I traded emails with someone earlier today from the Catch22 campaign, which is the latest, though certainly not the only (remember Vote For Environment last time?), attempt to unite voters against the Conservatives. While I’m sympathetic to the desire to elect a progressive alternative, in my emails, I tried to explain why strategic voting doesn’t work (and why I do not support the practice; I believe we must introduce some element of proportionality into our voting system to ensure we get a parliament that reflects the will of the people). I thought I might share some of that here. First, let’s start with what I think is a pretty accurate truism:

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it” – Einstein.

First of all, if you are a true believer that strategic voting will work, there’s really nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. So this is really aimed at a more general audience. And let me be clear: it isn’t just that I think it is futile, it’s that the evidence from 2008 shows that it actually helped the Conservatives. i.e. it doesn’t just “not work”, in most cases¹, it actually has the opposite effect. Why? Let’s see if I can explain… first, we might quote another great scientist:

“To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions.” – Newton

I’m using an analogy of course. But if you try to coordinate Liberal, NDP and Green voters in a given riding to all vote for the same person, that very action will also provoke a reaction from the Conservatives to mobilize its base in the riding (whether that reaction is less, more or equal than yours, I don’t know). It is naive to think that a mobilization campaign in a given riding against the CPC candidate will provoke zero response by the well-oiled and well-funded CPC machine.

So then it becomes a battle of who can mobilize better. The CPC has an easier task because they already know who their voters are and have the people, organizational structure and money in place to mobilize.

The strategic voting campaign (such as Catch22), however, must start from scratch. In it’s present form, their strategy is a media campaign, not a mobilization-on-the-ground campaign. They are, ironically, deploying what I’ve criticized the Green Party for doing — trying to get press and hope the votes will come automatically. It doesn’t work that way. That’s not how your mobilize voters.

The Catch22 campaign (and other strategic voting campaigns) is no different than any that seeks to gets the most people to vote in a particular way — to be effective, you need to canvass these ridings, ID voters who are committed to voting against their party (which is a much, much smaller subset than general Liberal, NDP and Green voters), enter them into a database, and have an army of people on the ground to get your subset of IDed voters to the polls and vote the way you want them to.

And Catch22 (and others) will have to build that database from scratch because I can assure you the grassroots activists in the parties that are not the “chosen” candidate are not going to help you to take away votes from their candidate (these people are die-hard partisans, remember).

Catch22 and others will point to a 2007 Duke University study to “prove” that strategic voting works. But the study is based on a priori voting intentions, not a posteriori actual votes (i.e. exit polls). It’s one thing to *say* you are prepared to vote strategically; it’s quite another to actually do it in the ballot box. We *know* there are differences between what people say they are going to do and what they actually do, otherwise, polls would always be 100% accurate (good consumers of data know that adjustments need to be made). The Duke study shows that on average only 15% of people said they were going to vote strategically across all parties and all years. How many actually did vote strategically we don’t know, but probability theory suggests that given a binary choice (do I vote against my party or not?), the odds are 50:50 that people choose option A vs option B (it’s highly unlikely that 100% did or 100% did not; a normal distribution of choices should be a bell curve with 50% being in the middle). So the most statistically probable bet is that about half those 15% who said they would actually did. So you’re talking 7-8%.

Even still, the period 1993-2000 was when the right was split in Canada, so the willingness to C/Allliance-Reform voters to flip-flop was high, which inflates their %s. Likewise, it also was a period when the NDP was very weak, again inflating their the %s. Post-2004 is quite different, given the emergence of the new “unified” right under the Conservative banner. I would suggest the #s are more like 1988 in the Duke study – that maybe 20% of NDPers say they are willing to vote strategically and 10% of Liberals (I’m rounding for simplicity), and let’s estimate that 30% of Greens would, a reasonable guess (they were not included in the study).

There will also be a direct backlash from people (LPC, NDP, GPC) who take offense to being manipulated in this way, although let’s assume this is small. We know even when supporters from two parties are suddenly told to vote for one, as in a merger (like the PC and CA), there is some amount lost — in their case, about 25-30% (some of that because people stay home). It would be unrealistic to think that there would be no slippage when trying to rally Liberal, NDP and Green voters around one candidate. i.e. 35L/15N/10G in a close race is unlikely to add up to the same 60%. So let’s say conservatively the CPC might see a small 10% bump (which means a 4 pt bump for the CPC if they are at 40).

So let’s do the math. A riding that is C40/L35/N15/G10, after accounting for the slippage might have a baseline that looks like this:

CPC 44
LPC 33
NDP 14
GPC 9

Now let’s say 15% of Greens, 10% of NDP supporters *actually* vote strategically, that means we might expect the Greens to drop to 7.65 and the NDP to 12.6. So the LPC would gain 2.75. You see, it’s less than the 4 pt bump the CPC gets. In fact, what started out as a 5-pt gap is now a 8.25 pt gap. The result would be:

CPC 44
LPC 35.75
NDP 12.6
GPC 7.65

Even if you assuming the same number of people who said they would vote strategically actually do (which is highly improbable) –i.e. the full 30% GPC, 20% NDP), you would still not close the gap; in this case, the NDP would drop 2.8 pts, the GPC 2.7 pts. The results would be:

CPC 44
LPC 38.5
NDP 11.2
GPC 6.3

In fact, the gap is still bigger than it was to start. Left to its own devices a riding that started out as a 5 pt gap, even assuming 100% who say they will vote strategically do (which is highly improbable), it ends up being 5.5 pt gap.

