Using data aggressively #nlpoli

These days campaigns are about collecting information on voters and using the data.

The Ted Cruz campaign has been especially aggressive in  Iowa with a mailer that highlights the poor record of some voters of participating in caucuses.

The thing came in a brown envelope (above) and consisted of  single sheet of yellow paper (below) marked like a ballot that showed a score and percentage grade for voters named on the sheet. 

These folks don’t typically turn out to vote, so Cruz was trying to goad them into participating. Voting records are public in some American states so campaigns can tell who voted and who didn't.  Your neighbours.

You can tell if it worked by the results from Monday’s caucuses.

-srbp-

Political Calculations 2 #nlpoli

The next provincial general election finishes on November 30, 2015.

Not the way you are used to thinking of it, right?

You think the election happens on that day because, traditionally, that’s the day when most people vote.

Thing is,  voting takes place on several days and pretty much always has.  In Canada,  elections sometimes took weeks and months according to Elections Canada.  The rules to determine who can vote also changed over time.  Some elections in the 19th century had different qualifications for voters in different provinces.

Through all that, the basic goal of the election was the same:  be the one who had the most votes in the ballot box when the elections officials counted them up.

Non-voters and Influence #nlpoli

There is a new scourge among us.

An evil that causes “problems”.

Russell Wangersky found them and wrote about them this past weekend.

They are the people who do not vote.

The Ground Game Counts #nlpoli

Two posts, quite a distance apart touch on the same basic political (science) issue:  the role of the local, get-out-the-vote effort in any political campaign.

Cost per Vote: the Rural/Urban Divide #nlpoli

In looking at by-elections in Newfoundland and Labrador, the second and third phases offer a neat cluster of by-elections in urban (metro St. John’s) and rural (everywhere else) districts.

Break those out and you get some information that shows the relative strengths and weaknesses of the parties, depending on where a by-election occurred during the period between 201 and 2011.

For starters, here is a reminder of the cost per vote results for the three major parties in all three time periods (phases).

Now let’s take a look at the second phase, that is, on the by-elections between the 2003 and 2007 general elections.

Three by-elections took place in what we can consider to be urban.  They are Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, Kilbride and Ferryland.  The rural by-elections took place in Exploits, Placentia-St. Mary’s, Port au Port, Humber Valley, and Labrador West.

In the urban by-elections, the Conservatives average  cost per vote was $8.98.  The Liberals CPV was $15.71 and the NDP CPV was $18.17.

As much as we all assume that the New Democrats’ base of support is metro St. John’s, these CPV figures suggest otherwise.   Now part of that high cost is attributable to the fact that the Tories hotly contested the seat when Jack Harris left for retirement in 2006. 

But when you average the figure out the average cost per vote of the other two, you get  $15.70. That almost exactly the same as the Liberals and their political infrastructure in the metro St. John’s area just shrivelled up to nothingness by 2007.

CPV is not a measure of actual effort of course.  Parties in Newfoundland and Labrador don’t have to report all their efforts.  Volunteer workers, for example, don’t show up as an expense in and of themselves.  They show up when the party or the campaign has to foot their travel and accommodations bills. 

That’s the kind of thing that happens to the Tories in rural Newfoundland. The Conservative Party itself spent more than $26,000 on campaign worker travel in the Labrador West by-election (2007). The by-elections in Ferryland and Kilbride cost the Tories only about $15,000 and $18,700 for example.

Labrador West essentially comprises two towns that are spitting distance apart.  You would not have to spend $26,000 on travel unless you were flying people in from other parts of the province to work the by-election. Scan the by-election finance reports and you’ll see exactly the same kind of phenomenon in other Tory campaigns in rural Newfoundland. 

Some call it “by-election-in-a-box” but what the Tories really do is maintain a team of campaigners they can drop into augment the local candidate’s effort.  In addition, the Tories have a pattern of tapping into a regular pool of donors to help finance the given by-election.  And again, it is part of a pattern of adding to the local campaign.

Contrast that with the Liberals, for instance.  In any by-election, Liberal candidates are basically on their own.  Sure there are some people who work by-election to by-election, and sure the party headquarters may toss some cash to a campaign. 

But on the whole, Liberal candidates couldn’t count on the party for much of anything during the second and third phase by-elections.  Two noteworthy exceptions to this were the Straits-White Bay North North and Terra Nova both of which took place in 2009 (Phase Three). 

Incidentally, when people talk about the Liberal Party’s lack of organization and infrastructure, this is the kind of stuff they are talking about.  This is the meat and potatoes of politics and the Tories know how to make a fine stew of it.

 

In Phase Three, you had three by-elections in the metro St. John’s are.  Those are our urban set:  Cape St. Francis, Topsail and Conception Bay East-Bell Island.  The rural by-elections were in Baie Verte-Springdale, the Straits-White Bay North,  Terra Nova and Humber West.

