A lot of people think it’s hopeless

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Matthew Pearson

Trevor Haché wants to be a locksmith.

The NDP candidate in Ottawa-Vanier is hoping to break open the ironclad lock the Liberals have had on the riding for decades.

Read more…

To vote or not to vote

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Emily Senger

Lunjia Huang thinks it’s important to vote, but that doesn’t mean she is going to do it.

Huang turned 18 in June, making her among one per cent of the Canadian population who will be old enough to vote for the first time on October 14. She also represents what some advocacy groups are referring to as a democratic crisis—young people who do not vote.

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Flickrs, twitters and Facebooks

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Student articles

Dan Robson

Harper Flickrs, Dion Twitters, and Layton posts on Facebook. 

The heavy hitters of Canadian politics have tapped into the immensely popular world of online social networking, and are hoping to ride cyberspace to the ballot box this October. 

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A new campaign game

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

Thanks to Jane Taber in today’s Globe and Mail and Linda Diebel in today’s Toronto Star for giving us the material to play a new campaign game – match the person with the controversial comments he or she made that required that the newspaper grant the person anonymity.

The Players

A source

A Dion insider

The Ottawa-based Liberal veteran

A well-placed source

One veteran MP

One veteran Liberal MP

A Toronto Liberal MP

Their Comments

No sense yet of “any kind of mutiny”

“Dion is in another friggin” world.”

It’s simply too early in the campaign to write off Mr. Dion and the party.

“The ads were rejigged to suit the leader’s preferences.”

“There’s nobody – nobody in charge except Dion and he isn’t listening.” 

Mr Dion has yet “to get some traction with the public.”

“We have pros working for us, too.”

“Dion is dragging us down” 

Political duplication

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Faculty links

Another assessment of the campaign from colleague Andrew Cohen in today’s Ottawa Citizen.

Marion Dewar…hockey grandmom

Posted by padams under Election 2008

Paul Adams

Marion Dewar, the former mayor of Ottawa, who passed away yesterday, was also a Member of Parliament briefly, and her son, Paul, is now running for re-election in Ottawa Centre. She was a legend in Ottawa for her social commitment which began long before she became mayor and continued long afterward.

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OK, now it’s clear…clearer maybe

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

Now that the Harris/Decima polls has fallen into the line with the other polls, it is clear that those who proclaimed, as some did on the front pages of Saturday’s papers, that the Tories won the first week of the campaign, were wrong.

In the week before the election call, the Tories had an excellent run. In the week after the call they had a gentle decline. Most of the pollsters now agree that this happened though they differ somewhat on the pace and the extent of the change. From my perspective, this is also a more satisfying conclusion because it fits better with events as we all experienced them. The Tories had at best a mixed week, and they looked better than they otherwise might because the Liberals have not yet emerged as the inevitable alternative.

This is a huge problem for the Liberals, who can normally expect to be treated by the media as the principle alternative when the Conservatives are in power. For the most part the media so far have tended to view the election as the Tories against everyone else rather than as mainly a two-way fight, with other parties snapping at the heels of the real protagonists. (The only recent exception was the run-up to 1988, when the NDP led the polls going in.)

This time, the NDP is faring quite well, especially among women, but has not yet closed the gap on the Liberals sufficiently to convince the media to treat them as potentially the new alternative party of power.

In fact, the Liberals do seem to be tumbling out of contention in some parts of the country — notably B.C., Manitoba and Saskatchewan — where they have traditionally been competitive. In much of the West, Layton and Harper are the lone gunslingers, just as both of them would probably prefer.

However, I think there is actually some sign that former Liberal supporters in Ontario have reacted to the possibility of their very own regional party — yes, the former natural governing party of Canada —  being displaced, by moving back to them, saving the Liberals from collapse at the national level.

My personal hunch on the Greens is that they may not yet have seen the benefits of last week’s debate-on-the debate and the attendant attention it drew to their leader, Elizabath May. Deciding to vote Green is a bigger jump that moving to one of the familiar parties, so the Greens may have attracted a lot of tire-kickers, who will soon drift away. On the other hand, there are a lot more people on the lot now, and some of them may still just need a little more convincing before they buy. In other words, it is worth watching to see whether the Greens get a bump this week, even though last week was their big one.

What’s going on in Quebec? Reading the papers, you’d think Duceppe was having a terrible campaign. Talk about friendly fire. But so far he’s doing better in the polls than he is in the papers.

Is this a “Seinfeld election” — about nothing. That’s what people were saying at this stage in the ’05-’06 campaign. A betting person would definitely put money on the Tories to win.  But if we really do end up where we started, there will nonetheless be a couple of parties who have had the scare of their lives, and a couple of others who will feel they had a historic opportunity that they failed to seize.

I, for one, will be seriously surprised if that happens.

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and the Globe and Mail, and is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.

It depends who is talking . . .

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

The front-page election stories in today’s Globe and Mail and National Post offer contradictory perspectives on the week ahead in the campaign.

The Globe says:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will sharpen his attacks on Stephane Dion stating today, as new polls show the Liberal Leader is failing to connect with voters or talk about the issues that mean the most to them.

Meanwhile over at the National Post:

The Conservatives said yesterday that they are refocusing their primary aim on the NDP and the Green party, citing them as a bigger threat to their re-election that the Liberals.

Worth checking back later in the week to see who was right.

In the meantime score one for those nameless senior strategists who know all and are only too willing to tell, providing of course they are given anonymity so no one can hold them to account.  

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.

Campaign confusion?

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy, Election 2008 Media commentary

Christopher Waddell

There is a fascinating story in today’s New York Times by reporter Adam Nagourney that looks at the impact the fractured media landscape is having on the Presidential campaign – to the point of campaign managers no longer being confident about what strategies and tactics work and don’t work. Some of it at least seems transferrable to the campaign here as well so it is worth reading. 

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.

tcnorris

Posted by padams under Election 2008, Election 2008 Media commentary

Paul Adams

After a hiatus, the estimable (but mysterious) tcnorris has resumed blogging on polls and the election campaign.

Check it out.

Paul Adams is a former political reporter with the CBC and the Globe and Mail, and is now a member of Carleton’s journalism faculty, and executive director of EKOS Research Associates.