Going early and long may keep voters home

Opinion

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This article was published 06/08/2015 (3689 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a tight three-way election with a wide array of policies and pledges and clear contrast between the party leaders. But will that be enough to motivate voters to get involved?

In general, campaigns that feature tight races, particularly those where three parties have a theoretical shot at winning, tend to draw voters in greater numbers. Hard-core supporters are motivated to ensure their votes count; estranged or occasional voters get caught up in the campaign excitement.

Canada’s 42nd campaign seems to offer this promising scenario for higher voter turnout. That would be welcome, given Canada has fared poorly in overall federal election turnout for the past 15 years.

In 2011, 14.7 million voters participated. That was only 61 per cent of the 23.9 million voters who were eligible to vote. Since 2000, no Canadian election has seen more than two-thirds of eligible voters vote. You have to go back to 1988 to see a turnout of more than 75 per cent.

This woeful record is producing alarming electoral mathematics.

Consider total turnout of about 60 per cent means only 15 million of nearly 24 million eligible voters would turn out to vote. Assuming it will take about 40 per cent of the popular vote to win a majority, that means the winning party will need only five million votes, or a mere 20 per cent of all eligible voters, to form a government. It’s getting to the point where no winning party will be able to claim it has a mandate to govern.

Fortunately, the current campaign offers some hope of better-than-average turnout. Given the characters and narratives to this point, even the most disengaged citizen should be able to find a reason to vote.

There is, however, one small but worrisome caveat. Even though conditions are ripe for higher turnout, there is a mitigating force — the prime minister’s decision to plunge the country into the longest campaign in 140 years, and the most costly.

Elections Canada originally estimated it would cost $350 million to execute a 37-day campaign. With the writ period more than doubled, those costs could double as well.

On top of the cost of holding the election, there are also rebates to candidates and their parties. Elections Canada paid out more than $60 million in the 2011 election to offset the costs of campaigning; with campaign spending limits doubled, rebates should follow suit. And that excludes the tax credits paid out to individual donors.

Polls released Wednesday show Canadians are unhappy with the length and cost of the election. Nearly six in 10 respondents in a Forum Research poll, taken the day Harper asked for Parliament to be dissolved, gave a thumbs-down on the lengthy campaign.

Regionally, the early election was most unpopular in Atlantic Canada (72 per cent against) and Quebec (69 per cent). Even in the Prairie region, the hotbed of Conservative support, more than half of respondents were uncomfortable with it.

What effect will these sentiments have on voting intentions and turnout? Given we’ve never had a campaign such as this in recent memory, predicting the effect will be difficult.

When Harper first triggered the election, there was widespread speculation it could backfire on the Tories if voters saw it as a blatant act of political manipulation. However, since that early speculation, another scenario has arisen.

It seems likely now voters may look at the cynical decision to call a long and costly election and decide to refrain from voting altogether. In this age of low turnout, voters need precious little justification for not participating.

If the early election call ends up suppressing voter turnout, the Conservatives most definitely stand to gain the most.

Right now, conventional wisdom has the Conservatives with the most stable, committed core group of supporters. However, the Tories also have the least opportunity to grow; poll after poll has shown Harper’s Conservatives are unlikely to draw any support from those leaning toward other parties, or from undecided voters.

Conversely, the Liberals and NDP have lower numbers of committed supporters but theoretically have more room to grow because they are more palatable to undecided voters.

If voter turnout goes down, or stays at average levels, it becomes an advantage to the incumbent Conservatives. Even a small boost in voter turnout would almost certainly boost Liberal and NDP support, and perhaps mitigate the left-of-centre vote splitting Harper needs so desperately to hold on to power.

Harper’s decision to go early and long is easily among the most cynical political strategies in Canadian history. Should voters decide to express their anger by showing up to vote, it will also go down as the riskiest strategy ever.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.