Welcome Canadian politics watchers to the Canadian Politics Roundup for Sunday, September 6th, 2015! Today we'll be looking at the latest poll aggregation for the Canadian federal election 42, vote on October 19th, what the Conservative strategy may be this election and what monkey wrenches may have been thrown in the works, and finally, one of those very monkey wrenches was thrown in this very day.
Polls, seat count projections, place Conservatives in third
The latest polls coming in are showing interesting movement, even though all three major parties are within a few percentage points of each other so it's still a very close race.
Two new polls have come out, the first is a Léger poll printed in the Globe and Mail on Friday, September 4th which show the NDP still in the lead, but the Conservatives in third place:
The New Democratic Party has the support of 31 per cent of respondents at the national level, ahead of the Liberals at 30 per cent and Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party at 28 per cent.
This poll is a little out of date, so we haven't see the impact of any major news stories since it was taken:
The poll was conducted between Monday and Wednesday of this week as Canadians learned that the country was in a recession in the first half of the year, but before the Syrian refugee crisis came to dominate the campaign.
The second poll was a Forum Research poll that was published in the Toronto Star on Saturday, September 5th. It showed much the same thing as the Léger poll, namely the Conservatives falling into third place:
When it comes to the overall horse race, the battle between the NDP and the Liberals is tightening, while the Conservative party continues to trail in third place, the latest weekly Forum poll found.
Support for Mulcair’s party has dropped slightly, though it still leads with the support of 36 per cent of the 1,384 respondents. Trudeau’s Liberals are also up slightly with the backing of 32 per cent of Canadians.
But Harper’s Tories are now far behind the others, registering just 24 per cent support.
Of course, this poll is also a snapshot of the recent past rather than a reflection of what's going on today:
The poll, which was conducted between last Sunday and Tuesday, is considered accurate to within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
As regards to seat counts, the average that the CBC poll tracker currently has is the NDP in the lead with 122 seats, the Liberals next with 114 seats, and the Conservatives third with 101 seats. The CBC poll tracker (in conjunction with threehundredeight.com) is a pretty nifty little tool for tracking where the polls say the political parties are at.
In all, it seems that the NDP's lead is shrinking, the Liberals are gaining support, and the Conservatives are slipping into third place. But, the election isn't until October 19th, and so much could happen between now and then. There's also suggestions that the campaign hasn't started in earnest yet, and that the Conservative Party has a strategy to win.
Conservative strategy and how it might all go very wrong
In an interesting article for the Winnipeg Sun, Lorne Gunter reports on the strategy of the Conservative Party for Election 42. The first part of the strategy is the well known cash angle. The Conservatives have more cash and can spend it with a longer election period:
The Tories were thought to be the only party with all the cash (more than $25 million) already in the bank to sustain just the traditional 37-day battle. But a doubly long campaign permits parties to nearly double the amount they may spend according to election finance laws.
On this front Gunter reports that his highly placed anonymous Conservative friend told him:
"We thought that we would either run the other guys out of cash early or force them to hold on to their cash until the latter days. Either way it was a bonus for us. Either they wouldn’t have money left during the last couple of weeks and we would have the field to ourselves at the very time most voters are making up their minds. Or we’d get out ahead and have the first few weeks to ourselves when voters were forming their first impressions.”
Anonymous highly placed Conservative goes on to say that the Conservatives had hoped to run out the clock on any bad news for the lazy summer portion of the campaign while letting the other parties exhaust the bad news so that the electorate eventually tunes the other parties out completely:
The Mike Duffy trial, the weak loonie, the soft recession in the first half of this year – the Tories were sure the Liberals and New Dems couldn’t resist the temptation to jump on those issues often in the early days of the election.
And they were right. Mulcair and Trudeau have been almost shrill in their attacks on the Tories’ ethics and on their economic management.
“We were hoping they’d either wear themselves out, run out of things to say or just annoy voters by saying the same things over and over for 70 days.”