This is just a back-of-the-napkin illustration of course, but it illustrates why I say, in most cases, strategic voting actually hurts more than it helps.

Note
¹ I say most cases because there are exceptional circumstances where it has had an effect. For example, I would say that Linda Duncan’s election in Edmonton-Strathcona, can at least in part be attributed to Liberals and Greens rallying behind her. This is, of course, highly exceptional, because we’re talking about the only even remotely competitive seat in the entire province of Alberta, so quite literally the NDP, Liberals, and Greens can throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into that riding. I would also point to Danny Williams’ ABC (Anybody But Conservative) campaign as a case of strategic voting working, but again, in this case, there was near-universal sentiment in Newfoundland & Labrador that the Conservatives has insulted the province. The move away from the Conservatives was tied to a strong Newfoundlander nationalist sentiments that cannot be expected to be replicated in most cases. You could also point to what happened in Sannich-Gulf Islands last time as a case when NDP and Greens rallied behind Liberal Briony Penn (who still lost by 3-4 points), but again this is a unique case because Penn is an ex-Green and because the NDP candidate withdrew due to scandal. Likewise, Elizabeth May benefited from the absence of a Liberal candidate in Central Nova, and both Liberals and NDPers to some extent backed May (although she still lost by 14 points). So I say most cases; exceptional circumstances offer more hope.

I really should know better than to write about the Greens. Every time I do, I get a wave of emails from Greens. Yesterday was no different. In one of my exchanges, I expanded a bit on how I think Elizabeth May’s campaign is going in Saanich-Gulf Islands (SGI). I thought it might be of value to post some of that here, although I recognize that some Greens would rather not hear about it.

According to GPC sources, after over a year of full-time campaigning and $300,000 spent ($30,000 per month for 10 months, with no funds for the last couple months), the SGI team has identified 3,500 supporters. That’s still more than a third fewer supporters than Guelph (for example) had IDed two years ago at a fraction of the cost (and no doubt Guelph has even more now).

What does this tell us about how the campaign is going? Partisan Greens will no doubt point to the small-sample (i.e. high margin of error) riding poll that was commissioned 18 months ago and say she can win (despite the wide range of possible outcomes, given the high margin of error). And I’m sure we’ll see them roll out more small-sample riding polls soon that show how great she is doing. It’s a common tactic for the Greens to position their candidate as the key challenger.

The problem is, as I’ve said time and time again, these high MOE riding polls are unreliable; they simply offer too little data, are rarely calibrated to the riding demographics, and never adjusted for turnout rates of demographic groups, and often don’t weight the data to the geographic distribution of population within the riding (which is particularly important in SGI, since May will run away with the Islands, but that’s only 13% of the population). The “too little data” claim is easy to see. If such a riding poll shows Lunn and May tied at 30%, what that really means is that May could be ahead by 10 points or Lunn ahead by 10 points; with a range of 20 points in the different possible scenarios, it’s just not that meaningful. They are, in short, a poor metric of projected votes. We’ve had riding polls days before an election that are so far off the actual votes, it’s not even funny (remember how J.P. Blackburn was supposed to lose Jonquiere-Alma by a landslide? um, not quite).

There are far more reliable metrics, including understanding the demographic profile of the riding, the anticipated turnout rates of these different groups, how much of the riding has been canvassed, how many supporters have been identified, the size of the local volunteer team, the threshold required to win, and so on. There are many factors at play.

The # of IDed supporters is especially important because there tends to be a strong (positive) correlation between the # of supporters you’ve IDed, and how many votes you will get. It’s not linear of course, but for example at ~20% support, we might expect the GPC ratio to be about 2.5 votes for every 1 IDed (i.e. they ID about 40% of the votes they get). That’s consistent with what Guelph had in 2008, for example. But to get north of 35% total support (what you need in SGI), I estimate you need to ID closer to 60%. It goes without saying that IDing your support is essential for GOTV (get out the vote) operations on election day, but it’s also essential for building a huge team of volunteers to do the dirty work both now and during the 36-day election campaign. You don’t stand much chance if you don’t know who your supporters are.

Assuming a turnout of about 70,000 in SGI (factoring in a bit of a bump over 2008 since many NDP stayed home since their guy had withdrawn), having IDed 3,500 right now suggests you can count on an absolute floor of 12-13% (8,500 to 9,000 votes). But I suspect it’s even more than that. Demographics alone tell me the GPC could ordinarily expect to get 17% in SGI (I did an analysis last summer with the #s). But this does suggest their canvassing/ID efforts to date are well below expectations. If they were “on par” with the underlying demographics, they should have IDed ~35-40% of what the base demographics suggest by now — i.e. between 4,200 and 4,800 supporters. But given the effort/$ put forth, it should actually be much higher than even that.

But if you need to ID at least 60% to be in a position to win, and you need a minimum of 25,000 votes to win (that would be 35-36% support), it suggests you need to ID at least 15,000 to be in the running. Do the math. They’ve IDed 3,500 in about a yr, about 300 per month. At that rate, they would need another 3+ years to get to 15,000 IDed supporters. But of course, the rate usually declines as you go along, and we’re assuming there are even 15,000 people in the riding willing to vote Green (which there may or may not be).

