Mission 2015: Convert Conservative Voters

Good ideas. But I think people are mostly motivated by their material well being. The whole "it's the economy stupid" cliche.

Everyone says they're "struggling." I think the NDP needs to show how the Conservatives have contributed to making that worse, whereas their policies would make it better.

Step 1 - show people how their average income has stagnated and then declined, in real dollars, under the Cons (and before them the Liberals).

Step 2 - drive home that point by highlighting how the privatization of various services creates an increase in costs that the average person, with said declining income, has to deal with.

Step 3 - compound the point by showing how the right-wing policies directly lead to stagnating and declining real income for the "99%" and increased costs in everything from housing to health care.

Step 4 - show how NDP policies would reverse and repair the damage right-wing policies have done to real income and average individual expenditures.

Step 5 - profit + landslide majority government!

Okay, it's not quite that easy but..... I've often wondered why no one in the NDP "braintrust" runs ads something along the lines of: "This is how much you made in inflation adjusted dollars in (1980 or 1990 or 2000 - or 2006 if you want to directly reference the Cons), this is how much you make now. No wonder you're struggling. Think the Conservative Party will fix it? They can't because they're responsible for it. Vote NDP." Or something more catchy.... You get the idea. Though I think it should still be relativley blunt so the message isn't lost.

But yeah, it's true, the only way the NDP is going to win is by taking Con seats. Working and middle class ridings that probably shouldn't be in Conservative hands, but are. I don't think they'll do that "by appearing centrist." Then again, I'm not of the mind that they ought to just "go left" and everything will fall into place and we'll establish a "socialist paradise" either. I think it's a matter of not being afraid to take on economic and material issues, which the left always seems to shy away from in this day and age, which is odd as that's it's main raison d'etre (to ensure that economic and material situations are fair for the average poor, working and middle class person).

It also depends on the candidates that the NDP can recruit in 2015.

Jagmeet Singh's victory in the Ontario provincial election shows that the NDP can elect members of different ethnic communities, which is vital to earning support where it hasn't come from before.

Having candidates repeat in ridings that are winnable, such as Shawna Gagne in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe, Noah Evanchuk in Palliser, Louis Cardinal in Edmonton Centre, etc.

Recruiting high-profile candidates, such as Julius Grey in Westmouth-Ville Marie, etc.

Now that the NDP is seen as the government in waiting, the quality of the candidates the party will be able to recruit will reflect the fact that they are the ones to defeat Harper's Conservatives.

What are the prizes for 'mere voters'?

[... whch is who we are talking about]

Hey Vansterdam kid, when you say landslide, what do you mean?

Like a Mulroney landslide or a Diefenbaker landslide?

Please elaborate on Step 5.

Well, it was a quick scan across the country. The last was Ontario- because thats where there are the most seats for the NDP to gain.

And in the course of talking about Ontario- in a sentence or two- he brought up the 905 belt.

He was making the point that we need these seats, AND that there are some pretty sophisticated or at least subtle differences in how we reach those. I took the point about those 905 seats to be not just about them, but also about how specialized, or just special, some of the regional plays are.

I hadn't thought about that dimension of the 905 seats and the role of the until this election Liberal voters. And frankly, Western Ontario may be a tough nut to crack for the NDP, but I think the NDP-Cons dynamic is much more established there and much more like SK and NS than the 905 belt.

There is a difference between needing to get the work done [Western Ontario], and needing to get your head around some things we've barely addressed [905].

If we cannot get at least some seats in the 905, then we are are just as much going to not make government as if we cannot make gains in Western Ontario. And there is no reason we should not be able- even though we have hertofore treated the 905 like a barren dessert.

The way the NDP is going they will hardly be a left-wing party by the time the next election comes so I don't see how centrists and right-wingers would be scared to vote for us. I wonder who left-wing people will vote for.

Just to be clear I am not saying the 905 reegion isn't important, or that it should be ignored,but that ignoring 519 is leaving an awful lot of potential good ridings where building is well underway out of the equation in favour of an area that is going to take several elections to build in.

