Turning over the election tea leaves

Perhaps Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair made the mistake of putting too much faith in their press clippings. There were far too many successful tactics in the Liberal campaign that were allowed to go unchallenged. Here are some examples:

Where the votes came from: The conventional wisdom was that the Liberals would need to cannibalize the NDP base to gain enough votes to overcome the rock-solid Tory vote. And, of course, young people didn’t bother to vote.

As things turned out, those suppositions were only partially correct. The Conservative vote was down only by 54,000. But the NDP hemorrhaged by one million votes from the 2011 elections. The Liberals gained more than four million votes, meaning they got the lion’s share of new voters.

Given the appetite for change prevalent among voters in months of polling data, the fact that the Liberals were the only party who made an effort to attract new voters, as the U.S. Obama campaign did, is curious.

That veterans of the Obama campaign were working with the Liberals was public knowledge. Also public knowledge was the fact that the Liberals were relying heavily on micro-targeting and social media. Yet, the two other major parties seemed to think the Liberals would win only by converting voters from positions held by the Conservatives and the NDP. Did anybody realize they would win by mobilizing new votes?

Moving to the left of the NDP: Keith Davey, the late senator and Liberal rainmaker, used to warn that his party would always lose if the Conservatives managed to move leftward. This was what Brian Mulroney’s Tories did successfully in 1984.

The NDP should have thought about this when the Liberals suddenly promised three years of deficits. Not only was this a clear “hail Mary pass,” it was a flip-flop of major proportions. The Liberals had been condemning the Tories for six years of deficits early in the campaign. Yet, the NDP continued to direct its advertising at the Tories and ignore the Liberals. A Liberal strategy that clearly was working was left unchallenged. That was the major mistake of the campaign.

Just not ready: To paraphrase Einstein, insanity is “the act of continually doing the same thing, even though it clearly isn’t working.” The Conservatives continually tried to define Trudeau as “just not ready” long after it was clear those ads were not working. The Conservatives also never got around to developing much of a platform even though both the NDP and the Liberals produced very thoughtful policy documents. Just who was “just not ready” for the campaign should be clear by now.

Reefer madness: For a wedge issue to work, the opponent must not be able to counteract it. This is why Trudeau came out for legalization of marijuana a year ahead of the campaign. Because of the Tories’ social conservative base, that party had to oppose legalization even though the public was mostly in favour of it. By accusing Trudeau of trying to put marijuana in schoolchildren’s hands, the Tories only made their predicament worse.

More madness: Niqabs and the Fords: In the days immediately following the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, what was Stephen Harper talking about? Banning niqabs in the public service. The TPP represents potential access to 40% of world markets. Yet, the Tories set aside a major government achievement for a tactic that would disgust Canadians outside of Quebec. Then, on the final weekend of the campaign, Harper, the anti-drug crusader, allowed himself to be photographed with former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, the crack-smoking buffoon.

It now is fashionable among Conservatives to blame Harper for the loss. But was there no one in the party with the courage or cachet to tell the boss that being in the same room with Rob Ford was a bad idea? There are quite a few unanswered questions from the 2015 federal election. IE

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