Harper should have seen it coming

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 11:23 AM - 12 Comments

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the reckless way Prime Minister Stephen Harper all but dared his opponents to form a coalition—providing them a catalyst for colluding and ample grounds for arguing their plan is legitimate—is that he has clearly thought through coalition scenarios in the past.

The fact that he contemplated forming a coalition of some sort with the NDP and Bloc in 2004 is now beyond dispute: along with Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton, he put it in writing. But there is also no doubt that he worried about the prospect of a Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition much more recently, during the fall election campaign.

About one week before the Oct. 14 vote, a change of tone took hold in Harper’s campaign rhetoric. Stéphane Dion’s campaign, after being written off by many early on, was showing signs of life in the stretch run. On the hustings in British Columbia, Harper suddenly seemed to sense danger, and he turned up the rhetorical intensity a few notches.

At a new conference in Victoria on Oct. 8, he caught reporters off guard by presenting the hypothesis that Stéphane Dion might actually become prime minister, but not necessarily in the usual way. “If you get Prime Minister Dion either directly or by the opposition parties helping him take power,” Harper said, “…interest rates are going to be going up.”

Leaving that interest rates warning aside, clearly Harper was thinking about something like the scenario we now face. Which makes it all the more surprising that he allowed it, or even caused it, to unfold. If he hadn’t really considered this possibility, he’d might seem less culpable. But since he demonstrably saw in various contexts how a coalition might emerge, his strategic blunder appears all the worse, and the damage to his reputation as a parliamentary strategist that much more severe.

Can slow and steady win the race?

By John Geddes - Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

On the day before Stephen Harper called this election, one of his senior aides framed the campaign around the two questions Conservatives hoped people would have on their minds as they entered the voting booth. The first amounted to a bet that middle-class Canadians would see something of themselves in the incumbent Prime Minister, but not in Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion: “Which leader is more like you?” is how the aide put it. And so the country was introduced to the sweater-vested Harper, and soon heard him making family-friendly niche promises like a tax break for kids’ music lessons. The second question was harder-edged, and its urgency grew as the race unfolded against a backdrop of financial-market carnage: “Which leader would you rather have managing the economy in tough economic times?”

The Tories started out sure that Harper would win hands down over Dion if guiding a troubled economy emerged as the top-of-mind concern. But they got far more than they could possibly have bargained for. Their planned steady-hand-at-the-tiller message began to sound strangely passive as the market turmoil worsened. Greg Lyle, head of the polling firm Innovative Research Group and a one-time strategist for former Ontario Tory premier Mike Harris, said Harper failed to fully exploit voters’ clear inclination to see him as the better economic manager. “The Conservatives look good on the economy at first glance,” Lyle said. “But then you ask, ‘Well, what are they doing?’ And that’s where they run into trouble, because their general approach is not to have the government mess around a lot. In a crisis, the public likes to see the government doing something.”

So with a week left to campaign, Harper tried to add a bit of activist oomph to his stay-the-course economic theme. He announced $200 million over four years for each of two key federal sectoral subsidy funds, the Strategic Aerospace Initiative and the Automotive Innovation Fund. These fresh promises were aimed directly at Central Canada’s manufacturing hubs, and particularly Ontario, which happens also to be home to the last cluster of winnable ridings offering Harper a chance to eke out a majority or, more likely, expand his minority.

Harper used a lunch speech in the heart of Toronto’s anxiety-ridden financial district to urge long-term confidence in Canada’s economic fundamentals. He tried to persuade a worried business crowd to take a brave look out beyond the storm clouds on the near horizon, predicting Canada “will come out of the current international downturn stronger, better, and more prosperous than ever.” But he also took the odd step of reflecting, as his aides had been doing for a few days, on how he had seen economic strife coming all along. He rather awkwardly quoted himself, at length, from another speech he gave in Toronto, six months earlier, when he warned of “global financial volatility.”