When I read sites like this, I hear a great deal of hang wringing about the 905 and little recognition of the potential in the 519 region.  That says to me the NDP still doesn't quite get it.

That said the focus on getting less people to vote Conservative is the absolute right strategy.  It is the only thing that will work in the end.  Some faked up merger never will.

Not from me, LTU. I see the 519 as the next natural source of seats for the NDP in Ontario, because of the investment made there during the last few electoral cycles. But that's worked banked over a few electoral cycles.

In fairness to Brian, he's probably talking about how to start the same kind of work in the 905 - and that is where most of the new seats will be coming after the census data gets factored in to the seat allocations.

The 519 seats that already have some headway in them are ones like: Brant, Essex, Sarnia, Guelph, Huron-Bruce and so forth. There will be a bunch of other seats that suddenly become viable plays with the Liberals weakened, like London North Centre, Cambridge, Kitchener Centre, Chatham, and perhaps others like Elgin-Middlesex-London or St. Catharines.

Bramalea-Gore-Malton was the lowest-income of the 3 Brampton area ridings. It had a great local candidate, a young and very enthusiastic campaign team (the CPAC profile was really an eye-opener for me), and as I later learned, an older Broadbent-era experienced campaigner living in the area. The Brampton ridings are better for us than the Mississauga ones, and ironically the riding in the north part of the 905 where we do best is John McCallum's (even though he wins it massively) - Markham-Unionville. To the east, Oshawa is the always-elusive seat.

Apart from those, I'd say there's more to get in Scarborough (particularly if Liberal incumbents have to battle one another for nominations based on new boundaries). I think we can also find new seats in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan (after the redistribution), and a few other seats here and there (Vancouver Centre, Wascana, Yukon, a couple in Winnipeg and Nova Scotia).

I've only ever fought campaigns in Edmonton, but from what I know about other parts of the country, I suspect the answer to the question of "how to convert" is quite different in different regions, because the reasons why people vote Conservative are different in different places. For lots of things a unifying national strategy will suffice (such as the wonderful positive message from the last campaign), but for this particular goal, we are going to need to break things down into separate strategies for different regions. Only some of them need to bear fruit, but we have to have all of them in place, just in case.

Or, realize that trying to play the blame game is fighting on what will always be the opponents territory.... even when you manage to win back a piece of it.

StuartACParker wrote:

Many people who vote conservative do so because they are offered blame/punishment narratives. Conservatives are good at finding culprits to blame for things not going right in people's lives. We need to be more aggressive in blaming groups who won't support us anyway for making things worse, in particular financeers and other parts of the business establishment.

Also, Conservatives are trying to own nationalism. We need to contest that directly by putting forward an alternative nationalism and showing them to be weak on Canadian independence e.g. border security integration.

I disagree.  There are many potential NDP-Conservative switchers.  What appeals to them is a populist message.   It has little to do with blame, but more to do with their sense of being ignored and feeling their communities being threatened with economic hard times.  For an object lesson in this see the most recent Ontario provincial election and where the Liberals lost support.

Life, the universe, everything wrote:

StuartACParker wrote:

Many people who vote conservative do so because they are offered blame/punishment narratives. Conservatives are good at finding culprits to blame for things not going right in people's lives. We need to be more aggressive in blaming groups who won't support us anyway for making things worse, in particular financeers and other parts of the business establishment.

Also, Conservatives are trying to own nationalism. We need to contest that directly by putting forward an alternative nationalism and showing them to be weak on Canadian independence e.g. border security integration.

 

I disagree.  There are many potential NDP-Conservative switchers.  What appeals to them is a populist message.   It has little to do with blame, but more to do with their sense of being ignored and feeling their communities being threatened with economic hard times.  For an object lesson in this see the most recent Ontario provincial election and where the Liberals lost support.

I agree. Populism is the way to go. And most successful populism tends to be about identifying a group perceived to be comprised of elites and blaming them.