The Liberals’ urban cost per vote hit $22.50 in Phase Three. Spending dropped, on average, from about $9600 to a little under $7500 and the average vote went from 612 to $330.

NDP urban spending went from $14,412 to $11, 472 and the vote went from 793 to 751.  The resulting CPV improved in Phase Three, reaching $15.27 compared to $18.17 in Phase Two.

The Conservatives CPV was $9.00.  Their urban spending went up by about $2400 and the average vote went from 2370 (Phase Two) to 2741. 

Conservative rural CPV dropped (marginally) from $23.07 to $22.25.   Tory rural spending dropped by about $6,000 and the average vote dropped by 170 votes.

The New Democrats’ CPV in rural Newfoundland was $30.82 during Phase Three compared to $16.45 in Phase Two. The NDP increased their spending, on average by $1300 but their average vote dropped by 151.  They spent 19% more, in other words, and got 36% less.

Liberal spending on rural by-elections increased by 70%, on average, in Phase Three compared to Phase Two. Liberal rural vote went up by four percent.

- srbp -

Campaign Spending and Efficiency #nlpoli

Two of the three political parties in this province are spending more, on average, and getting less, on average in by-elections.

That’s one of the things you can see in an assessment of a decades worth of by-elections from 2001 to 2011.

Last week, SRBP gave you a teaser of a look at the idea of cost per vote, as measure of campaign efficiency and effectiveness.  As the name implies it tells you how much each campaign spent for each vote it received. The information for the assessment comes entirely from financial reports and by-election vote reports issued by the province’s chief electoral officer.


There were 21 by-elections during that time.  You can break them up into three phases or time periods.  Phase One covers the by-elections between 2001 and the general election in 2003.  Phase Two covers the by-elections from 2004 to 2007.  Phase Three runs from 2008 until the 2011 general election.

The charts below show the average spending and votes received by the three main parties with the resulting cost per vote in each of the three  phases.  We’ll look at the phases individually in other posts.



From Phase One to Phase Two, average Liberal spending on by-elections dropped 64% from an average of around $37,000 to about $13,500. In Phase Three they were spending about $20,000 less per by-election than they were when they were in power.

In the shift from being the opposition to government, Conservative average spending climbed from about $27,000 to $40,700.  It’s a jump of about 51%.

The average NDP spending over the same two periods went up from $2118 to $10,069.

The NDP and the Conservatives spent more in Phase Three than they did in Phase One.  Even the Liberals, who dropped significantly by the second phase had boosted their spending by the third phase to hit $17,663 per by-election on average.

What they got for their efforts is shown in the comparison of average votes received.



The most dramatic changes are at the beginning.  Both the average Tory and average Grit vote per by-election dropped precipitously from Phase One to Phase Two.  The Conservatives went down 30% while the Liberals went down 42%.

Dipper support climbed from 132 votes, on average, to 576.

The Liberal slide continued into Phase Three.  They dropped another 200 votes and took an average 1,000 per by-election in Phase Three.



The line that stands out is the orange one.  The NDP are getting more votes and they are spending more money on average to get them.  But the cost per vote is also climbing.  In the third phase, the NDP was spending $20.23 per vote compared to $16.05 before 2003.

The Conservatives saw a huge increase in their cost per vote by the second phase.  Incumbency effectively doubled their CPV from $8.15 to $17.65.

In Phase Three, the Tory CPV was $15.70.  It’s the lowest of the three parties, but not by much. By Phase Three, the Liberals are back close to their pre-2003 CPV with $17.64.  That’s nothing to cheer about.

Those Phase Three CPV numbers suggest that all three parties have problems getting their messages across or aligning with public opinion.  Remember, the lower the CPV is, the better you are doing.

Still, you can see some indication of what came in the 2011 general election if you look at Phase Three compared to Phase Two:

• The Tories spent 8% less and got 3% more votes. They’ve got a relatively better position than the others and that helps keep them in power.
• The Grits spent 31% more and got 17% less in the vote department.  That’s all sorts of bad news.
• The Dippers spent 5% less and got 18% less in votes.  Again, that should be all sorts of news, most of which isn’t good. 

Once Elections NL releases the 2011 general election financial reports, SRBP can do a comparison for all three general elections since the turn of the century.  We can also cross reference the general elections with the by-elections to see if there are any things that turn up.

In the next post on CPV, we will take a look at the three phases broken down by urban and rural by-elections.

- srbp -

*edited to correct typos

There are no free lunches #nlpoli

Heard that before, right?

And it’s true.

Just because it is true - and most adults know it is true – doesn’t mean that all of them still aren’t willing to crave a free gnosh.

And not just lunches.

Free anything.

One of the oldest marketing ploys around is the old BOGOF:  buy one, get one free.  One of them really isn’t free.  You just think it is.

Still.

See that BOGOF over there.

