Election Ringside: A daily exchange for The Globe and Mail between strategists Tom Flanagan, left, and John DuffyThe Globe and Mail
Election Ringside is a daily e-mail exchange for The Globe and Mail between strategists Tom Flanagan and John Duffy. Check in every weekday afternoon during the 2011 federal election campaign for their insights and opinions about the campaign as it unfolds.
From: John Duffy Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 10:10 a.m. ET To: Tom Flanagan Subject: Election Ringside
Since late last week, folks have been asking me whether or not to expect fireworks in tonight's English language televised leaders debate. Since I've probably contradicted myself on this, sometimes in the same conversation, I should take the opportunity right now to confess a divided mind. The reason is this: Stephen Harper is an incumbent who is clearly ahead by a long chalk, so it's fairly obvious that he doesn't have much of an interest in throwing any long bombs, which carry the risk of interceptions. He'll play a running game tonight. But Michael Ignatieff's strategic posture is more of a puzzler. Most politicians who are down 10 to 12 points at this stage of a campaign are readying some pretty wild throws, going negative, inviting the other guy to step outside and 'settle this like men,' etc. But it doesn't feel like Mr. Ignatieff is moving in this direction. Why?
Part of the answer lies in the idea of variable victory we kicked around yesterday. To emerge from the election in a stronger political position, Mr. Harper needs to enhance his seat-count of 143, hopefully past the 153-seat majority threshold. The bar for Mr. Ignatieff is somewhat lower. But the cousin of this variable victory notion is voter turnout, which is perhaps the key issue for the Liberal campaign, and which does a lot to explain Mr. Ignatieff's surprisingly un-scrappy tone this week, and perhaps tonight.
Recap 2008, where the major parties' votes all declined from the previous campaign, but where almost 80 per cent of the decline was concentrated among Liberal voters. Now ask yourself, what would happen if those Liberals stopped hiding in embarrassment and instead marched out into the bright light of voting day on May 2? A lot would change, even if you factor in that Mr. Harper's percentage of the vote is now greater than in 2008. Assume full Liberal turnout, and at current voter intention polling numbers, once you crunch them through a standard seat-yielding model, you'd actually see the Liberals gather a decent pickup in the 20-seat range, and the Conservatives inch forward towards the majority goal. That's why turnout and voter apathy are so enormously important in this election (shout out to John Ibbitson, who wrote a great piece on this over the weekend that should be required reading.) And what all that means is that right now, both Mr. Harper and Mr. Ignatieff are tantalizingly close to their minimum victory conditions.
This is not to suggest that Mr. Ignatieff plans on settling for a decent but distant second-place finish, as would come at today's numbers. It is simply to argue, rather, that both the Liberal and Conservative campaigns are both going quite nicely, so why take crazy risks? Now, for all I know, Mr. Ignatieff is brewing up a can o' whup and will seek an epic moment with Mr. Harper and we'll all be writing about it in 30 years. But if the debate stays low-key, polite and Canadian, it will be because this election is actually a battle of inches, with victory measured variably.
From: Tom Flanagan Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 10:45 a.m. ET To: John Duffy
Interesting strategic speculations, John. I hadn't thought about it that way before for Mr. Ignatieff. If his goal is really to form what I have called a virtual coalition, he doesn't need to make spectacular gains in the debate. He just has to turn in a solid performance that will help bring back missing Liberal voters, win some additional seats and qualify the Liberals to run a minority government with the help of their two outriders. I'll be very curious to see if he seems to be taking that path tonight.
Here are my thoughts on what Mr. Harper needs to do: His party is running ahead on the ballot question, and he personally has much better leadership rankings than his adversaries. His potential weakness at the moment is trust, because of all the scandalettes that the opposition parties have hyped. And, of course, the leaking of the Auditor-General's draft G8-G20 report only heightens that. (A tip of the hat to Liberal opposition research.)
Anyway, given the situation, Mr. Harper has to appear relaxed and candid in the debates. He cannot afford to look as if he is concealing anything.
I know from experience he is very good at this kind of dialogue in small groups, but the challenge will be to create the same kind of impression amidst the chaos of a leaders debate, where three other opponents are all concentrating their fire on him. Anyway, that's what I'll be looking for tonight, to see whether Mr. Harper seems relaxed, open and candid while parrying attacks and then turning the conversation to the government's economic record.
Incidentally, Chantal Hébert, who is usually quite accurate, was wrong this morning when she wrote that Conservative polling numbers did not go up in 2004, even though Mr. Harper was deemed to have won the English leaders debate. Actually our numbers did spike up, but we squandered the temporary advantage with subsequent mistakes, while the Liberals fought back cunningly. It's all in Harper's Team , Chantal. You should read a few pages every night to put you to sleep!
From: John Duffy Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2:53 p.m. ET To: Tom Flanagan
I agree, Tom, that the trust issue is going to get played up tonight. In fact, I think that for all I have said today and at other times about the measured pace of Mr. Ignatieff's campaign, it looks like they may be trying to make a move here.
Today the Liberals released a new tv ad. The depiction of the Conservative "gravy train" spending on the Toronto summit is a terrific little piece. Cooked up overnight to respond to the Auditor-General's report, the ad makes a sharp criticism - I guess it qualifies as negative - but does it with enough charm and humour to land the blow without giving offence.
Right now, it's an Internet spot. Depending on how the debate goes tonight, I imagine it may be upgraded to the television rotation. My hunch is that the Liberals are seeing a potentially good opportunity it here with the Auditor-General story, and may be probing to see if they have found a vulnerability that will propel them into the second half.
Let me be clear, the Liberals can make a lot of gains in this campaign and still come up very short. Right now, they need to make up some yards, and the period around the debate is a "switch-on" moment when a fair number of folks start to tune in. Don't expect too many fireworks tonight, but I do think the heat will be on over this issue, complete with the attempts to link it to trust that you astutely point out.
From: Tom Flanagan Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 3:13 p.m. ET To: John Duffy
Just to put everything in perspective, let's also remember that the debates are relatively early this year. There will still be 2-1/2 weeks after the debates, plenty of time for parties to respond if they feel they suffered damage. John Turner did well in the 1988 debate, for example, but the Conservatives counterattacked with an expensive ad campaign, and by election time, the debate effect had vanished. So the debates are a very important moment in the campaign, but still just a moment.
I'll start tomorrow with some of my impressions, but it actually takes about 48 hours for the public to reach a conclusion. Most people don't watch the whole two hours, so what's really important is what get's clipped for the evening news. Then the pundits massage it for a day or two and pollsters collect reactions while people think about it. One viewer's quick impressions don't mean much because we all see the event from different perspectives. What's more important is the vector that emerges after a couple of days.
Tom Flanagan is professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a former Conservative campaign manager. John Duffy is founder of StrategyCorp and a former adviser to prime minister Paul Martin.