KenS wrote:

Or, realize that trying to play the blame game is fighting on what will always be the opponents territory.... even when you manage to win back a piece of it.

The Mouseland parable is a prime example of rhetoric that identifies a group of nasty elites responsible for our problems and encouraging a united front against them. All successful populism is based on blame. When Mike Harcourt won in BC, he ran against "special deals for friends and insiders." When Glen Clark won, he ran on the slogan "on your side," and painted Campbell as a puppet of wealthy elites.

All sucessful populism, left and right, involves a blaming us-and-them narrative. It is liberalism that eschews blame in favour of the dream of an ordered technocratic society with a place for everyone and everyone in their place.

In Ontario if you want to build you target the area or areas with the largest concentration of seats -- that is the 905/416 belt. I am not suggesting to ignore the other areas but if one looks objectivly at what the federal conservatives have done since 2004 you will see that they targeted the belt around Toronto and Toronto. it took them a while but they did break into both areas.

I once heard that in Ontario politics if you can not win the majority of Toronto seats then the odds of winning a majority is very slim since how seats are distributed.

ottawaobserver wrote:

Stuart's blaming approach was disproved by the success of Jack Layton's strategy in the last election, and in any event doesn't give much basis for a government to come afterwards. Interestingly, it's not even the approach being followed by Adrian Dix now.

So, you find an example of the NDP winning less than 20% of the seats in English Canada "disproves" my statement about populism? In places where populism plays well, ie.e the West, 2011 wasn't our best result by a long way. Let's compare the proportion of seats won in the West in 2011 to that won in the NDP/CCF's better performances.

In 1968, 1979 and 1984, we won between 20% and 30% of the seats in the four western provinces. In 1953, 1957, and 1980, we won between 30% and 35% of the seats in the West. And in 1988 and 1945, we won 36% and 38% respectively of the seats in the region. In 2011, we took 17% of the seats in the West. When we have been most successful in the West, it has been by crusading against corporate welfare bums, special interests, etc. It has not been by saying, "we're gonna cap your service charges at TD."

I am thrilled that the New Democrats did so well in Quebec. Elated. But the idea that we can somehow win English Canada without a populist message is a crazy dream. Retail social democratic politics got us a majority of the seats in Quebec but that's not what's going to take us over the top in English Canada. We already know what works in English Canada in two-way races: populism -- stoking fear of the other guys, showing them to be in the pockets of an elite minority and showing ourselves to be the voice of, as they say on Occupy Wall Street, "the 99%," the mice in mouseland.

Also, from a basic logic perspective, if I show a bunch of examples of something working, it is not "proved" not to work by virtue of you being able to show something else working. But you haven't even done that.

Agreed NS. But let's remember that there are no non-dangerous routes to 24 Sussex Drive.

Also, I dispute the idea that we're offering a different kind of cat by being populists. One of the reasons people vote for populist candidates is because they see there being less distance between themselves and the candidate than between themselves and some kind of wise, elite manager figure.

Feeling angry and excluded is something we share with most voters. We should be connecting with them on that basis, not downplaying that.

People know there are sides. If we don't draw those distinctions, we cede that role to the Tories. We can show what the sides really are: the intolerant, greedy, rich elites versus the rest of us; or we can let the Tories describe it in their terms: the educated, superior, liberal elites versus regular people.

Well, Stuart, when you run a national campaign that doubles your vote and triples your seat, you'll have a lot more credibility with me. I'm sorry to be rude about this, but I think the NDP showed tremendous growth in Ontario in the final week of the campaign, which was the result of being seen to be viable as a national choice, and being upbeat.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

My point about the tabby cats was not about populism but about becoming just another "centrist" party.  A tabby cat slightly better than either the black or white cats but a cat none the less. If the party strives to much to attract voters who like cats then they risk becoming one.

I'm arguing for populism as an alternative to centrism. Generally, the only time voters in large numbers favour a party that doesn't tack to the middle is when that party runs on a populist message. People only vote for significant change when they are offered a narrative that puts the present situation in stark, urgent terms. If a party is depicted in the press as far right or far left (as we will be no matter how much mealy-mouthed centrist horse shit head office grinds out in 2015), its only hope is to make an anti-elite populist appeal, if, for no other reason, than to explain why the media hates it.