In case people are wondering, given all the data I’ve seen, and assuming a fall 2011 election (and assuming they continue their work at the current pace), this is what I’m currently projecting (note: a 3% range is about as narrow as I can get it):

SAANICH-GULF ISLANDS
CPC Gary Lunn 37-40%
LPC Rene Hetherington 25-28%
GPC Elizabeth May 21-24%
NDP Edith Loring-Kuhanga 9-12%

This can and will change of course, but it gives you a reasonable sense of where things stand based on the data we have available. So assuming a fall 2011 election, I’m expecting they’ll have IDed ~45% of their votes, or between 6,500 and 7,500 supporters.

Just FYI, here’s what I had projected for EM’s last two tries — as you can see, it wasn’t too far off. So take the above for what it’s worth.

CENTRAL NOVA
CPC Peter Mackay 41-44% (actual: 46.6%)
GPC Elizabeth May 33-36% (actual: 32.2%)
NDP Louise Lorifice 20-23% (actual: 19.6%)

LONDON NORTH CENTRE
LIB Glen Pearson 33-36% (actual 34.9%)
GPC Elizabeth May 22-25% (actual: 25.8%)
CPC Dianne Haskett 22-25% (actual: 24.5%)
NDP Megan Walker 16-19% (actual: 14.1%)

I had just made my wife and I some yummy eggs benedict and brewed my favourite Dunkin’ Donuts french vanilla coffee (mmm…) when I sat down with the paper (read: iPad + wireless) on a fine Sunday morning to catch up on the Canadian political scene. What a way to ruin a fine Sunday morning, my wife said. I laughed, knowing she was of course probably right.

I knew the Green Party convention was this weekend, but I hadn’t come across anything in the news the last couple days, so I did some digging and eventually found a couple of buried pieces. And sure enough, I just about spit my cup o’ joe all over the iPad when I read Elizabeth May’s comments in the Toronto Star. In just a tiny article, May managed to spread at least 3 falsehoods.

(1) Dismissing the membership decline an a “meaningless indicator”
When asked about the precipitous decline in Green Party membership over the last year (they’ve lost 20-25% of their members), May said it was, and I quote, “a meaningless indicator”.

Wow. Members are a meaningless indicator? Nothing could be further from the truth. Members are the lifeline of a political party. They are the people who volunteer their time and energy recruiting others, knocking on doors, hosting events, making phone calls, encouraging their friends to vote, etc. They’re also the bread-and-butter of fundraising. It’s almost unbelievable that May dismisses members so casually (and callously). May’s strategy, of course, is centered on getting as much press for her as possible and seemingly hope that votes will come automatically.

Perhaps this under-appreciation of the value of the on-the-ground work by members explains why, after over a year of full-time campaigning in Saanich-Gulf Islands (SGI), and spending $30,000 every month until the party cut them off in June, her team, according to GPC sources, has identified just 3,500 supporters (note: that’s about 2,000 fewer than Guelph had at the end of the 2008 election). Needless to say, the more supporters you ID, the more people you can ask for help and the more people you can get to the polls on election day. Since it will take a minimum of 25,000 but probably closer to 28,000 votes to win SGI, I’d estimate they need to identify a minimum of 15,000 supporters to be competitive. At only 3,500 now, you can see they’ve got a long way to go.

(2) Membership Renewal Notices
I was just recovering from May’s cavalier dismissal of the large membership decline when I further read that she attributes the loss to people who simply forgot to renew their membership, including her own father. She said, and again I quote, “we actually don’t notify people,” admitting the system is inadequate. “But it’s not my role as leader to work on that,” she said, making clear how low a priority it is for her to build the membership base of the party.

May is either out-to-lunch or simply lying when she says the Greens “actually don’t notify people” that their membership is up for renewal. What an insult to their membership director (Elizabeth Berman), who is nothing is not thorough. Let me introduce to you exhibits A, B, and C (click thumbnail to enlarge).

As you can see, I received not one, not two, but three notices — on Jan 6, Jan 20 and Feb 3 — that my Green Party membership was expiring (I did not renew). Sorry, Elizabeth, the Greens do notify their people of expiring memberships. As leader of the party, you might want to get up to speed on that.

(3) Priority of Electing May in 2008
The third falsehood slipped in at the end of the article — a favourite of May’s — is that the party has never placed electing the leader as a priority. What May really means is that the party has never made getting her and only her elected as the only priority (the current strategy). Certainly, electing May was a priority in 2008. One need only to look at the amount of money that was transferred to and the number of staff members in Central Nova prior to, during, and after the election to know that getting May electing was a top priority. May should not confuse incompetence with lack of priority. What May really means is that other candidates also received financial assistance. But it’s one thing for a candidate to be given a few thousand dollars, but quite another to be given hundreds of thousands of dollars. May equates these when she says getting her elected was of no particular importance.

I should have listened to my wife (as usual); it was good way to ruin a perfectly good Sunday morning. I do applaud May, however — it is a remarkable feat to distort so many truths in so few inches of ink. But does anyone care? Is anyone paying attention? Based on the anemic attendance at the Green Party bi-annual national convention (a mere 250 people), it doesn’t seem that too many people are tuning in anymore.