You know you want one.

Go on.

See?  Told ya.

As in life, so in politics.

Free sells big.

Free education is the ticket for the province’s New Democrats in this election.  They are aiming heavily at the student vote. The provincial Dippers hope young people will work voting miracles.

So they are promising them free education.

And when they’d finished announcing that policy, they announced that they would actually phase it in.

First would come more grant money.

And eventually education would be free.

Give the Dippers your vote, the one you got for nothing in the first place, and they will deliver you free education.

Eventually.

Like four or five years from now after you’ve finished your degree.

And only if they accidentally accumulate enough credits to form a government first.

But that’s just details. 

Look.

Vote one, get one!

Free!

And free is really popular.  You can tell because the Canadian Federation of Students - a completely impartial group  the DNP loathes -  released a poll on Wednesday confirming for those who remained doubtful that fully 84% of those surveyed in the province thought free tuition was an amazingly, wonderfully great idea.

Coincidences are wonderful too, aren’t they?

Anyway, this Harris-Decima poll is a penetrating insight into the friggin’ obvious. People love freebies.

Just so there’s no misunderstanding, you have to hand it to both the Dippers and the CFS for coming up with a bit of retail politicking that plays to a potentially important voter segment for them. 

Education is one of the big issues for people.  We know that from the quarterly government polling that some people have pried out of government under access to information laws.

And this fake free lunch thing is exactly the sort of freebie that can get some headlines, generate some interest and hopefully not cause people to think too hard.  it’s simple enough that people can get the full impact of the NDP message in two words;  free education.

They just have to pray to the deity of their choice – for those who aren’t atheists – that no one thinks about the whole thing for two long.

For starters, people would realise that the NDP have to win this election to collect on the vote sell-off implicit in the NDP offer.  Since the NDP are actually campaigning for the Tories to win, that’s gonna be a hard one to collect.

Then there’s that whole free lunch thing.  “Free tuition” would actually be paid out of tax dollars.  And if it turns into increased cash to universities and colleges and grants to students for living allowances,  that ‘free’ is going to get quite expensive.

Forget tax cuts.

Forget spending more on other areas people want to see action on, like health care.

And if that wasn’t painful enough, consider that at the heart of the provincial NDP policy, they are really talking about having taxpayers in this province give a free education to people from anywhere but here as well.

There really are no free lunches.

But marketing like the Dippers are using just wants you to turn off the rational part of your brain for a long enough to cast a vote.

Just think of the free education policy as the spindly super vacuum that runs on double A batteries but sucks better than a Dyson and didn’t break a few weeks after the Canada Post truck dropped it off.

You got two for the low price of $49.95 or whatever it was.  You just had to pay the separate shipping and handling for both.

Same basic marketing premise.

- srbp -

Political Reporting 2011

As we slide into the fall general election’s open campaign period, some of you might find it interesting to ponder Jay Rosen’s recent post about the current state of political reporting in the United States and Australia.

This is more a thought post than anything else.  Your humble e-scribbler started chewing over some observations about politics and political reporting a while ago.  The ideas are still swirling around and sometimes it is useful to just post them as part of a thought-exercise in progress.

Rosen is a journalism prof at New York University.  He’s been blogging since 2003 about journalism, so yes, folks that makes him a very early adopter of the form.

Political reporting is off track, Rosen argues.

So this is my theme tonight: how did we get to the point where it seems entirely natural for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to describe political journalists appearing on its air as “the insiders?”  Don’t you think that’s a little strange? I do. Promoting journalists as insiders in front of the outsiders, the viewers, the electorate…. this is a clue to what’s broken about political coverage in the U.S. and Australia. Here’s how I would summarize it: Things are out of alignment. Journalists are identifying with the wrong people. Therefore the kind of work they are doing is not as useful as we need it to be.

Rather than suffer through a short-hand version of Rosen’s post, take a second a go read it for yourself.  It isn’t very long and Rosen does makes his points rather neatly.  If you’ve got the time, wander through some of the links he offers up at the end.

There are a bunch of ideas running through Rosen’s post and the links.

There are the three ideas Rosen holds as part of the problem he sees in current political reporting:

1. Politics as an inside game.

2. The cult of savviness.

3. The production of innocence.

Politics is an inside game and some reporters present themselves as insiders – as savvy – and as people who can get inside the deepest recesses of political campaigns and bring audiences an informed, accurate and detailed discussion about the strategy and tactics.

Interesting concept.

Except that, with very few exceptions nationally and none locally, the reporters can never get inside, have never been inside. 

They only know what people who genuinely are inside will tell them. 

And given that none of the reporters have ever been inside a political campaign as a campaign participant, they can’t authoritatively discuss what is going on authoritatively based on experience..

And yet some reporters do it.

At the same time, the same reporters will insist they are merely observers who have no stake, or role in the politics and political process at all. 