Boasting about a track record for issuing accurate forecasts is standard salesmanship from brokers and bank economists. But being reminded about what the Prime Minister predicted last winter might be cold comfort for Canadians watching the mutual funds in their RRSPs shrivel this fall. It’s easier, though, to pick over weaknesses in Harper’s message than to suggest lines that would work better. History shows that a Canadian prime minister who goes to the polls under an economic cloud faces a daunting task. Before this fall’s slump, according to Statistics Canada, the country endured six recessions since 1960, the last one ending in 1991 (just before the Tories were all but wiped out in the 1993 election). In the federal election that followed each of those recessions, the party in power was either reduced from a majority to a minority, or lost power altogether.

Politics buffs with long memories might argue about how definitive economic concerns were in some of those campaigns. Still, the dismal history of governing parties that had to answer for hard times has to be worrying for Tories. Harper’s approach is to downplay the extent of the crisis in Canada, beyond the undeniable drop in the value of equities. In Toronto, he made no mention of the possibility of lost jobs, seeming to suggest the damage might be contained to securities markets. He even alluded to the chance of making some shrewd stock deals. “I think there’s probably some great buying opportunities emerging in the stock markets as a consequence of all this panic,” Harper told reporters. “Let’s put this in perspective. It’s a big drop in the stock market. It hits a lot of people. They are going to get their statement, and getting their statement is upsetting. At the same time, stock markets do go up and down, and governments can do very little about stock markets.”

That sort of talk probably plays to Harper’s strengths, even if it sounded more calculated than comforting. Sweater-vested or not, he was never really going to convince voters that public displays of empathy represent his authentic personality. The real Harper is more present in a refusal to be rattled. It remains to be seen how that plays, though, particularly in southern Ontario, where export-driven manufacturing is heavily exposed to any contraction of U.S. markets, and a large clump of seats remained winnable for the Tories, even as their polling numbers declined from early campaign highs. In fact, as the campaign entered its final days, both the economic news and the campaign’s focus were converging on Ontario.

It wasn’t expected to be that way. Earlier in the race, the road to historic Tory gains— maybe enough for a majority—seemed to run straight through francophone Quebec. After winning 10 seats in and around Quebec City in 2006, the Conservatives seemed poised to cut deeply into remaining Bloc Québécois bastions. The Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Polling, or LISPOP, at Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University, projects how many seats each party would win in each province based on shifting public opinion polls. Early in the campaign, LISPOP projected 22 new Quebec seats for the Tories—only nine short of the 31 they would need nationally, above the 124 MPs they returned in 2006, to secure a House majority. But by last week, dissonance between Tory talk and Québécois values, on culture cuts and stiffer penalities for teenaged criminals, had hurt Harper to the point that LISPOP was forecasting he would hold roughly the same number he won last time.

In previous eras, being held to a handful of Quebec seats would have doomed a Conservative campaign. The classic Tory majority coalitions of John Diefenbaker and, especially, Brian Mulroney, combined Western dominance with Quebec breakthroughs. But times have changed. Punishing splits on the left of the political spectrum make it far harder for the Liberals—even as Dion hit his stride after an unsteady start to his campaign—to turn an uptick in the polls into a reasonable expectation of more seats. His problem is a solid New Democrat campaign and a small but strategically crucial slice of urban votes bleeding to the upstart Greens, especially after an attention-grabbing performance in the English-language TV debate by Green Leader Elizabeth May.

In public remarks, Conservative operatives were stressing Harper’s steadfastness on the economy. In private, however, their talk tended to drift more often to those tantalizing left-of-centre vote splits. One veteran Conservative strategist said the key variable, compared to every previous campaign, is the Green vote. Based on surveys conducted the first few days of October, the firm Harris/Decima had the Greens holding at 13 per cent support nationally, a notch higher at 15 per cent in Ontario, fully triple the party’s vote total on election day in 2006. Like NDP support, the Green vote bites largely into potential Liberal support. As a result, even if Harper fails to better his 2006 popular vote of 36 per cent, or falls below, he could win considerably mor
e seats. Early this week, LISPOP said publicly available polls had the Tories adding 15 seats in Ontario, even as the party’s support drifted down. Some Conservatives said close three-way, or even four-way races, in and around Vancouver might deliver Harper a few more hard-fought seats.

