There seems to be a new definition of winning. There was a lengthy Insight article in the Toronto Star last weekend on how the liberals think they won the last election. Signed by the Star’s Susan Delacourt, it must have been dictated by the liberal campaign head Jeremy Broadhurst. Even with that amount of bias, the most you can say is that the election was a draw. Nobody won.
Broadhurst (blushingly) gives the credit to the troops doing the grunt work on the ground game. What stunned me of all the figures kicked around in that article was the figure he used to show the liberal ground strength. He talked about 90,000 volunteers across Canada. We used to have more than that just in southern Ontario—and that was back in the day when you paid a membership fee to be considered a liberal.
And then he points to the 250,000 Canadians who signed up to be a free liberal. I would like to know how many got sick of all the pleas for money and hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button?
Maybe the lists needed some culling as there was likely a preponderance of seniors in the previous membership lists. And what have Justin Trudeau and his team ever done for seniors, other than ignore them?
During the campaign, I had a demonstration in the local liberal committee rooms of the smart phone app used in this campaign by liberal workers. I found the system to be too impersonal and too subject to interpretation. As a campaign manager, I often had to chase down canvassers the next day to get their comments on what they were hearing at the door. There were also times I would grab a canvass kit and spot check an area to verify what was being heard.
I am not sure where the party is getting its campaign managers today but building the competence of the party to win elections is a task that begins the day after the previous election. Technical gimmickry aside, you cannot leave team building for after the writ comes down.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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