NATIONAL
Conservative – 134 seats (35.6%) - range: 122 to 154 seats (34.1% to 37.1%)
Liberal – 90 seats (30.2%) - range: 72 to 105 seats (28.7% to 31.7%)
Bloc Quebecois – 49 seats (9.8%) - range: 43 to 55 seats (8.3% to 11.3%)
NDP – 35 seats (16.5%) - range: 26 to 40 seats (15.0% to 18.0%)
Green – 0 seats (6.7%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (5.2% to 8.2%)

ONTARIO
Conservative – 49 seats (38.9%) - range: 46 to 57 seats (37.4% to 40.4%)
Liberal – 42 seats (34.9%) - range: 35 to 47 seats (33.4% to 36.4%)
NDP – 15 seats (16.5%) - range: 12 to 16 seats (15.0% to 18.0%)
Green – 0 seats (8.8%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (7.4% to 10.4%)

QUEBEC
Bloc Quebecois – 49 seats (38.1%) - range: 43 to 54 seats (36.6% to 39.6%)
Conservative – 9 seats (17.5%) - range: 7 to 11 seats (16.0% to 19.0%)
Liberal – 16 seats (26.0%) - range: 12 to 20 seats (24.5% to 27.5%)
NDP – 1 seat (13.6%) - range: 1 to 2 seats (12.1% to 15.1%)
Green – 0 seats (4.0%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (2.5% to 5.5%)

BRITISH COLUMBIA
Conservative – 21 seats (41.2%) - range: 19 to 23 seats (39.7% to 42.7%)
Liberal – 6 seats (22.5%) - range: 5 to 7 seats (21.0% to 24.0%)
NDP – 9 seats (25.3%) - range: 7 to 11 seats (23.8% to 26.8%)
Green – 0 seats (9.5%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (8.0% to 11.0%)

ALBERTA
Conservative – 27 seats (62.7%) - range: 27 to 28 seats (61.5% to 64.5%)
Liberal – 0 seats (15.2%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (13.7% to 16.7%)
NDP – 1 seat (8.3%) - range: 0 to 1 seats (6.8% to 9.8%)
Green – 0 seats (11.4%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (9.9% to 12.9%)

PRAIRIES
Conservative – 21 seats (48.4%) - range: 18 to 23 seats (46.9% to 49.9%)
Liberal – 3 seats (28.1%) - range: 2 to 5 seats (26.6% to 29.6%)
NDP – 4 seats (16.9%) - range: 3 to 5 seats (15.4% to 18.4%)
Green – 0 seats (5.8%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (4.3% to 7.3%)

ATLANTIC CANADA
Conservative – 7 seats (31.1%) - range: 6 to 10 seats (29.6% to 32.6%)
Liberal – 21 seats (43.8%) - range: 18 to 24 seats (42.3% to 45.3%)
NDP – 4 seats (20.6%) - range: 3 to 4 seats (19.1% to 22.1%)
Green – 0 seats (3.7%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (2.2% to 5.2%)

NORTH
Conservative – 0 seat (32.9%) - range: 0 to 2 seats (31.4% to 34.4%)
Liberal – 2 seat (33.4%) - range: 0 to 2 seats (31.9% to 34.9%)
NDP – 1 seat (23.4%) - range: 0 to 1 seats (21.9% to 24.9%)
Green – 0 seats (9.7%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (8.2% to 11.2%)

see http://www.democraticspace.com/canada2009/ for details.

I feel obligated to follow up on a story I’ve been following, although I’m fairly certain most of my readers don’t really care about the internal politics of the Green Party. Even still, I can report that Green Party members green-lighted (which means passed without debate in Green lingo) motions to change the party leader’s term from a 4-year term to an indefinite one by 74% and endorsed current leader Elizabeth May by 85%. Of course, that Green members did not red-light (i.e. reject) a single one of the 74 motions up for vote tells you how silly their online voting process is. In fact, technically, there are contradictory motions that were yellow-lighted (to be debated at the convention next weekend) including a motion that would call for an immediate leadership race and other leadership related items (although don’t expect these to go anywhere). These results are not surprising (at least not to me), although when 82% of members don’t bother to participate, it’s hardly a victory for democracy — yes, turnout was just 18% (although ironically that was higher than last time).

Let’s put some (rounded) numbers to illustrate the conundrum the Greens face (note: I’ve updated the numbers to reflect the actual results; it appears I was being generous in my initial estimates):

# of GPC members before this yr = 10,500 (roughly)
# who quit this year = 2,300 (roughly)
# remaining as of now = 8,200 (roughly)
# who voted online = 1,500 (but only 1,000 on the leadership question)
# who endorsed May = 846
# who endorsed a term change = 679

As you can see, politics is largely self-selecting. Before balloting even began, over 2,000 GPC members (i.e. over 1-in-5) had already voted — with their feet — and left the party. We can only speculate why they left, but it’s probably not unreasonable to guess that a small percentage of them were EM supporters or perhaps we might say that a majority of them were probably not May supporters. So it’s probably not too much of a stretch to say that those who are still GPC members today are largely May supporters. One wonders how the online voting would have looked before the mass exodus of members.