That’s the innocence Rosen talks about.

Now Rosen has his own conclusions about how journalism ought to be done.  That’s all fine and good.

What savvy news consumers reading this might want to think about is that how the news gets reported to them can affect their perceptions about the political process generally and about the particular campaign.

While reporters are discussing strategies, tactics, how many candidates have been nominated or about a particular parties debt problems, there might well be other things they aren’t reporting.  Those other things could be as important or even more important to public perceptions of the campaign.

Rosen also offers a little graphic representation people can use to plot reporting.

And the way Rosen describes the four sectors:

Bottom left: Appearances rendered as fact. Example: the media stunt.

Top left: Phony arguments. Manufactured controversies. Sideshows.

Bottom right: Today’s new realities: get the facts. The actual news of politics.

Top right. Real arguments: Debates, legitimate controversies, important speeches.

Here’s one example from the local political scene to get you started.

Manufactured controversies:  Danny Williams and Quebec.  That one pretty much screams contrivance, right down to the complete misrepresentation of what the Quebec energy regulatory decided on Nalcor’s wheeling application and what the wheeling application was all about.

What would you put in the other sectors?

- srbp -

Like Momma always said…Part Deux und Trois

The only funnier thing than a guy up on assault charges claiming he is a wannabe Tory candidate are opposition party politicos who campaign for the incumbents.

In the past couple of weeks, comments coming from both parties have highlighted positive economic news.

Liberal leader Yvonne Jones did it before she headed back to Labrador for a series of meetings. She issued a news release that mentioned how the Labrador economy is booming.

Then  provincial NDP president Dale Kirby tweeted a link to a Globe and Mail story about how well the provincial economy is doing in comparison to the rest of the Atlantic provinces.

Wonderful stuff.

Except that in both cases, Jones and Kirby wound up reinforcing the classic argument for staying the course and keeping the current government in power. Things are going well, say the incumbents. Don’t risk all the good times by changing horse in the middle of the stream of cash and jobs.

Opposition parties need to draw attention to things the incumbent party isn’t talking about. There are plenty of issues. Some of them are ones the incumbents just don’t give a frig about but opposition voters do.  Some are issues the incumbents haven’t figured out are potentially decisive. Others are ones the incumbents will scream blue murder about because they are sore issues.

But talking about how good things are under the current administration?

Not really a message that says vote for me, the leader of the party that didn’t deliver all this good stuff.

It’s good for them to be positive, you say.  Otherwise the opposition parties would be all negative.  No one likes it when you are negative.  More people would listen to the opposition parties if they weren't negative all the time.

Well, for starters if you think that way, then you are – without question  - an ardent supporter of whatever incumbent government we are talking about.  Either that or you make Pollyanna look like a suicide waiting to happen.

Only incumbent politicos and their staunch supporters dislike it when others talk about problems.  Face it:  problems exist all the time.  They may not be big problems but they do exist.  It’s natural for people to talk about them if for no other reason than they would like the incumbents to fix them.

But incumbents hate people talking about problems.  The longer the incumbents are in office the more they dislike problems.  The longer the incumbents are in office, you see, the more likely it is that they caused the problems.

Incumbents also know that problems energise the opposition supporters.  After all, talking about the problems at the time are what helped get the incumbents elected in the first place. 

It seems like ancient history these days, but those who can recall the period between 2001 and 2003 will remember Danny Williams talked relentlessly about problems.  He was angry.  He stayed angry even after the 2003 general election. In fact, Danny stayed angry right up to his last days in office.

Tories  - and Danny lovers - don’t see it that way, of course. They think he spoke the truth.  But that’s what one would expect Tories to say, just as Liberals would have said the same sorts of things the last time Liberals were in power.

And when the incumbents hissed at Danny that he was too negative, he just ignored them and carried on about his business.  Danny carried on because he knew what opposition politicians are supposed to do if they ever want to get back into a government office again.

- srbp -

Republic of Moose

In an announcement that had absolutely no ties whatsoever to the current election campaign, the provincial government today tossed $5.0 million into a variety of efforts that are supposed to reduce the number moose-vehicle accidents in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The provincial government will spend $1.0 million on the traditional make-work job of clearing alders and other scrub from the sides of provincial roads.  this time though it will be clearing alders and scrub specifically to reduce moose accidents.

Out of the hundreds of kilometres of paved highway in the province, the government will build protective fencing on 15 of those kilometres as part of an experiment to see if it might keep moose from wandering onto roads where they get hit by cars and trucks. As one perceptive tweet comment had it, though, no one has explained how the government will measure the success of their efforts to reduce something that happens at random. 

Kinda makes the experiment silly, but as we noted, this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact moose accidents are a political issue the government has ignored until now when it is – purely coincidentally – an election year.

There are other reliable indicators, though.