I think you may be importing my argument about target provincial ridigns in southwestern BC from the other thread into this discussion.

The Layton-era NDP's best populist message: "Never let them tell you it can't be done." Yes, it's us-and-themmy, but it's still resoundingly positive and terrifically empowering.

The problem is Stuart you are equating populism with negative campaigning.  That is not a given.  Populism at its heart is articulating the concerns of people in a direct and forthright manner.  I would argue that Layton's call to fix Ottawa was a populist campaign - and it worked pretty darn well.  You seem to want all negative, all the time by creating left versions of scapegoats.  There is plenty of evidence that what you are suggesting doesn't work.  Take the CCF campaigns in Saskatchewan, those were about articulating concerns, not providing evil doers to hate.  The same is true in many other instances where the NDP has won government.  They run a positive populist campaign, about the average person doing better, or getting a better deal or what have you.  Douglas' Mouseland and Cow stories while populist in nature are more about educating people about the situation they face than creating figures to dislike.  Notice in the case of Mouseland in particular it is really a parable about the times, not a look at them story.

Sure there might be some implicit attacks on other groups, but for the most part they are left unsaid. Lewis' corporate welfare bums rallying cry was about the only time in my memory that the NDP went negative in that way and while it returned a highwater mark of seats, given the times (and I was there) they should have been able to do much better and it was not very long after that Lewis lost his own seat and the NDP was greatly reduced in parliament in (was it) 75 (I forget), so there was no long term gain out of that negative campaigning.  (Or it turns out sucking up to the Liberals Mr. Dobbin)

Life, the universe, everything wrote:

The problem is Stuart you are equating populism with negative campaigning.  That is not a given.  Populism at its heart is articulating the concerns of people in a direct and forthright manner.

That's a broader definition than I'm used to. My understanding of populism is that it involves campaigning based on an opposition between two categories of people: "the people" and "the elites." Such a campaign is necessarily one that draws contrasts between the agenda and interests of the elite and those of the rest of us.

Quote:

I would argue that Layton's call to fix Ottawa was a populist campaign - and it worked pretty darn well.

The same can be said of his other campaign messages in 2004, 2006 and 2008. Yet each of those was distinctly different from his campaign in the previous election. Layton's incremental success had a lot to do with his ability to change messages and campaign narratives to fit the opportunities he was presented. Therein lay his genius.

I think that taking the position that the 2011 campaign was the right way to campaign is akin to the followers of that rabbi that told his 18th century Eastern European followers to dress like 18th century Slavic bergers in order to blend in. It is to miss the essence of the message due to a preoccupation with the letter.

Quote:

You seem to want all negative, all the time by creating left versions of scapegoats.

Scapegoats are undeserving recipients of blame. Is the Occupy Wall Street movement scapegoating? Of course not! Because the elites running Wall Street really ARE to blame. The people running the tar sands can't be scapegoated because they really do have a lot to answer for.

Quote:

There is plenty of evidence that what you are suggesting doesn't work.

I witnessed it work very well in a number of elections. You and OO seem to be taking the position that because other things also sometimes work, populism never works. This is illogical. What we should take away from this conversation is that different kinds of messaging work under different circumstances. I am suggesting that the job of consolidating the anti-Tory vote while simultaneously stealing some of their voters is best achieved through a more populist form of campaigning.

Quote:

Take the CCF campaigns in Saskatchewan, those were about articulating concerns, not providing evil doers to hate.

They were clearly about both. As almost all successful NDP campaigns in Saskatchewan have been. Mouseland is a quintessentially populust "us and them" story. There's a reason this was Douglas's greatest parable.

Quote:

The same is true in many other instances where the NDP has won government.  They run a positive populist campaign, about the average person doing better, or getting a better deal or what have you.

