Whenever Premier Christy Clark is asked to account for her surprising, come-from-behind victory in the 2013 provincial election, she invariably replies “campaigns matter.”
It’s a view that is now no doubt shared by the three major federal party leaders, who this week finished an epic 11-week marathon campaign themselves. Public opinion about the three of them seemed to shift, swing and move remarkably as the campaign wore on.
I’m filing this column the day before the vote, so I have no idea which of them won. But all indications were pointing to the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau winning and the Conservatives’ Stephen Harper besting the NDP’s Tom Mulcair when it came to votes and seats won.
This, of course, is exactly the opposite of the scenario marking the beginning of the campaign, and shows that the campaign itself does indeed matter – a lot.
The NDP’s Mulcair was the man to beat at the start. Harper looked spent, and Trudeau was miles behind. All signs pointed to a historic NDP victory.
And then people started to pay attention.
That’s another one of the points Premier Clark insisted was true when she was being counted out of it in the months before the 2013 vote: “People don’t pay attention to politics until the campaign is well under way.”
And the federal campaign seemed to bear that out.
While the media and the politicians are fixated on all kinds of political issues – from the mundane to the ones that seem “significant” – for the months and years leading up to the actual election campaign, a substantial pool of voters are not.
Much of what passes for political debate in this country – question period, talk shows, political panels – is eagerly gobbled up by those with a keen interest in politics. But the majority of folks do not fall into that category and go out of their way to essentially ignore “politics” whenever they can.
During an election campaign, however, those people take out their earplugs and stop averting their eyes, and begin assessing things. And when they started doing that, public opinion seemed to shift: the Liberals’ popularity started to grow and the NDP’s began to shrink. The Conservatives, meanwhile, were stuck in neutral for the most part since the campaign began.
Because expectations were so low for Trudeau (and set so low, ironically, by the Conservatives’ “he’s not ready” TV ad campaign) he had the most room of the three to grow in popularity, and he did just that.
The television debates were important, but not decisive. Lacking a large television audience, most voters relied on second-day assessments almost of all of which favored Trudeau, who was really being scrutinized for the first time (as was Mulcair, who seemed to impress only party partisans).
Trudeau’s campaign was the only one that seemed to have energy and confidence, and his dismissal of the balanced budget (the turning point of the campaign) was the launch pad to a growth in popularity. By contrast, Mulcair was stuck in a plodding embrace of the “mushy middle” that failed to inspire.
Harper and the Conservatives flailed around at the start of the campaign, then switched to a strategy based on instilling fear and division. It seemed to solidify part of their base, but also seemed to greatly limit their appeal to a broader crowd.
The long campaign helped Harper, and in particular Trudeau, as the former had time to adjust his message (as wrong as it was to so many people) and the latter had more time to find his sea legs and boost his credibility and his likeability.
And the long slog on the trail seems to have hurt the front-runner most of all. This is not altogether surprising given that Mulcair and the NDP had the most to lose and their lofty position at the start, while historic, seemed anything but firm.
As I mentioned, I’m filing this before the votes are counted, but I’ll wager when they are many folks will come to the same conclusion about one thing: campaigns matter because that’s when voters really start paying attention.
What seemed like reality at the beginning turned out to be anything but because the campaign itself determined the election outcome, not the warm-up game preceding it.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
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