Secondly, as has been reported, the vote was manipulated. Some might say manipulated is too strong a word — perhaps influenced? Others might say it’s fair game for the leader, Council, and their supporters to run a propaganda campaign to promote their favoured positions. Personally, while I don’t have a horse in this race since I have no longer have any affiliation with the Greens, I think these maneuvres were unethical, as May and her supporters were in a clear conflict of interest position. The fact is, the average member doesn’t pay attention to internal machinations. So when they get an email from the leader telling them what they should (and shouldn’t) do, they probably do it. And when they read “party considerations” warning them of the dire consequences of some motions, they probably heed them. And when they see that “Federal Council” has proposed a motion, again they probably are inclined to support it. And when they get a PDF with instructions from “supporters of Elizabeth May” telling them explicitly what to do, they probably follow them.

That so many people already left and the vote was manipulated ensured (at least in my mind) that the Council motion to change the leader’s term just as it was about to expire would be green-lighted and that May would be overwhelmingly endorsed. But the GPC is hardly better off today for all these acrobatics. After all, over 1-in-5 members have quit. And of those remaining, 1-in-6 have said they’d rather have nobody than May (i.e. the 15% who refused to endorse May), and 1-in-4 are uncomfortable with giving her (and subsequent leaders) an indefinite term. Of the 10,500 members they had a year ago, only 846 have stood up to endorse May today.

So while the outcome was not a surprise, one gets the sense that it was a Phyrric victory (and a battle that could have been avoided by simply following the constitution; the end result would have been the same). I suspect that a majority of those left in the party are probably more May followers than Green followers (some have called this phenomenon “the Elizabeth May Party”). One certainly wonders what will happen to those people when May eventually leaves (although with an indefinite term with a low review threshold, I am not of the opinion that May will leave even if she does lose in Saanich-Gulf Islands — and no, I don’t think Council will accept Steve May’s argument (part 1 and part 2) that the leadership review requires 60% of all members in good standing as opposed to 60% of voting members).

So while partisan Greens will certainly celebrate these results, the fact that so many voted with their feet even before votes were cast doesn’t bode well for them at the ballot box next time. It remains to be seen if the Greens have helped themselves or just prolonged the inevitable.

Jeffrey Simpson argues that we should end public financing of political parties because one party, the Bloc Quebecois, is separatist and they’ve benefited from the subsidies. It’s an argument that only an anglo federalist could even attempt to make. I’m sure Quebec-bashers in English Canada will nod their heads in approval at his flawed logic, but the argument is so weak, I’m surprised the Globe and Mail even ran it. There are at least 3 reasons why Simpson’s logic is flawed: (1) there shouldn’t be a policy litmus test for determining if political parties should receive public financing, as Simpson implies, (2) there is no evidence to suggest that the Bloc is directing its supporters to donate instead to the Parti Quebecois as he claims, and (3) Simpson fails to understand the reason why the Bloc receives a lower share of private contributions than other parties — because Quebeckers as a rule don’t donate to non-profit organizations as much as people in English Canada.

(1) The idea that there should be some sort of policy litmus test for parties to pass in order to qualify for public subsidies is asinine. Should we end public financing because some people advocate smaller government? Or some want to tax carbon? The fact that one of the pillars of the Bloc’s platform is Quebec sovereignty is irrelevant to the debate as much as the fact the Greens want to tax carbon, or the Conservative want to cut the size of the federal government. If people think it’s a bad idea, they won’t vote for it. But the fact is, for a small minority of people in Canada (and even a minority of people in Quebec), sovereignty is a policy that has some measure of support. People in English Canada don’t have to like that but it would be pretty undemocratic to say that we should scrap the entire system because we don’t like one aspect of one party’s platform.

(2) Simpson points out that a higher percentage of the Bloc’s funds come from public sources than from private donations than other parties — he uses ratios, but percentages are more clear — only 24% of the Bloc’s funds come from donations, as compared to 50% for the Liberals and NDP and 63% for the Conservatives (he didn’t mention the Greens but they are about 47%). Simpson claims that this is, in part, because Bloc supporters are instead donating to the provincial wing of the sovereignty movement (the Parti Quebecois): “[the Bloc] doesn’t try very hard to raise money, because federal largesse to parties means the Bloc can tell its core secessionist supporters to donate instead to the Parti Québécois”. But of course, Simpson provides absolutely no evidence to back that up. I would have hoped that a national columnist of Simpson’s stature would be willing to do research to back up his claims. Does the Bloc tell its supporters not to donate to it, but instead to the Parti Quebecois? And how much does the PQ raise, as compared to the BQ? And what percentage of those funds can we attribute to people who would ordinarily donate to the Bloc but donate instead to the PQ because they’ve been told to by the Bloc (even if they do)? And even still, there’s not a 1-to-1 between BQ and PQ support; for example, given the declining support for the Quebec provincial Liberals, it would not be surprising to see the PQ outpoll the BQ.

