More forums than ever lead the way to election day

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/02/2016 (3851 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you’re a fan of election debates, the upcoming provincial election campaign looks like it will definitely be your cup of tea.

Although it’s hard to come up with a definitive empirical case, it seems as if there could be a record number of forums and debates leading up to the April 19 election. At the moment, and depending on which party you talk to, there appear to be nearly a dozen events vying for time with the three major party leaders.

Why all the attention on live events?

Simply put, this is one of many unanticipated byproducts of a fixed-date election. With a firm fix on election day itself and a fairly firm fix on the date on which the government will drop the writ (somewhere between March 16 and 22), special interest groups and news media have been able to do a lot more advance planning for live events.

Some of these events will actually take place pre-writ, in the days and weeks leading up to the commencement of the formal campaign; others will be vying for a slot during the actual campaign.

The first leaders’ debate actually took place last November in Brandon, at an event hosted by the Association of Manitoba Municipalities.

Among those events scheduled for pre-writ or writ periods will be a debate hosted by the Free Press and the University of Winnipeg, in partnership with Twitter, on April 4. The fully-interactive debate will take place at on campus at the Ekhardt Grammatte Hall, from 7-9 pm, and will be webcast live at winnipegfreepress.com.

Other invitations in play include: a leaders’ debate hosted by the Manitoba School Boards Association on March 18; a virtual town hall sponsored by Manitoba Teachers Society on April 6; two debates in Brandon on April 7 (Brandon Chamber of Commerce and the Brandon Sun); Manitoba Chamber of Commerce on April 13; Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce on April 14. The three main parties are also in the earliest stages of negotiation with several television stations about one or more televised debates.

It is important to note that just because invitations have been issued does not mean all events will actually take place, or that party leaders will be making an appearance. In fact, it is proving somewhat difficult for sponsoring organizations to get anything more than a smile and a nod from the parties.

That is particularly true with the Progressive Conservatives. Ahead by a large margin in province-wide polls, the Tories have yet to respond formally to any forum/debate invitation. Although it is assumed PC Leader Brian Pallister will eventually take part in some of these events, the Tories are playing their cards close to their vests right now.

It’s not hard to understand why the Tories are more aloof. Front-runners go into these events with targets on their backs. As a result, they have much more to lose and little to gain from wading willingly into a forum designed to give other party leaders a chance to play catch-up.

However, it should also be said that parties lagging in the polls also approach the cavalcade of live election events with some trepidation. Elections are rarely won or lost at a luncheon leaders’ forum; the real work of winning elections involves strategic announcements and lots of door knocking to identify sympathetic voters. As a result, campaign strategists have begun to view live events as a predominantly risky, profoundly wasteful use of their time.

That is why so many forums and debates involve veteran candidates from safe ridings. In 2011, NDP cabinet minister Gord Mackintosh and Tory MLA Kelvin Goertzen appeared at so many forums together it appeared they were car pooling.

But finding warm bodies to attend these events is not the only problem for the parties. The other major concern is that many of the invitations come from special interest groups that, although technically neutral, have political or philosophical bents that make them unfriendly to certain parties and leaders.

NDP strategists will tell you they would never skip a chamber of commerce forum even though it is widely believed the crowd — dominated by business leaders and owners — is somewhat unsympathetic to the current government.

Similarly, Tory organizers have said they are very cautious about accepting invitations from groups focusing on issues like social programs or environmental policies, on the theory the invitations are little more than an opportunity for traditional PC enemies to have a go at their leader.

It was in part because of that last concern that the federal Conservative party became notorious for directing its candidates to ignore community-level forums and debates.

Although deliberately avoiding contact with voters is somewhat anti-democratic, it was hard to argue with the theory among Conservative strategists that most of the event invitations came from groups that were either skeptical or downright hostile towards the Tories. (As one senior federal Tory organizer from Manitoba told me over and over again during the last campaign, “Our supporters don’t organize forums and they don’t go to forums. There is nothing for us at those events.”)

Even with all these concerns taken into account, you can expect to see more forums and debates in this campaign than ever before. Will any of these events do anything to sway voters? It’s always hard to say, but if history is any indication, these events produce very few impactful moments.

But that legacy does not make them any less important or compelling. It’s important to remember that engaged voters and journalists follow live campaign debates and forums not because they influence the outcome of elections.

We follow these events because they might influence the outcome. And in the narrative of any election campaign, the promise of a seminal moment is enough to draw a crowd.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca