LILLEY: As election starts, remember why campaigns matter

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I have three main rules about politics that can be summed up as follows: voters are fickle, polls can change, and campaigns matter.

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The first two rules are showing up in the wild swings we’ve seen in federal election polling recently. And the third rule is about to be tested.

I’ve been saying this mantra for years and it seemed some on the Conservative side doubted it as they saw their party take a wide lead over the Liberals. Then Justin Trudeau resigned, Donald Trump was sworn in and started making threats on Canada, the Liberals chose a new leader in Mark Carney and suddenly the polls are much tighter.

Now, Liberals are jubilant, many Conservatives are feeling down, but both sides should remember my rules.

Too many of us who cover politics believe voters are choosing a candidate, a leader, a party based on a thorough analysis of the issues. It’s why we talk about policies and pronouncements and demand stupid things like a fully costed platform – a great idea in theory but no party ever sticks to them.

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The truth is, for many people, especially the swing voters that all parties fight for, voting is an instinctive and emotional act, not an intellectual one.

Voters will look at a party leader and ask if they appear trustworthy, do they like the cut of the leader’s jib. They will assess whether they think the leader understands the issues that they personally are facing and make decisions based on that analysis, not an in-depth study of their tax plans, their climate plans or their foreign policy.

How the leaders speak on those issues may feed into that analysis, but it’s the perception, not the policy itself that matters.

That’s why voters are fickle and why things can change.

But, but, the polls …

Partisans love polls when they are going their way and hate them when the polls go against their team. Polling got a bad reputation among many since 2016 due to the perception that polling firms got it wrong on the results of the Brexit vote and the Clinton versus Trump presidential election in the United States.

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The simple fact of the matter is that the polls weren’t wrong in either case – it was the interpretation of the polls that was wrong.

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Right now, I would say the polls currently favour Mark Carney and the Liberals, but the support that has transferred over to the Liberals is soft and could swing back. When the Conservatives were pulling 45% in the polls, some of that was soft support, people parking their anti-Trudeau votes and depending on how things go, we could see things swing back.

Polls are a rear-view mirror tool for examining how the public felt yesterday, or last week.

In 1984, when John Turner took over the leadership of the Liberal Party, Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives had been enjoying a significant lead over the Liberals. Suddenly, with a new leader not named Trudeau, the Liberals had a 10-point lead over Mulroney.

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On election night, the PCs took 50% of the vote, the Liberals 28%.

Polls can and do change all the time, often due to how a campaign rolls out or due to events.

In the 2006 federal election, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were running a near flawless campaign with popular promises like cutting the GST, but they weren’t able to break through.

The Liberals continued to lead in the polls for the first month and then two things happened.

Jane Creba, a 15 year-old girl, was shot and killed while walking out of a pizza shop on Yonge St. in downtown Toronto. Creba was killed and six others were wounded by bullets from a gunfight that had broken out on the other side of the street.

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The second incident was the confirmation by the RCMP that they were investigating allegations of leaks and insider trading on tax changes to income trusts.

Both of these incidents happened within three days and dramatically altered the course of the campaign. Suddenly, voters were focused on crime and ethics and on both issues, the Liberals were looking bad.

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A week later, the polls shifted in favour of the Conservatives, and they kept the lead all the way until the end.

No one saw either event in the campaign happening, but their impact was monumental, making Stephen Harper Canada’s 22nd prime minister.

Some want to declare the looming election over before it has even started. The truth is, there is plenty of time for things to change before any of us put an X on our ballot.

blilley@postmedia.com

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