No shortage of issues to possibly sway voters

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Conservative attack ads were effective, but more Liberal ads are yet to come.

So, it has come down to this.

Do you resent the Conservative government for its record over the last 30 months? Or do you resent the opposition parties for forcing an election on the country, the fourth federal vote in the last seven years?

Many will argue this election is about more than those two sentiments. And they're right. Voters will have a plethora of smaller issues and sub-issues on which to base their decision. Some will worry about the Conservative government's inability to make progress on climate change, or perhaps there are still some lingering concerns about the prorogation of Parliament, or the snap election in 2008 that came a full two years before a fixed-date election law said it was supposed to occur. Or perhaps our treatment of Afghan detainees, or the anti-recession stimulus spending program.

On the other hand, there will be many voters who believe the Liberals have not fully shed the stench of the Quebec sponsorship scandal, or moved beyond the hubris and arrogance that infected the Grit government in the years before it went from "Canada's natural governing party" to a poor second choice.

In the final analysis, however, all of those other issues will defer to the Tory record and the opposition's decision to bring down the government. And that creates a great irony. The Tories will ask Canadians to vote for them based on their record and the federal budget that was not passed because Parliament was dissolved. And because the opposition has forced an election no one wants.

At the same time, the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois will ask Canadians to vote against the Tories because of their record of ethical abuses and their inability to deliver a dynamic budget.

The final verdict in this election will very much be left in the eye of the beholder.

Who then has the advantage? Some poll results would suggest the Conservatives are in good position to win a majority government. Ipsos-Reid delivered a poll on Friday morning, just a few hours before the House of Commons passed its motion of non-confidence in the Harper government, showing the Tories with 43 per cent support, 19 points up on the Liberals who were pegged at 24 per cent. This most certainly smells like a majority, and yet there are underlying concerns the Tories will have to deal with, and overcome, before it becomes a reality.

Governing parties rarely see their support rise during an election. It has been known to happen; after a majority in 1999, the Manitoba NDP bumped its popular support and seat total in both 2003 and 2007. But many more times, there is a loss of support once a writ has dropped. Why? Theories abound.

In non-election periods, governing parties get the lion's share of media coverage. Government tends to get coverage every time a cabinet minister yawns. Opposition parties will tell you they can go days, even weeks, without a decent media hit thanks to fewer reporters, smaller papers and shorter newscasts. Elections, however, give all competitive parties more or less equal access to the news machine. That eats into governing party support.

And then there are attack ads. The Conservatives have blitzed the Liberals with increasingly hostile and personal advertisements attacking Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. To preserve their election war chest, the Liberals decided to give the Tories a free shot; the Grits did not respond for weeks. As a result, their support started to flag. It's not a difficult cause and effect to figure out. Much of what Canadians know about Ignatieff comes from the Tory attack ads. On that basis, it's not hard to understand how his popularity has remained so low. However, the Liberals are running their own attack ads, and they expect to spend up to Elections Canada's $18-million limit.

Which brings us to another important point: This time around, the Conservatives will not be allowed to exceed the Elections Canada cap. In 2008, thanks to some ingenious accounting, the Tories spent $1 million above and beyond the cap in advertising by charging those costs to individual candidates. That is not on this time around.

The last and perhaps most important reason it seems likely the Tories will see their support drop is the Liberals will be better in this election than 2008. By all accounts, that is a reasonable conclusion because, seriously, how could they be any worse? Former Grit leader Stéphane Dion firmly entrenched himself as the poster boy for electoral incompetence.

His Green Shift -- a carbon-tax proposal that would have seen taxes on fuels used to pay for tax cuts and other environmentally friendly initiatives -- became a dead weight around his party's neck. It is nearly impossible for Ignatieff to perform below those standards.

Over the next five or six weeks, we'll find out whether the Tory record was a curse or a blessing, and whether the election itself is an opportunity or a death sentence. And that should make for a pretty compelling narrative.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 26, 2011 A4