The key battleground is Ontario, the big question is how to react to economic upheaval, and the main strategic variable is a new sort of vote splitting on the left. If there’s a strong possibility that a familiar result will be cooked up on Oct. 14—another Tory minority—it won’t be for lack of some new and interesting ingredients being thrown into the mix.

Welcome to Harper’s bubble

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photographers are summoned to a spot behind an office building on Parliament Hill for 8:15 a.m. There they are provided with directions to that morning’s photo op—this one in the living room of a nondescript, middle-class Ottawa family whose three sons, all under the age of 12, play the violin, viola and cello respectively. Shortly thereafter, a dozen reporters board a small bus from the same Hill location and are driven to the Conservative party campaign headquarters, located on the second floor of a nondescript two-storey office building on the outskirts of the capital.

Inside a makeshift television studio, that first family is joined by a second nondescript, middle-class group, this one with four girls and a boy. And with children on either side of him—the kids looking variously perplexed, frightened and bored—Stephen Harper makes another small, but not insignificant announcement aimed at another small, but not insignificant segment of the Canadian population (an offer of a tax credit to parents whose children are enrolled in artistic activities). Afterwards, reporters are permitted to ask questions, following a predetermined order. Speaking out of turn is not tolerated.

“I think what the Prime Minister has learned from previous campaigns is that it’s important to have discipline and focus in all aspects of the campaign,” says Tim Powers, a Conservative strategist, “from the way the tour is run to the messages that you’re giving out.”

The Prime Minister, though looking a bit tired on this Monday morning, dispatches the queries handily. Unfortunately, one of the human props behind him is less sturdy: the young girl, seemingly overcome by the stage lights, looking glassy-eyed and wobbly as she’s helped off stage.

The odd bout of light-headedness aside—it’s not the first time a human prop has been overcome during the campaign—this is what some reporters have come to call Stephen Harper’s bubble. Nothing unexpected, no one uninvited, everything in its right place. The Liberals, who have been faulted for constructing a less impressive bubble, have found great glee in quantifying the Prime Minister’s isolation—keeping weekly count of how many of Harper’s events have been open to the general public, compared to those of Stéphane Dion. At last count it was Dion 38, Harper 0. The Prime Minister did take time from the campaign trail to attend his high school reunion. Though in that relatively uncontrolled setting, he was subsequently heckled.

The only other heckler to reportedly breach the bubble did so at an event in Rockland, Ont. The RCMP quickly removed him from the premises. The Mounties were similarly dispatched to block reporters who attempted to question the Prime Minister shortly after the party’s use of a digital puffin led to the suspension of a campaign staffer. Reporters trying to question Dona Cadman, a Conservative candidate in British Columbia and the widow of former MP Chuck Cadman, were also stymied, reportedly at the behest of an aide to Harper.

“Certainly,” Harper said recently, asked about his campaign, “my security situation changed radically once I became Prime Minister.”

All of which may mean something or nothing at all. “I think it’s a lot of the chatter in the chattering classes and the people who pay more attention to this than perhaps we all should,” Powers says. “I think what [ordinary] people are interested in seeing are what their leaders are doing and what they are offering them and they’re not as interested in the mechanics.”

For sure, all candidates are, to some degree or another, isolated. And most of everything in a campaign is mechanics. So perhaps the question is how far the mechanics push the campaign from reality. And whether mastering life inside the bubble qualifies one to govern life outside it.

Later this day, it’s off to Val d’Or, 500 km north of Montreal. As the campaign buses roll from the airport through town, a woman leans out the passenger side window of a stopped car and extends a middle finger at the caravan. Her salute is seconded by various other passersby. Apparently blessed of advance notice, 100 union protesters are waiting at the conference centre where Harper is scheduled to speak.