You can tell the provincial government is serious about this project because they spending the same amount of money cutting down on moose accidents that they spend subsidizing production of the CBC series Republic of Doyle.

You can tell the announcement had nothing to do with an election because both opposition party leaders couldn’t wait to praise the ruling Tories for making this splendid announcement.

- srbp -

How to win without news media

Texas governor Rick Perry won re-election without relying on conventional news media.

Perry shunned editorial board meetings, for example.  Those are sit-down sessions with the entire editorial staff.  It’s a traditional way to garner an endorsement and that is traditionally seen as a key part of any major political campaign.

The reason is pretty simple politics:

Mike Baselice, Perry's highly skilled pollster, acknowledged Wednesday at a public forum sponsored by The Texas Tribune that the campaign asked primary voters in Texas whether a newspaper endorsement would make them more or less likely to vote for Perry. Only 6 percent said an endorsement would make them more likely to support Perry, while an eye-popping 37 percent said it would make them less likely (56 percent said it made no difference).

In other words, for all the energy conventional thinking would have you put into sucking up to editors, the average Texas voter didn’t really give a rat’s derriere one way or the other. And with almost 40% taking an endorsement as a bad thing, that pretty much clinched the deal. 

Predictably the news media slagged Perry.  That only increased his standing in the eyes of voters, especially the 37% who said they would look unfavourably on a candidate who had a news media endorsement of any kind.

Perry also didn’t do the usual things associated with a conventional campaign, like lawn signs or direct mail.  Instead, his campaign used social media, paid television and “field operations” – face-to-face work by campaign volunteers.

- srbp -

Process Stories, or real insiders don’t gab

A piece this week in the Hill Times this week conjures up images of a West Wing episode. The night of Jed Bartlet’s re-election, some guy turns up on the major networks purporting to be a Democratic Party insider. The guy claims he advised Bartlet on issues during the campaign that turned out to be crucial to victory.

Only thing is the guy wasn’t really an insider.  Rather he was a pollster Bruno Gianelli hired to do some polling in one part of one state.  The guy knew nothing but he talked a good game and the networks ate up his story.

The Hill Times story quotes an unidentified ‘Liberal insider” as saying:

"They can't win. If you go province-by-province and riding-by-riding, what does it give you? I know the spin will be that the cross-country tour elevated Iggy, and the long-gun and census stuff pulled Harper down, so now we're tied. But when the crunch comes and people are going to vote, I don't think—whether they had to fill in a long-form census or not—I don't think it's going to be a serious factor…".

Someone actually so far inside any political party as to know what the leadership team is actually thinking:

1. wouldn’t discuss it publicly, and,
2. wouldn’t talk the sort of pure crap contained in this article.

You can tell the “insider” is full of crap by this simple paragraph:

In Newfoundland, for example, if Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams "goes whole hog" and puts his support behind the federal Conservatives in the next election campaign, the Tories could win five of the province's seven seats, the insider said. Liberal MP Siobhan Coady's St. John's South-Mount Pearl riding and Scott Andrews' riding in Avalon are the most at risk.

Right off the bat, this anonymous character predicts the Tories would gain five seats in Newfoundland and Labrador, but only names two that might change hands.  Where are the other three?

Any person who actually knew what happened on the ground in Newfoundland and Labrador  - as opposed to the bullshit - wouldn’t claim for one second that Danny Williams could turn the tide and suddenly have everyone vote for a party Williams himself savaged not so long ago. 

The simple reason is that Danny Williams didn’t do it the last time.

All Danny Williams did in 2008 was strangle the Conservative vote.

Well, for the most part he strangled it.  In St. John’s East, Tories turned out en masse for Danny’s old law partner, Jack Harris.  The Liberal vote there collapsed as well, giving Harris a giant majority. Don’t count on that one changing hands back to the Conservatives.

In St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, a sizeable number of Conservative voters actually rejected Danny’s instructions and turned out to vote for the New Democrat.  That’s right.  Even though Danny Williams’ cabinet ministers turned out for Liberal Siobhan Coady, a sizeable number of rank and file Conservatives in the riding actually made a choice for the New Democrat.  In other ridings they just stayed home.

But in SJSMP, they voted for the New Democrat as a protest over Conservative ministers actively campaigning for their hated enemy, les rouges.  Call it a hold over from the 1949 Confederation racket if you want, but Conservative townies tend to vote for the New Democrats rather than Liberals if the can’t vote for their own guy.

Put a stronger Conservative candidate in play and this riding might change its colours.  Then again, it might not.  If you apply the current poll configuration to old votes, the riding tended to vote Liberal more than Conservative more recently.  What usually made the difference in the old configuration was the solid blue voting along what is now known as the Irish loop.  Even losing coming out of St. John’s and Mount Pearl, the Conservative would go over the top as the Southern Shore went solidly Conservative.

