives need to win.
The third boost for the Tory cause was the call by Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe for Péquistes to vote for his party to prevent a Conservative majority. Last weekend at the Parti Québécois convention, he said “everything again becomes possible” if voters elect large numbers of sovereigntists in Ottawa and a PQ government in Quebec City. In Mr. Duceppe’s eyes, more Bloc members means an unstable minority government in Ottawa that would not be able to fight a effective unity campaign in a referendum. The Bloc has nose-dived in support in Quebec since last weekend, and the impact is likely to reverberate beyond the province’s borders.
The call for a referendum will likely prove to be an incentive for many Canadians in the rest of the country to vote for a majority government. Mr. Duceppe suddenly looks less like a less attractive dance partner than the benign social democrat he may have appeared to some people before last Sunday. There will be many people in Mr. Ignatieff’s own party who want no truck with the separatists, even in the form of a non-aggression pact.
As the campaign enters its final week, the Conservatives stand on the cusp of a majority. Senior Conservatives say they are starting to see seats in play that they weren’t even considering last month. The public opinion polls suggest little has changed since the start of the election. But, if 2006 is any precedent, a frank exchange of views over Easter ham may firm up opinions among the crucial one in 10 Canadians polls suggest are still undecided.
One of life’s great mercies is ignorance about the future, but it doesn’t seem an outrageous prediction to suggest the desire for a conclusive result, which clears up any uncertainty that may be created by post-election opposition co-operation, will be the decisive factor over the next nine days."
John Ivison, nationalpost.com, Last Updated: Apr 22, 2011 4:10 PM ET
Opinion polls from the 2006 election suggest many Canadians had a slice of politics with their Christmas turkey – the polls flipped decisively toward the Conservatives in the final week of December. If this is a precedent, it suggests we can expect some shift in public opinion after the Easter meals and egg hunts are over this weekend. How might that change look?
I’ve been on the election trail for the past month – spending a week on Michael Ignatieff’s tour; attending three platform launches and a leaders’ debate; and wearing out shoe-leather with candidates in six ridings in four cities. My conclusion is that Stephen Harper, the only leader with a realistic chance at ensuring Ottawa leaves people alone for the next four years, is set to win big.
It sounds frivolous but I’m serious. Canadians just don’t want to be disturbed at the moment. There are no pressing issues of national importance that they feel necessitate an election – other than the question of why we are having another election.
There is anger in the herbivore community about Stephen Harper’s failings – some of it is even justified. But the evidence on the doorsteps suggests it does not extend beyond the politically engaged into the suburbs, where people have to get up in the morning. They may not appreciate Mr. Harper’s abuse of Parliament but his drive to control events doesn’t affect them personally.
Mr. Ignatieff continually raises the issue of trust – “can you trust [Harper] with health care?” asks the new Liberal attack ad. But my feeling is that Canadians have grown used to Mr. Harper and believe he can be trusted to manage the country responsibly.
Most people are immune to rational argument when it comes to politics – they don’t vote for policies, they vote for leaders with whom they feel comfortable to run the country. He may not be loved but Mr. Harper gives off an aura of competence that has persuaded enough people to make a majority government a realistic prospect. By contrast, Mr. Ignatieff has come across as a chameleon figure who can be buffeted by the crosswinds of politics. Witness how his campaign has tacked in several different directions.
Mr. Harper’s relationship with the electorate is analogous to the way people around the world think about the U.S.’s role as the world’s policeman – everyone complains about the Americans but few relish the alternative. The bottom line is the desire to “kick the bums out” that we saw after the sponsorship scandal is just not there. In its absence, the result of this election is likely to be one of two outcomes – Tory majority or minority.
Mr. Ignatieff made majority government much more likely when, for reasons best known to himself, he mused on CBC about what the Governor-General may or may not do, if he and the other opposition parties bring down a Conservative minority on its budget. He played down his ambitions, but had the look of someone who’s been awake most nights thinking about it. In fact, the decision by the Liberals and NDP to spark this election only makes sense, if you believe that the real goal is to hold the Tories to another minority and then form an informal coalition of losers.
One suspects many Canadians are wary of wandering into that constitutional quagmire and will decide to resolve the issue cleanly by voting for Mr. Harper, even if they have to hold their noses to do so. The tradition in this country is that the party first past the post wins the race. The public will be unforgiving if the result of this election is overturned at the first opportunity by power-hungry politicians, who decide to ignore the outcome because it goes against them. It might be constitutionally sound but Mr. Ignatieff would have no moral authority to form government if he loses the election – particularly if the gap between the two big parties runs to 50 or so seats.
Despite the prospect of sound and fury, the election thus far has been marked by public indifference. Mr. Harper has run a dull, front-runner campaign, more focused on avoiding mistakes than exciting voters. He has emphasized continuity and stability over change, working on the principle that voters will vote for you if you don’t irritate them into voting against you. Such a low-risk approach relies on the traditional Canadian prejudice for the customary and suspicion of the unfamiliar.