Inside, there are only supportive faces, each attendee stamped with a blue Stephen Harper sticker and squeezed into a nondescript ballroom sans air conditioning, where they will cheer at the appropriate points and, if necessary, bang thundersticks together or wave placards. The Prime Minister speaks efficiently and almost entirely in French, save for a couple of clips dismissing Stéphane Dion en anglais for the evening news. Another small, but not insignificant announcement aimed at another small, but not insignifcant segment of the population (this one about support for older workers).

Behind Harper are three rows of human props, the youngest children seated up front, a representative smattering of teenagers and adults standing behind them. The people here of obviously more rugged stock, not one of them collapses under the lights.

Ungodly union

By Martin Patriquin and Philippe Gohier - Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

Quebec, so the myth goes, is the atheist’s last refuge. Nowhere else in the country has the revolt against the Church been so pronounced or so ingrained into the collective mindset of its people. Like “Duplessis” and, often, “federalist,” religion is une vulgarité—a dirty word.

Strange, then, that Quebec is the only place religion has cropped up as an issue in the campaign. Two Conservative candidates, Jacques Bouchard and Rodrigo Alfaro, are members of Quebec-based Pentecostal churches whose members believe humans roamed the earth alongside the dinosaurs 6,000 years ago—which earned the pair some mocking press coverage. Still, the evangelical movement has an undeniable presence: there are roughly 75,000 Quebec evangelicals, and some 3,000 people attend the weekly Sunday service at Église Nouvelle Vie, Bouchard’s South Shore Church. Luc Harvey, the Conservative member for the Quebec City region of Louis-Hébert, has actively courted the Pentecostal vote in his region—all the better to improve on his narrow victory in 2006.

Another Conservative candidate, Nicole Charbonneau Barron, is a member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organization perhaps best known for its notorious turn in The Da Vinci Code. Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe tried to make her faith an issue, saying it was an example of the Conservatives’ “narrow-minded ideology.”

In Quebec, Opus Dei is tiny, numbering less than 250; its mainstream practising Catholic brethren, however, is anything but. According to Université de Montréal researcher Christophe Talin, there are about 950,000 Catholics in the province who attend church at least once a month—nearly 13 per cent of the total population, which is overwhelmingly Catholic itself, if mostly in name.

Notions to the contrary aside, Talin says, religion is alive, well, and politically active in Quebec. Even stranger: despite the Conservatives’ family-oriented platform designed to attract churchgoing folk, it’s the Bloc Québécois—a left-wing party whose leader is a former Communist and avowed pro-choice atheist who often rails against the Church’s encroachment in public affairs—that does surprisingly well with the faithful.

In 2000, Talin concluded, roughly 50 per cent of Quebec’s practising Catholics voted for the Bloc. Though much has changed in eight years, notably the formation of the Conservative party and its recognition of la nation Québécoise, that support has remained relatively stable.

“There was very little change between 2004 and 2006, so it’s fairly safe to say that 2008 will be similar,” Talin says. “It’s a contradiction, but the political leader who is the most atheist and the farthest to the left in fact has a lock on a large chunk of the religious vote in Quebec.”

At first blush, the Bloc is a strange haven for practising Catholics. The party is staunchly pro-choice and in favour of both assisted suicide and stem cell research. It counts Réal Ménard, one of the few openly gay MPs, among its numbers. According to Life Site News, a Toronto-based pro-life group, not a single Bloc member opposed abortion pioneer Henry Morgentaler’s Order of Canada nomination. Moreover, religious voters tend to be older and more conservative than their atheist counterparts. Yet Jean-Claude Leclerc, Le Devoir’s religion correspondent, says the Bloc’s stance on fighting poverty has tilted Quebec’s Catholic support leftward. “That’s the most dynamic element of the religious vote,” he says. “It’s little-known, but many people in the religious community are involved, along with members of the clergy. Religious people tend to have a greater sense of civic duty than others.”