One of the other key differences might be the New Democrat candidate. If the NDP run a candidate with a strong enough profile and the right messaging, he could split the blue vote. Yes, that seems counterintuitive for people who think of voting only in left-right terms – like the “insider” apparently -  but the distinction could be important in the next federal election.

Another factor to watch would be the impact of migration on the vote. The old Conservative stronghold in Avalon has moved to the metro St. John’s region.  Where they live now could have a huge impact on the vote in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl as well as neighbouring Avalon.

In 2008, the fight turned out to be a straight fight between the Liberals and the Conservatives.  You’d have to do a poll by poll breakdown to see where the Conservatives lost votes and where they picked up.  The New Democrats were a distant third, but they did increase their vote sizeably. They won’t have the Conservative Family Feud to count on this time and those extra 2400 votes the NDP gained last time might swing to one of the other parties.

None of that takes into account the value of incumbency.

Nor does it take into account the fact that in 2004 and 2006 – when Williams and his party actively supported Conservatives across the province – the best the Conservatives could do is win the same two seats they usually win. In 2008, though, Williams wiped out the Conservative vote and In St. John’s East in particular he may have locked that one in New Democrat hands for a while.  Conservative insiders –real insiders – are likely thinking that with friends like that…well, you know where that goes.

So that none of that looks even remotely like a scenario where the Old Man is going to hand his old enemy Steve five easy seats. And it gets even harder to see the “insider” scenario if you realise the farther one gets from St. John’s, the harder it is to elect a federal Conservative in Newfoundland and Labrador, even with the enthusiastic help of a guy whose strongest supporters are still found among townies.

Of course, the “insider’’ assessment only works on any level if you continue to think that Danny Williams remains as popular as he ever was, even within his own party.  As the insider aptly shows by his or her appearance of knowing things, appearances can be deceiving. 

The 2008 Family Feud did its most damage within the Conservative Party itself.  Even having Danny Williams call off the feud  or claim that he leads a Reform-based Conservative Party might not be enough to win back the enthusiastic support of Conservatives who voted Blue long before Williams was a gleam in his own eye. Those are the people he screwed with in 2008 and those people didn’t like it one bit.

Williams himself also hinted recently at internal political problems with his party.  And let’s not forget that earlier this year, someone dropped a dime on his little plan to scoot south secretly to have heart surgery.

To be fair, though, the one part of the scenario the Liberal “insider” didn’t mention is another one:  what might happen in one of the ridings if Danny Williams himself decided to take a shot at federal politics.

That wouldn’t change the federal Conservatives’ chances a great deal in Newfoundland and Labrador, but it would make the nomination fight in one riding a lot more interesting than it might otherwise be.

Wonder which riding it might be?

St. John’s East is already safely in the hands of his old friend and law partner. Odds are the Old Man wouldn’t run there.

But he does own a sizeable house in Avalon, the seat once held by his political nemesis, John Efford.

Hmmm.

The Old Man jumping to federal politics.

Maybe the Hill times wasn’t speaking with a Liberal after all.

Their assessment sounds more like what one would get from a member of the Old Man’s crew.

- srbp -

The lesson from Nova Scotia

In Newfoundland and Labrador these past few days some local adherents of the Orange Creed – that’s New Democrats, not Protestants or Dutch – have been buoyed by the success of their Nova Scotia brothers and sisters.

Others have been talking about the prospect of local New Democrats doing the same thing here that Darrell Dexter and his party did in persuading Nova Scotians to take a chance on voting NDP.

Therein lies the first lesson local New Democrats should learn:  Darrell and the crew didn’t ask Nova Scotians to “take a chance” on anything.  They presented a professional, credible alternative to the other two parties. 

There was no chance involved.

There was a choice.

A few years ago, the Nova Scotian Dippers were like other labourites.  Being a New Democrat was to be part of a social cause or a social group, not a bunch who seriously thought of winning an election.  That’s not unusual. Other labour parties have gone through the same thing.  The Labour Party in Britain once cherished ideological purity over electoral success.  So too did New Democratic parties across Canada.

But, like those other labourites elsewhere,  the Nova Scotian New Democrats decided it was better to be in office than standing impotent on the sidelines with their ideological purity intact.

That’s the second lesson the local New Democrats need to learn:  there is no substitute for power.  You can have all the lovely ideas you want but if you don’t win the election it’s just as well to order another round at the Ship and explain your theory to the bottom of a pint of Guinness.

You get to win by organizing.  Find volunteers.  Get people who know how to organize. Raise money and put it in the bank.  Find candidates.  Reach out and bring new people and new ideas into the fold.

Inevitably, there will be a crowd who will get pissed at the loss of ideological purity, but that’s the price of shedding the sack-cloth and the stench of burning martyr and donning the mantle of government.

Equally inevitably, for every old bolshevik who abandons ship for the Greens, there’ll be two or more new people who either weren’t in politics before or who defect from another team.