The one tangible attempt by the Tories to grow their market share has been in what they themselves term “very ethnic” ridings. Potential gains are the result of long-standing Conservative policy decisions. I visited Vancouver South, where 50% of voters are Chinese Canadian, and the Chinese head tax apology has helped boost the chances of candidate Wai Young. I stopped in York Centre in Toronto and Mount Royal in Montreal, where the large Jewish vote is on the move because of Mr. Harper’s support for Israel. These are long-term investments – as former Conservative minister David Emerson told me: “It’s like selling a Chevy to someone who’s bought Fords all his life.” But there is progress and in many cases the Tories are pitching to communities whose values align closely with their own.
If the Tories’ efforts have been lacklustre, they have been aided greatly by their rivals. First, the Liberals needed to find billions of dollars to finance their spending plans and opted to end “tax giveaways to the wealthiest corporations.” Having made that decision on corporate tax cuts, it was logical to pitch leftward to try to woo NDP voters, leaving the centre-right “John Manley Liberals” susceptible to Tory advances. The platform that subsequently emerged was long on spending but short on investment and barely mentioned job creation.
The gamble was that Mr. Ignatieff would campaign well, close the gap in the polls with Mr. Harper and be seen as the progressive standard-bearer. The first week of the election went well for the Liberals. The leader exceeded expectations, dribbling out a series of attractive policies aimed at making life easier for the middle-classes.
The Grits saw an early bump in the polls, at the expense of Jack Layton’s NDP, but that momentum was not sustained. Mr. Ignatieff performed solidly in the leaders’ debates but one poll suggested only half as many people thought he looked and sounded more like a Prime Minister than Mr. Harper. In the end, the Liberals discovered people are more worried about the economy and stability than they are about ethics and accountability.
With Plan A in tatters, the Liberals have scrambled to find a Plan B and now Mr. Ignatieff’s “campaign of hope” is borrowing from Mr. Harper’s “campaign of fear” by running nasty attack ads in the Conservative mould that suggest the Tories will savage health care.
It’s not quite clear at this point what the Liberal ballot question is. The Grits have been reduced to saving as many of their MPs as possible. Mr. Ignatieff was in traditional Liberal territory in Montreal Thursday and is heading to the Grit heartland in the Greater Toronto Area with former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, next week.
The second development is the revival in enthusiasm for the NDP – what columnist L. Ian MacDonald called, tongue-in-cheek, “Jack-mania.” In reality, Mr. Layton will be lucky to come back to the House with the same number of MPs with which he left – 37. The party has traditionally had trouble maintaining its support above 20%.
But there was a brief moment in time when it looked as if the Liberals might siphon off large numbers of New Democrats in a “Stop Harper” movement – as they did during the last weekend of the 2004 election, when the NDP saw three percentage points of its support melt away.
It was only after Mr. Layton started attacking the Tories and Grits with equal vigour as the “same old, same old parties” that his support firmed up, particularly after the leaders’ debates, where he questioned Mr. Ignatieff’s attendance record in the House of Commons. Once it became clear that the Liberals were in no real danger of winning, potential switchers settled back with the NDP as the most authentic voice of the progressive left.
Mr. Layton’s stock has risen in Quebec, in particular, where a CROP poll for La Presse put the NDP ahead of the Bloc, with the Liberals apparently in free-fall. If borne out on May 2, it would see big Grit names tumble to defeat on the Island of Montreal, including two potential future leaders, Martin Cauchon and Justin Trudeau.
The NDP surge is unlikely to translate into a flood of seats in la belle province – its support is spread wide and thin – but it is helpful to the Conservatives in their battle to keep the 11 seats they hold around the Quebec City area. As Mr. MacDonald noted, every vote the NDP takes from the Bloc is one less the Conservatives need to win.
The third boost for the Tory cause was the call by Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe for Péquistes to vote for his party to prevent a Conservative majority. Last weekend at the Parti Québécois convention, he said “everything again becomes possible” if voters elect large numbers of sovereigntists in Ottawa and a PQ government in Quebec City. In Mr. Duceppe’s eyes, more Bloc members means an unstable minority government in Ottawa that would not be able to fight a effective unity campaign in a referendum. The Bloc has nose-dived in support in Quebec since last weekend, and the impact is likely to reverberate beyond the province’s borders.
The call for a referendum will likely prove to be an incentive for many Canadians in the rest of the country to vote for a majority government. Mr. Duceppe suddenly looks less like a less attractive dance partner than the benign social democrat he may have appeared to some people before last Sunday. There will be many people in Mr. Ignatieff’s own party who want no truck with the separatists, even in the form of a non-aggression pact.
As the campaign enters its final week, the Conservatives stand on the cusp of a majority. Senior Conservatives say they are starting to see seats in play that they weren’t even considering last month. The public opinion polls suggest little has changed since the start of the election. But, if 2006 is any precedent, a frank exchange of views over Easter ham may firm up opinions among the crucial one in 10 Canadians polls suggest are still undecided.
One of life’s great mercies is ignorance about the future, but it doesn’t seem an outrageous prediction to suggest the desire for a conclusive result, which clears up any uncertainty that may be created by post-election opposition co-operation, will be the decisive factor over the next nine days."
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