Let's take a look at the campaigns the NDP has just run. Which was the most negative of the four provincial campaigns we witnessed? Greg Selinger's campaign in Manitoba, based on messaging that McFayden was going to turn the province's resources over to his elite buddies through sweetheard privatization deals that were part of his hidden agenda.

And which one produced a government? Top tier campaigns are necessarily more negative than second-tier campaigns. Welcome to the top tier!

Quote:

Douglas' Mouseland and Cow stories while populist in nature are more about educating people about the situation they face than creating figures to dislike.

Yeah. Comparing the wealthy elites backing the Saskatchewan Liberal Party to predators who plan to eat you is not demonizing or negative at all.

Also, you again are creating a false binary. The first time you suggested that you could either say the other guys are backed by nasty elites OR addess people's issues Of course, you can do both. Now you're suggesting that you can either educate people OR attack the moneyed elites who are plundering our society. Here, you and I must part company. What kind of lousy education doesn't expose who's making off with our country?

Quote:

Sure there might be some implicit attacks on other groups, but for the most part they are left unsaid. Lewis' corporate welfare bums rallying cry was about the only time in my memory that the NDP went negative in that way and while it returned a highwater mark of seats, given the times (and I was there) they should have been able to do much better

So, we obtained the balance of power, got over 10% of the seats in the Commons and got the best result the party received in Ontario until, depending on how you count it, 1988 or 2011.

Again, you seem eager to throw out evidence that doesn't fit your preconception of a winning campaign.

Life, the universe, everything wrote:

Stuart - quit misrepresenting what people say to fit your world view.  It grows very tedious.  It is clear trying to engage you positively is futile.  Where for instance did I ever say the NDP should not run on a populist platform? I didn't -exact opposite in fact.

But you did so by offering a definition of populism different from the one the rest of us are using. So I'm doing two things: (a) disagreeing with you and (b) not letting you redefine populism.

You appear to oppose one of the central elements of populism while claiming to be a populist. If we're going to have a remotely productive conversation about how we will conduct ourselves in the 2015 campaign, we need a certain degree of precision when mobilizing terms. I think you're bending the definition of populism too far.

Quote:

That fact you are getting your views from history books, where as I actually lived much of it and then go on and ignore that lived history as if it never happened except in a way to prove your trumped up points makes engagement with you in any thread pointless.

I simply don't choose to privilege your representation of these events over others, at this point. My other NDP friends who lived in Saskatchewan in the 40s through 70s don't confirm your narrative of the Douglas and Blakey campaigns not negatively portraying the moneyed elites that opposed them. The fact that their recollections of the campaigns is also consistent with the documentary evidence left behind in the form of campaign materials, newsreel footage, etc. is just the icing on the cake.

I'm not going to referr to all the back and forths here- even implicitly or in a general way. That is not a way to have a discussion.

Above [post37] IP gave a pithy example of Jack Layton's basic communications strategy. And I would make that explicit as: when you attck what your opponents the Conservatives are doing, wrap it with positive propositional politics.

And in the recent discussion at least, I do not see anything Stuart is saying that disagrees with that.

Jack's last letter to us I think did talk solely about positive and propositional politics. But you can bet he never meant for us to do only that. He just knows us well enough to know our tendency to first of all be the critics.

Harper's senior voters were ready to revolt (and vote for Jack) during the last election campaign because he was obfuscating his plans for health transfers. They peristently pressured him and he finally had to agree to maintain the 6% increases that had been made recently.

What the seniors didn't comprehend is that the 6% increase might cover the increase in cost of their own health care, but it will definitely not cover the increase in the numbers of seniors as baby boomers age and require more care.

I suggest focusing squarely on health care costs and Harper's failure to plan ahead for known demands. Convince seniors that the NDP brought them universal healthcare and the NDP will maintain it, and you have the constituency you need to beat him.

KenS wrote:

I'm not going to referr to all the back and forths here- even implicitly or in a general way. That is not a way to have a discussion.

Thanks for going constructive, KenS. I'll try to follow your example. See my response to Deb's post above.