The two major parties don’t get elected because people vote the way their parents and grandparents did.  That’s a convenient excuse dreamed up by someone who just can’t face facts. 

The two major parties get elected because they hold onto a cadre of supporters and then add on a whole bunch of people who change their votes from time to time. The other two major parties appeal to voters with the platforms and promises by finding out what voters are looking for and then offering it to them.  Put another way, they get elected by building coalitions of people who have similar views or who can find enough reasons to vote for one team over another. 

That’s basically what politics is about:  bringing people together and that should be what New Democrats do naturally.

But they don’t.  Instead, they try to not just distinguish themselves but drive a wedge between themselves and voters.  New Democrats of the old school make it seem like it is a sign of moral weakness to have voted for the other two parties at some point.  Before one can vote New Democrat one must first  admit the sins of ones voting past.

That’s the essence of that common NDP refrain that the other two parties are all alike.  Predictably, it turns voters off.

Think about that for a second and then look at two New Democrat leaders.

Think about Jack Layton, he of the “they are all alike” school.

And then think about Darrell Dexter.

If you can perceive the differences, and you are a New Democrat, then you are well on your way to learning the Lesson from Nova Scotia. You are well on your way to bringing a genuinely competitive alternative to voters.

-srbp-

Amen to that

Telegram editor Russell Wangersky points out in his column this week that local political campaigns suffer from an obvious lack of new ideas.

It’s been so formulaic that there have even been candidates lamenting the state of the media for failing to do riding profiles of each of the federal ridings.

The only thing more lacklustre than the recent campaigns would be a panel of local reporters discussing the campaign.  Gee, maybe they'll talk about things they knew but didn't tell their audiences, just like they did last time.

-srbp-

Change is gonna come

The Obama campaign has transformed American politics already and there's still almost a week to go until it's over.

One of the many changes has been in campaign advertising. 

Take this spot, for example, just one of almost 1800 professional videos on the official Obama campaign youtube space.

Then compare it to anything produced locally or nationally during the recent federal election campaign.  You won't find many this simple or this effective.

Even at the local level high quality advertising is attainable.  It requires only two things.

First, there has to be a willingness within the campaign to step away from the conventional.

These sorts of spots are not expensive to produce and air time can also be purchased strategically.

Second, there has to be a willingness to take professional advice.

In an upcoming post, we'll take a look at some of the best political advertising done locally. That's one you'll want to check out.

-srbp-

The Fruitloop Factory

There's no allowing for the myriad reason why people feel the need to make stuff up, nor that they would use this false stuff for their own political ends.

Nope.

All we can wonder about is how people actually wind up believe sheer crap and run around repeating it like it was...

true.

Stuff that can be easily shown to be...wait for it...completely false.

Like say the stuff about Barak Obama.

-srbp-

Another resounding victory...

1. In the cause for electoral reform or political reform or some kind of reform: another riding taken by a party already in dictatorship territory, with 38% of the vote.

2. For incompetence: Proof the current executive of the party - and especially the president - need a vacation.

Well, more like a retirement, actually, but a bit more permanent.

3. Blindness: New Democrats. A wake-up call that there is no "labour" vote. Re-think your approach to politics

-srbp-

Logistics: a dismal science

Geoff Meeker raised a question this past week about the nature of election campaigns and media coverage. Specifically, Geoff took some exception to a comment by CBC provincial affairs reporter David Cochrane's comment that

The 21 or whatever days of the campaign is about working the phones, finding out who may vote for you, identifying them and then getting them out on voting day. It is a mechanical exercise with the air war of the leaders traveling around to give you a little bit of a bounce. But it’s an operational exercise more than a philosophical exercise.

Geoff then discussed media coverage during a campaign, arguing that news media should be adopting a somewhat critical posture during elections. As Geoff put it:

I think elections should be a time to ramp up the tough questioning of our politicians. Sure, send the reporters out on the hustings to tell us what the leaders are saying, and make hay when they screw up. That's part of the entertainment. But if that becomes the primary focus of our election coverage, something is wrong with the system.

Cochrane is right. During the 21 days or so of a campaign, the political parties ought to be focused on the essentially organizational exercise of finding the vote, fixing it in place and then firing it at the polls. Campaigning is a logistics problem in that it is basically about the marshalling of resources and managing their use. How the forces are deployed, how they are used and to what end is the strategic question but at the heart of strategy lies logistics. It is futile to develop a strategy calling for spending millions of dollars based on the deployment of hundreds and thousands of volunteers if either the cash nor the bodies exist.

This is not a deterministic argument. A comparative lack of resources does not equate to defeat, either in a specific battle or indeed even in a campaign, military or political. Misuse of resources, that is bad strategy, can and often does lead to defeat. What we saw in the recent provincial election was the result of both logistical differences among the parties as well as some pretty severe strategic errors. We also saw something that actually had nothing to do with logistics but rather another element of campaigns: will. This is where Cochrane's comment is wrong.