(3) But most importantly, Simpson doesn’t seem to understand Quebec culture; if he did, he would know that Quebeckers as a rule don’t donate to *any* cause as much as those in English Canada. Quebeckers are more pre-disposed to pay into a public system through their taxes and in return expect high quality public services. That is, Quebeckers look to the public sector more than the non-profit sector to provide services. This is equally true of political non-profits as it is environmental, religious, or otherwise. Take a look:

source: HRSDC

As you can see, Quebeckers donated on average $150 vs a Canadian average of $340. But that $340 includes Quebec. As you can see, the 5 biggest provinces outside of Atlantic Canada average about $400 (it’s about $300 in Atlantic Canada, so call it about $380 in English Canada). So Quebecers donate at roughly 40% the rate that English Canadians do. If Bloc supporters followed this pattern, we might expect that contributions would account for only 40% as much as they do for other parties (recognizing that there is some lowering of the other parties since they also operate in Quebec, so it’s not a perfect comparison) — that would mean we might expect contributions to account for 19-25% of the Bloc’s funds (i.e. 0.4 times the 47-63% that the other parties have). And as noted above, private contributions account for 24% of the Bloc’s funds. So, this is entirely consistent with Quebeckers donating patterns.

Whether you like public political financing or not, Simpson’s logic is simply flawed and his argument weak. Unfortunately, most people will have a false impression of the reality of the situation and probably come away agreeing with him.

Update: as Mark (Report on Greens) also points out in the comments — citing the Pundit’s Guide — while the Bloc central party raises less, it’s EDAs out fund-raise “raise a greater proportion of their revenue in their riding associations than do the other parties” (as noted by Pundit’s Guide’s Alice Funke). In other words, its fundraising efforts on concentrated at the local level, not the party level. Consider that a fourth reason why Simpson’s logic is flawed… Alice now has a rebuttal in the Globe that makes the point. Click HERE for a PDF breakdown assembled by Alice at Pundit’s Guide. See the breakdown below:

John McCain’s presidential campaign was a fine mess in August 2008 when he reached into his bag o’ cheap political tricks and pulled out a Sarah Palin. The dynamic of the race was instantly transformed. And it worked… that is, until Palin actually spoke. It was clear that, despite her aw-shucks “folksiness”, Americans just didn’t think she was up to the job. Her subsequent interviews showed just how shallow McCain’s choice was — she was clueless on both substantive and trivial matters.

Is it possible that Green Party leader Elizabeth May just had her own McCain moment by naming ex-NHL enforcer Georges Laraque as Deputy Leader of the Greens? (notwithstanding the obvious colossal difference in importance between the VP of the USA and DL of the GPC) It may be too soon to tell, but there are parallels…

May’s party, like McCain campaign in 2008, is in a mess (declining membership, de-registered EDAs, shrinking contributions, declining poll numbers, in debt, etc) and her cadre has been under fire of late for doing all kinds of acrobatics to change the party’s constitution at the last minute to avoid facing the membership in a leadership vote at this month’s GPC convention. Faced with this mess, May needed to change the channel and get a momentary boost heading into the convention. Enter Laraque.

It’s actually a time-honoured political tradition when a politician finds him/herself in trouble to pull a publicity stunt to change the channel. Unfortunately, these stunts rarely endure. As McCain’s choice of Palin demonstrated, at the end of the day, people will see the publicity stunt for the cheap trick it is; and ultimately, it just makes them look desperate. It may well be the same with May’s McCain moment as well.

I was reserving judgment on the move until I read the National Post’s interview with him. The early returns are not exactly flattering. When asked to name his top 3 Green policies, Laraque responded:

“I just got a big book about all the policies. If you ask me in a month, I’ll be able to tell you. So far, the biggest policy is about promoting the environment. In the coming weeks, I will be studying and meeting and reading with Elizabeth [May] a lot more on those environmental policies to be more informed on the specific policies that they have.”

Oh boy… Moreover, that Laraque has so many other things on the go that he doesn’t want to “tie himself up” with the Greens — he’s not even going to run as a candidate — makes me wonder how long this marriage will last. In some ways, it reminds me of the Blair Wilson stunt. It was bad enough that the GPC made the Laraque announcement in B.C. (and not Québec) on the Saturday of a long weekend when people were more interesting in consuming brews than news, but to have Laraque doing front-page interviews so ill prepared is simply amateur hour. It’s really not unlike what happened when Palin first spoke to the media.

Let me be clear: I’m critical not because I think Laraque is a bad guy (on the contrary, I applaud his activism), but rather because I think this is a case of both parties (May and Laraque) seeing a mutual benefit from what amounts to a publicity stunt. May is trying to change the channel and Laraque being able to claim a title with the Greens helps his green business pursuits. I just don’t believe this will be a durable, long-term serious partnership.

Of course, May has come to Laraque’s defense saying he’s a “fresh face” who is “not a policy wonk”, echoing McCain’s characterization of Palin two years ago. And as far as I can tell, Laraque likes the Greens because… well… he watched a documentary 18 months ago which prompted him to become vegan plus he likes animals and thinks we should care about the environment. That’s all well and good, but hardly enough to be second-in-command of a party receiving almost two million in taxpayer dollars.

One key difference between May and McCain, however is that while McCain portrayed Palin as an “everyday” person — Jane America — May is explicitly counting on Laraque to “use his celebrity status” to court voters. As May said, with a straight face: “I was looking for someone who could really take us to the next level.” This is consistent with May’s strategy of getting press and expecting the votes to flow automatically (needless to say, this is folly — you *earn* votes by doing work on the ground, at the grassroots level, not with publicity stunts — a lesson that after four years on the job May is clearly still learning).