And then there’s sovereignty. Though the Bloc has, out of a matter of political necessity, ceased talking about another referendum, it is still a sovereignist party, and in a way, Talin says, it’s taken on the traditional role of the Catholic Church in Quebec: as a vanguard against meddling outside (read: English) influence on the province. “Yes, the Bloc is a little bit to the left, but sovereignty remains one of the biggest influences in the party, and it goes beyond the traditional right and left,” Talin says. “There are people on the right but who vote Bloc because they are sovereignist.”

Fr. Raymond Gravel can certainly attest to this. An ordained Catholic priest, Gravel was a Bloc MP until he resigned in September, and is in many ways representative of the party’s unique stance on religious matters. Pro-choice, pro-gay marriage and a former street worker in Montreal’s gay village, Gravel was nonetheless hugely popular with his Catholic base, thanks to his championing of seniors’ rights—and for being unapologetically sovereignist. “All the parishes where I’ve worked have been almost totally sovereignist,” Gravel says. “It’s the same for the priests, to the point where I never had a problem speaking about Quebec sovereignty at churches during elections.”

There’s still a big Catholic vote beyond the reach of the Bloc Québécois. The trouble with the other federal parties, at least according to one of the province’s better-known religious advocates, is that they haven’t gone far enough in attracting it.

“The parties tread too lightly on certain subjects—they’re scared,” says Jean Tremblay, mayor of Saguenay and outspoken proponent of Biblical morality. “Take abortion, homosexuality, marriage. The parties barely talk about them. They’re scared of losing a share of the vote. That prevents certain ideas from crystallizing.”

Quebecers’ faith on many fronts may have wavered; certainly, the rise of the Conservative party was the stuff of federalist dreams not three years ago. Despite appearances, though, it seems Quebec’s two dominant religions, Catholicism and sovereignty, aren’t nearly as dead as they may seem.

Iggy in the middle

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 1 Comment

At an outdoor job fair on a street corner in west Toronto, Michael Ignatieff climbs on a makeshift stage and publicly states his support for the local butcher, among other neighbourhood amenities. He keeps his remarks short, and then gets to shaking hands. There’s a guy wearing a T-shirt that helpfully instructs, “Don’t feed the bears,” and a gentleman dressed all in black, whose hat identifies him as “100 per cent Newfie.” Ignatieff lets a stranger put sunscreen on his hands and talks to a woman already recruiting volunteers for this year’s Santa Claus parade.

A moment later—Ignatieff walks fast—he’s across the street. He runs into the Newfie again. Then a young boy playing the violin. Then his NDP rival. Then a woman from the Humane Society. Then some firefighters. He likes this. Says it’s the “realest” part of his job. None of which would be that notable if it weren’t so at odds with what is generally believed about Michael Ignatieff.

“I don’t have to put it on, I enjoy meeting people,” he says later. “I enjoy the sense of being finished with abstractions. I’ve talked politics all my life, this is politics.”

It is understood implicitly that Michael Ignatieff is a politician and, therefore, must politic like all the rest. But otherwise, he is only ever discussed as being above or below this. He is either the Harvard intellectual with Russian royalty in his blood and Canadian aristocracy to his name. Or he is the brooding Machiavelli, conspiring in the shadows to overthrow Stéphane Dion. He is either the party’s greatest asset. Or its leader’s most conniving rival. (Or maybe both.)

In a campaign office at the end of an Etobicoke strip mall, he is only the candidate, albeit one with arty campaign banners bearing his likeness. His wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, works the front desk, greeting volunteers. There are lawn signs piled high in the backroom, colour-coded maps of the riding on the wall and pans of lasagna laid out for lunch. Ignatieff pauses to eat, then he’s back in a volunteer’s car and, after a short drive, strolling around a leafy neighbourhood. While he walks, he talks thoughtfully of what it is he does for a living. But he is tactfully self-deprecating. “I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to politics,” he tells one constituent.