Politics is a clash of wills, a clash of ideas, supported by the clash of the machines. A candidate and a political party must want to win but there must be an idea that captivates the imagination or connects with the voters. Without a reason to vote, there would be only a handful of people trooping to the polling booth. Without the desire to campaign and to win, there is no hope of success for that party. There may be two competing wills engaged in the contest, and in that instance, the campaign will go to the one which better marshals and deploys its forces or which has the will to win. In western Labrador, the progressive Conservatives did not quit until the last ballot was in the last box; the new Democrats took the weekend off and effectively quit before they had finished. The stronger will won.

Similarly, as noted here, one of the most obvious things about the Liberal campaign was that the party - as a whole - had accepted defeat not at the start of the campaign but indeed weeks, months and possibly years beforehand. The outcome was only determined by the willingness of one party - in this case the Liberals - to accept the popular commentary that outcome was predetermined. Gerry Reid said as much in his concession speech. Compare that, however, to the British position in May 1940. Tossed off the continental by the Germans, her major ally defeated, and with few of its soldiers left outside German prison camps, Britain stood in a position where many countries had been before. Many countries had sued for peace. Many people expected the British to seek peace. The only thing that paved the way for the subsequent defeat of Germany at that point was the bull-headed determination of Winston Churchill not to accept the conventional wisdom.

Meeker is right here too, up to a point. Take a look at the CBC campaign blog and one finds a disturbing quantity of puffery, including the breathless references to Danny Williams being greeted like a rock star. The CBC is far from alone in this sort of superficial reporting, incidentally, but this sort of commentary - even if it didn't make it into the main stories - is surely an indication of the extent to which embedded reporters can become an integral part of the campaign which they are supposed to be covering at some distance removed:

I missed out on Fogo and Change Islands because there wasn't enough room on the chopper but my cameraman went along and shot what was some of the most interesting and confrontational tape of the week. People in both places had a long list of grievances to place at Williams's feet: the ferry service, outmigration, the hospital, and on it went.

'The hem of Williams's garment'

But Williams listened. His people took notes and promised to get back to people. But other than there and Goose Bay (disgruntlement over the Energy Plan is rife in Labrador) it was mostly about touching the hem of Williams's garment. There is no denying that the guy is popular. At times, it was like being on tour with Mick Jagger! I'm not kidding.

There is a lamentable tendency among news media to focus on the superficial aspects of politics. They will talk of polls and the horse race: who is ahead? Who is behind? is the Liberal campaign beset by a curse? Polls especially appear to the amateurs to be the essence of the campaign or indeed of politics itself. Which of the province's reporters - Cochrane included -has not spoken as if the CRA polls revealed the essence of all things political? In truth, those polls did no such thing. The Progressive Conservatives finished the current campaign with the same share of the total eligible vote as they did in 2003. The Tories won such a large number of seats this time around, not because they won the approval of the hosts forecast by CRA but because they held the singer and the Liberal vote never showed up at the polls.

CRA's poll results have indicated an apparent satisfaction level on some issues that were at odds with the overall impression. Newsrooms have an option to go with something other than the same pollster used by the government - either Liberal or Conservative - and yet for some inexplicable reason most do not.

Consider for a moment that in the recent campaign, reporters actually elected to rationalize - to explain away - what Danny Williams meant by the word "race" rather than simply ask him what he meant. The comment may have been meaningless but we will never know because the reporters in the room preferred to invent a meaning rather than ask a simple question. The Telegram gave front page prominence to a leak from the highest levels of the Tory campaign aimed at one candidate and yet a week later ignored the background to or implications of Tory claims about imminent bankruptcy contained in their attack on Gerry Reid's comment in Labrador. Did anyone consider checking the actual state of the province's finances?

In the final days, newsrooms ignored entirely Williams' sneering comment aimed at Ed Joyce and yet picked up on comments by the supporter of another party. This is nothing new; similar things occurred in 1996 or 1999 with another premier of another political stripe. There may well be aspects of the Liberal or new Democrat campaign that went unreported but that is really no excuse or balance. As Meeker rightly noted, newsrooms in this past election campaign didn't deploy resources to identify and report "inaccuracy, hypocrisy, blatant stupidity or deliberate untruth", irrespective of origin.

News media in the province - in general - have tended to focus on superficial aspects of politics over the past decade, much as their colleagues elsewhere have done. If anyone doubts the absence of distance - and its relative "skepticism" - consider that a year and a half later, that when it comes to spending scandal no one can say what politicians knew what, when and what they did or didn't do about it.

In a small media marketplace, the inclination of reporters should be to distance themselves from the subjects on whom they report. That distance will become more important to the public good in the next four years than it has been for quite some time.

-srbp-