Even still, May is vastly overestimating Laraque’s celebrity. The reality is — and not to disparage the guy but since the Greens keep calling him an “NHL star” — if we’re being honest, he was a fringe NHLer who wasn’t especially well-liked at his last stop in Montreal. While May claimed “we are very fortunate he is willing to stop playing hockey and help his country,” the truth is, he didn’t really choose to stop playing, he was bought out of his contract and unable to land an NHL job this summer.

No doubt partisans (in this case, people whose allegiance is more to May than the party) will applaud her choice, just as die-hard Republicans did of McCain’s choice of Palin. That’s what partisans do. But I suspect the Canadian public will not be so easily fooled.

Is Laraque here to stay or is he just the latest in a series of parlour tricks meant to short-cut the more difficult task of building the Green party’s grassroots for the long run? Only time will tell whether this was May’s McCain moment or not.

It seems that some Greens don’t believe my claim that the GPC has seen a 20% decline in average party support from this time 2 yrs ago (i.e. a few months before a prospective election). So I thought I would explain it. The most reliable metric of where a party currently stands is the average of the most recent poll data from all the major pollsters. This not only gives us a larger sample size, thus smaller margin of error, than individual polls (albeit over a longer polling period), but it also evens out the differences in sampling methods (some pollsters use traditional telephone polling, others select from online user groups, some prompt for party names, some don’t prompt, some include leader names, the wording is all slightly difference, some ask the support question up front, some at the end, and so on).

Here are the latest numbers by the major pollsters for the Greens:

Ekos – 10.1%
Environics – 6%
Angus Reid – 7%
Ipsos – 10%
Harris/Decima – 10%
Nanos – 5.1%
Average = 8.0%

So the Greens are currently polling 8.0%. Now let’s compare this to summer 2008:

Ipsos – 11%
Environics – 8%
Harris/Decima – 13%
Angus Reid – 8%
Strategic Council – 10%
Average = 10.0%

So the polling average is running 2 points lower than in 2008, i.e. 2/10 = 20% lower. Hence my claim that the Greens are down 20% from two years ago.

Update: I thought I would just copy a comment I made below to address the question of whether this drop of 2 points is significant…. the aggregate data gives us 10,874 samples (note all data is publicly available, see Wikipedia for links), which gives a margin of error at the 95% confidence level (i.e. 19 times out of 20) of +/- 0.9%. So the current data tells us that we can be 95% confident that the GPC is between 7.1% and 8.9% (i.e. 8.0% +/- 0.9%). Assuming the MOE is similar for the 2008 data, back then would have said we could be 95% confident that the GPC is between 9.1% and 10.9% (i.e. 10.0% +/- 0.9%). As you can see, the low end of the 2008 data is higher than the high end of the 2010 data, which suggests that the drop from 10% to 8% is beyond the margin of error of the data, thus is notable.

…put another way, at 95% confidence, there is only a 2.5% chance (100-95/2) that the GPC is above 8.9% right now and a 2.5% chance that the GPC was below 9.1% in 2008. So the probability of both those events occurring (such that the GPC is NOT statistically below where they were two years ago) is 0.06% (0.025 x 0.025), i.e. virtually no chance. Is it possible the actual GPC support is less than 20%? Yes. There is a 0.06% chance that the actual GPC support is essentially unchanged, i.e. only 0.2 points (or 2%) less than 2008 (high-end 2010 = 8.9 vs low-end 2008 = 9.1)…the scenario I describe above. But that’s the same probability that the difference is actually 3.8 points (or 38%) less than 2008 (i.e. low-end 2010 = 7.1 vs high-end 2008 = 10.9). So the odds that the GPC has declined by only 2% is the same the odds that the GPC has declined by 38%. What we know is the average decline is 20%, as I claimed.

Note: it should be said that latent support (from the polling average) is not the same as projected votes for many reasons: last-minute changes in support, strategic voting, differences between party supporters’ demographics and turnout rates, differences between the scale and sophistication of get-out-the-vote operations between parties, and so on. e.g. the Greens were at 10% in summer 2008, 9% by the end of the fall campaign, translating to 6.8% at the ballot box. If it followed the same pattern this time (and it may or may not), the Greens at 8% now, might expect 7.2% by the end of a fall campaign, translating to about 5.5% at the ballot box.

NATIONAL
Conservative – 142 seats (36.6%) - range: 124 to 162 seats (35.1% to 38.1%)
Liberal – 77 seats (28.7%) - range: 63 to 100 seats (27.2% to 30.2%)
Bloc Quebecois – 52 seats (10.4%) - range: 43 to 55 seats (8.9% to 11.9%)
NDP – 37 seats (17.0%) - range: 28 to 42 seats (15.5% to 18.5%)
Green – 0 seats (6.2%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (4.7% to 7.7%)

ONTARIO
Conservative – 53 seats (40.0%) - range: 46 to 61 seats (38.5% to 41.5%)
Liberal – 38 seats (34.0%) - range: 31 to 47 seats (32.5% to 35.5%)
NDP – 15 seats (17.1%) - range: 12 to 16 seats (15.6% to 18.6%)
Green – 0 seats (8.0%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (6.5% to 9.5%)