I don't know if all of these words are Gunter's or highly placed anonymous Conservative, but the bias in this piece is obvious with the term "almost shrill." This theme is continued in the article as Gunter characterizes opposition criticism of the Conservatives as "incessant whining." Back to the strategy itself: This seems to be an incredibly cynical strategy on the part of the Conservative Party. It assumes that the Canadian electorate will either grow tired of hearing about negative news about the Conservatives and tune it out, or that the electorate will forget about this negative news come election day. Gunter continues:
It’s kind of a Rope-a-Dope ploy, baiting the opposition into flailing away at Harper and the Tories until Mulcair and Trudeau are worn out or voters are worn out from hearing their incessant whining. Then in the last few weeks or even just the last few days, the Tories intend to come out swinging.
This strategy relies on three things: The electorate getting worn out or sleepy during the final stage of the election campaign, Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair getting worn out or sleepy in the final stage of the election campaign, and the Conservatives never screwing up, no scandals or mistakes coming to light and smooth sailing for the Conservative campaign.
I think this article is too optimistic about the chances of success for the Conservative Party. Here are a few reasons why:
- Third parties have their spending restricted during the election campaign, and it seems they've been biding their time until now. Even if the other political parties can't spend anymore, it's a good bet that third parties will take up the slack.
- The Liberal Party has stated they will be spending the full amount on the campaign, even if they have to go into debt. They'd be stupid not to.
- The refugee crises seems to have thrown a wrench in the Conservative works, there's another issue the opposition parties can beat the Conservatives up over (more on that soon).
- The criminal trial of Bruce Carson is slated to start up on September 14th. A former top aide to the Prime Minister standing trial in a criminal case has the potential to inflict a lot of splash damage back onto the Conservatives and Stephen Harper personally.
Finally, there's the regular "bozo eruptions" that politicians are prone to, for example getting caught on hidden camera peeing into a mug in someone's home.
Conservative candidate caught with his pants down
It turns out that in 2012 current Conservative candidate Jerry Bance, fighting to get elected in the riding of Scarborough Rogue Park, was caught on a hidden camera peeing into a coffee mug and pouring it down the sink according to CBC News:
In 2012, Bance responded to a service call at a house where Marketplace had hidden cameras set up as part of an investigation into the skills and ethics of home repair service companies.
The cameras caught Bance urinating in a coffee mug and then dumping the contents into the kitchen sink while the homeowner was in the next room.
Of course, something like this isn't going to be the number one issue in an election campaign, but I think it will leave a yellow stain on the Conservative Party. I imagine that as you read this the Conservative Party top brass are telling Bance that he just has to go.
According to the above linked CBC News article,. Bance was an appliance service technician who owned his own company. He was servicing someone's appliances in their home and was caught on hidden camera by the CBC's consumer affairs show Marketplace. Bance had this to say for himself:
"I deeply regret my actions on that day. I take great pride in my work and the footage from that day does not reflect who I am as a professional or a person," Bance said when contacted by CBC News for comment.This event might not reflect on Bance as a professional, but he's effectively become an internet joke. Twitter lit up with #PeeGate, and #CPeeC jokes (the latter being a pun on the abbreviation of the Conservative Party of Canada: CPC).
Some of the Tweets included:
— Mark Critch (@markcritch) September 7, 2015
Woo, we made the American news! Go Canada Go!
#Peegate hits the New York Times "Canadian Candidate, Who Urinated Into Coffee Cup, Apologizes" @nytimes http://t.co/b2xtORZxEH
— Don Richardson (@Don_Richardson) September 7, 2015
"I can't tell the difference. Can you tell the difference?" #peegate #elxn42 #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/R87JFukLbD
— Stephen Lautens (@stephenlautens) September 7, 2015
— Kim May (@ugottabekiddin) September 7, 2015
The #CPC war room is going to have to shake this story three times before it can be sure it's finished #peegate
— Scott Reid (@_scottreid) September 7, 2015
Who could have guessed that the words "good to go" would come back to haunt Harper a second time in this campaign #elxn42 #Peegate
— Scott Reid (@_scottreid) September 7, 2015
— Steve Ladurantaye (@sladurantaye) September 7, 2015
Wendel Schwab
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