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Politics, again
Oct. 16th, 2015 11:08 pmI have avoided posting about the current federal election because it is very hard to be analytical and clear-thinking when one is tightly bound up in the success or failure of one of the parties - and, like many other people I know, I have a deep dislike for the current incarnation of the federal Conservatives. Between their dogwhistle racism in immigration and diplomatic areas, their toxic handling of citizenship and culture, especially when it comes to Arabic or Islamic culture, their hostility to science and any form of pure research, their economic illiteracy, their pandering by tax breaks unsupportable by any reasonable policy grounds to the upper middle classes, their legal illiteracy which has led to some epically stupid butting of heads with the courts over sentencing and human rights issues, and their truly appalling record on anthropogenic climate change - and the list is not exhaustive - I have many substantive reasons for disliking them.
All of which makes it hard to separate what one wants to see from what is there when looking at the campaign. Under normal circumstances, I would assume that the signs of a government in the senescent phase of its life - resigning cabinet ministers, scandals, the like - would translate fairly directly into a resounding defeat. The campaign hasn't gone terribly well for them: their entire appeal has been to their core voters rather than the centrists whom one would normally consider critical for winning an election. For about 70% of the population they flubbed the Syrian refugee issue, and their reflexive attack on the niqab has had the principal effect of weakening the NDP in Quebec and leaving the Liberals as the obvious default anti-Harper vote, where their best bet was to maintain a fairly even split to prevent support from coalescing around one opponent. That doesn't mean that the NDP is out of consideration: in many parts of the country (the West, parts of the North, much of Quebec) it is still the strongest non-CPC party. But in the core suburban battlegrounds of southern Ontario and BC where vote splitting on the left has to be part of any sane Conservative strategy the NDP is now perceived as effectively out of contention. (In the cities proper, inside the inner suburbs, the NDP has some real strength, and voices from the left will be needed, but those seats were never realistic CPC targets in any case.)
When Harper brought in legislation for fixed term parliaments, I'm pretty sure that he thought three things: first, that he would be riding an economic recovery, given the general economic cycle; second, that he would have the support of a government machine in Alberta; and third, that he stood a good chance of having the support of a Conservative government in Ontario. Instead the price of oil collapsed, taking with it the recovery, the Conservative economic strategy, and the Alberta government, and with McGuinty's resignation and Wynne's election the Liberals in Ontario shed enough dislike to win a majority against an unpopular PC leader. So the long term strategy was dead before the election began. He screwed up again by opting for a long campaign, which just magnified his probabilities of losing control of the issues (and the Duffy trial and the explosion of the Syrian refugee crisis in the public estimation all over the world occupied a big chunk of that extended campaign).
As far as estimating results, there's also the strategic voting issue affecting polls. Much as with the last Ontario election, there's an arguable tendency for people considering strategic voting - here, as there, voting Liberal rather than NDP to defeat Conservatives - to tell pollsters either that they are undecided, or that they are voting for their real preference. That would imply that the Liberal vote may be underreported in the polls. This would be bad news for the CPC.
All of which means that I'd normally be projecting a Liberal minority government. Why do I feel unwilling to simply say that? Partly because I am afraid that my wishes may be biasing my judgement, and partly because I don't understand the Conservative base. They seem to be firmly attached and have a strong antipathy to anything which questions their values: it's not quite as extreme as with the American Republicans, but there are definite similarities. And I recognize that the Conservative campaign, professionally run, and deliberately targetting just that base, must be predicated on the assessment that they stand a better chance of winning with a get-out-the-vote negative campaign than with any other approach. If they are sufficiently motivated, and voting splits favourably in enough ridings, the Conservatives might, in principle, be able to pill off a plurality. (I think they'd still lose on the Speech from the Throne, but it would be much messier.)
Still, deep down, my gut feeling is that the wheels came off their campaign a while back, and that the focus on their core isn't calculation regarding winning, but calculation regarding losing as little badly as they can manage. And that on Tuesday morning the Harper agenda of moving Canada to the right will be over.
All of which makes it hard to separate what one wants to see from what is there when looking at the campaign. Under normal circumstances, I would assume that the signs of a government in the senescent phase of its life - resigning cabinet ministers, scandals, the like - would translate fairly directly into a resounding defeat. The campaign hasn't gone terribly well for them: their entire appeal has been to their core voters rather than the centrists whom one would normally consider critical for winning an election. For about 70% of the population they flubbed the Syrian refugee issue, and their reflexive attack on the niqab has had the principal effect of weakening the NDP in Quebec and leaving the Liberals as the obvious default anti-Harper vote, where their best bet was to maintain a fairly even split to prevent support from coalescing around one opponent. That doesn't mean that the NDP is out of consideration: in many parts of the country (the West, parts of the North, much of Quebec) it is still the strongest non-CPC party. But in the core suburban battlegrounds of southern Ontario and BC where vote splitting on the left has to be part of any sane Conservative strategy the NDP is now perceived as effectively out of contention. (In the cities proper, inside the inner suburbs, the NDP has some real strength, and voices from the left will be needed, but those seats were never realistic CPC targets in any case.)
When Harper brought in legislation for fixed term parliaments, I'm pretty sure that he thought three things: first, that he would be riding an economic recovery, given the general economic cycle; second, that he would have the support of a government machine in Alberta; and third, that he stood a good chance of having the support of a Conservative government in Ontario. Instead the price of oil collapsed, taking with it the recovery, the Conservative economic strategy, and the Alberta government, and with McGuinty's resignation and Wynne's election the Liberals in Ontario shed enough dislike to win a majority against an unpopular PC leader. So the long term strategy was dead before the election began. He screwed up again by opting for a long campaign, which just magnified his probabilities of losing control of the issues (and the Duffy trial and the explosion of the Syrian refugee crisis in the public estimation all over the world occupied a big chunk of that extended campaign).
As far as estimating results, there's also the strategic voting issue affecting polls. Much as with the last Ontario election, there's an arguable tendency for people considering strategic voting - here, as there, voting Liberal rather than NDP to defeat Conservatives - to tell pollsters either that they are undecided, or that they are voting for their real preference. That would imply that the Liberal vote may be underreported in the polls. This would be bad news for the CPC.
All of which means that I'd normally be projecting a Liberal minority government. Why do I feel unwilling to simply say that? Partly because I am afraid that my wishes may be biasing my judgement, and partly because I don't understand the Conservative base. They seem to be firmly attached and have a strong antipathy to anything which questions their values: it's not quite as extreme as with the American Republicans, but there are definite similarities. And I recognize that the Conservative campaign, professionally run, and deliberately targetting just that base, must be predicated on the assessment that they stand a better chance of winning with a get-out-the-vote negative campaign than with any other approach. If they are sufficiently motivated, and voting splits favourably in enough ridings, the Conservatives might, in principle, be able to pill off a plurality. (I think they'd still lose on the Speech from the Throne, but it would be much messier.)
Still, deep down, my gut feeling is that the wheels came off their campaign a while back, and that the focus on their core isn't calculation regarding winning, but calculation regarding losing as little badly as they can manage. And that on Tuesday morning the Harper agenda of moving Canada to the right will be over.