QUEBEC
Bloc Quebecois – 52 seats (40.3%) - range: 43 to 55 seats (38.8% to 41.8%)
Conservative – 8 seats (17.3%) - range: 6 to 11 seats (15.8% to 18.8%)
Liberal – 14 seats (25.5%) - range: 12 to 20 seats (24.0% to 27.0%)
NDP – 1 seat (13.2%) - range: 1 to 2 seats (11.7% to 14.7%)
Green – 0 seats (2.9%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (1.4% to 4.4%)

BRITISH COLUMBIA
Conservative – 20 seats (39.9%) - range: 18 to 24 seats (38.4% to 41.4%)
Liberal – 5 seats (19.2%) - range: 3 to 6 seats (17.7% to 20.7%)
NDP – 11 seats (28.5%) - range: 9 to 12 seats (27.0% to 30.0%)
Green – 0 seats (10.8%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (9.3% to 12.3%)

ALBERTA
Conservative – 27 seats (63.7%) - range: 27 to 28 seats (62.2% to 65.2%)
Liberal – 0 seats (16.2%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (14.7% to 17.7%)
NDP – 1 seat (9.0%) - range: 0 to 1 seats (7.5% to 10.5%)
Green – 0 seats (8.7%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (7.2% to 10.2%)

PRAIRIES
Conservative – 22 seats (48.8%) - range: 20 to 23 seats (47.3% to 50.3%)
Liberal – 2 seats (23.2%) - range: 2 to 3 seats (21.7% to 24.7%)
NDP – 4 seats (17.5%) - range: 3 to 5 seats (16.0% to 19.0%)
Green – 0 seats (9.7%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (8.2% to 11.2%)

ATLANTIC CANADA
Conservative – 11 seats (35.4%) - range: 7 to 13 seats (33.9% to 36.9%)
Liberal – 17 seats (40.7%) - range: 15 to 22 seats (39.2% to 42.2%)
NDP – 4 seats (19.2%) - range: 3 to 4 seats (17.7% to 20.7%)
Green – 0 seats (3.9%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (2.4% to 5.4%)

NORTH
Conservative – 1 seat (34.0%) - range: 0 to 2 seats (32.5% to 35.5%)
Liberal – 1 seat (32.1%) - range: 0 to 2 seats (30.6% to 33.6%)
NDP – 1 seat (24.0%) - range: 0 to 2 seats (22.5% to 25.5%)
Green – 0 seats (9.2%) - range: 0 to 0 seats (7.7% to 10.7%)

see http://www.democraticspace.com/canada2009/ for full details.

After my update on the Green Party’s mess the other day, I received a number of emails basically asking me (and I’m paraphrasing) “how are the Greens different from the other parties?” It’s a fair question and goes to heart of why should someone vote Green. Greens typically say something about “transcending” the left-right political spectrum, but that really just begs the question (it allows the party to fill a vacuum for people dissatisfied with all parties, but that quickly hits a ceiling, as they are seeing right now).

The basic question is, are the Greens offering something that other parties are not? If they are not, why should someone vote for them? Elizabeth May has positioned the Greens on the left to centre-left, somewhere between the NDP and Liberals, which means competing directly with the NDP and Liberals for votes. So for the Greens to win votes, they must take them directly from the NDP or Liberals.

Yet, there has been a vacancy in the Canadian political spectrum since the merger of the Alliance and PC party — the centre-right, what we used to call “Red Tories”. The NDP are left, the Liberals are centre-left and the Conservatives are right, but there is no centre-right option. I believe this is a hole that Greens could fill and it would make the Greens much more relevant to Canadian politics. And there are a lot of current Greens who consider themselves Blue-Green, and would embrace a centre-right approach. But there are also a lot who are not, so no doubt this approach would push some current Greens away (probably to the NDP).

But think about. If you are socially progressive, care about the environment, peace and social justice, why not just vote NDP? Not as pro-union as the NDP? Then why not just vote Liberal? But why would you vote Green when you have at least two other options on the Canadian political left? (three in Quebec)

The fact is, for the Greens to be relevant, they have to offer something different. And they aren’t different enough right now. For the Greens to be electorally successful, they need a clear identity; embracing the Red Tory tradition would give them an explicit identity — socially progressive, fiscally conservative, which actually is a almost uniquely Canadian tradition.

Think about it — let’s imagine a Green Party that explicitly positions itself as Red Tory. Perhaps it could campaign around a half-dozen themes, such as:

(1) small business economy
(2) regional autonomy
(3) electoral reform
(4) balanced budgets
(5) social progressivism
(6) environmental protection

Whatever the specific big ideas, if successful, an explicitly Red Tory alternative could change Canadian political math in several key ways. First, it would draw from an existing base of Red Tory support, which is perhaps as much as 15% of voters (many of whom have stayed home in recent elections; although realistically a Red Tory Green party would only get a portion of them). You might lose a good chunk (maybe 1/3) of existing Green support, but the net result is probably a more regionally-concentrated base of about 10% versus a sparely distributed base of about 5%. That difference alone could win the Greens some seats. But just as importantly, it would chip away at the Conservative support in important places. And it would also lessen the vote split with the NDP and Liberals, allowing them to also gain seats. The big losers with this approach would of course be the Conservatives, but the Greens, Liberals and NDP would all benefit. Even without electoral reform, the net result is probably a much more balanced parliament that better approximates the will of the people.

So, what do you think, should the Greens become an explicitly “Red Tory” party?