Whatever his attempts to undermine his own reputation, it is resilient. Last week, after a quiet start to the national campaign, Ignatieff and the other perceived usurper, Bob Rae, appeared at Dion’s side. This was first interpreted as an explicit attempt to lend eloquence and charisma to the floundering Liberal leader. And then it was reported as nothing less than a plot to “outshine” Dion. “They know full well what they are doing. It’s obvious,” huffed one of the 300 anonymous senior strategists who populate the Liberal party.

Back at his own campaign headquarters, in a small office with two televisions buzzing in the corner, Ignatieff is serious now, but talkative and blunt. “Look, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t,” he says. “My view of this is that Dion has benefited from 18 months of considerably greater unity in the party than, say, Turner enjoyed or that Chrétien enjoyed. I can’t say it often enough. I had a millisecond to react to defeat in December 2006, on live television, in real time. And I made a strategic decision in that millisecond that the right thing to do, in every meaning of the word right thing to do, was . . . that the party had made its choice. Was I happy with the choice? No. Because I wanted to win. But the party made its choice and I’ve stood with the guy ever since.”

Does he fear that his loyalists are perhaps not so supportive? “I’ve made it very clear to everybody who supported me in 2006 that we have one objective. Which is to make this guy the prime minister of Canada,” he says. “I’d like to be a minister in a Liberal government. I would. But the point is, we’re in a situation where it actually doesn’t matter what the hell I say. People will write what they write. And, frankly, they can go to hell.”

He talks of the last two years as “exhilarating” and “difficult.” “The basic thing is I’ve got skin in the game. That is, I’ve been on the other side of this microphone, right? There are real things at stake for me here. You’re no longer a spectator, you’re a participant.”

It’s pointed out that were he on the other side of the microphone he’d argue that no one stands to gain as much from his party losing as Michael Ignatieff. “I don’t want our party to lose,” he says. He talks of “tribal loyalties” and knocking on doors at age 17. “This is the institution that was founded by Laurier, you don’t mess around with that. You want it to succeed all the time,” he continues. “If it fails, then we’re into another scenario. But the only scenario I’m looking at is up to Oct. 14. Because you start thinking about anything else and you will start making mistakes. And the party can’t afford me to make mistakes. The party needs me to execute flawlessly. And if we fail to do that, we’re going to deliver this guy a majority. And then a lot of the party will turn around and say, what the hell were you thinking? This is the real deal. I don’t want to give Stephen Harper a majority government. And the party would not forgive anybody among us who said anything that would make that possible.”

A couple of sentences more and he’s done. “Thank you for listening to me,” he says. “I gotta go.” A moment later he’s out the door, walking down the road to a nearby strip mall, where he’ll stand out front of a Shoppers Drug Mart and shake hands for another half-hour before calling it a day.

Jack the tortoise

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

Slow and steady doesn’t always win the race—but it’s a good way to get somewhere. Jack Layton’s NDP party is attracting more and more attention in the press, a sign its momentum is building as the Oct. 14 election nears. “The NDP campaign has been relatively successful,” says Stuart Soroka, co-director of the Media Observatory at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. “If we want to pick the party that’s steadily improving in terms of coverage, it’s the NDP.”

According to the 2008 Federal Election Newspaper Analysis Project, a weekly election feature in Maclean’s, Layton’s party is increasingly relevant. The NDP was mentioned first in 11 per cent of election articles from Sept. 14 to 20, up from nine per cent in the first week of campaigning, and four per cent the week before. Layton’s getting more headlines, too: last week, he earned six per cent of first mentions, finally beating Green party Leader Elizabeth May, who until then was getting more coverage than he was. (First mentions, notes Soroka, are a good way of measuring who’s framing the debate.)

Soroka’s team uses an automated system to track election coverage in seven daily newspapers: the National Post, Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, Toronto Star, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen. After ranking the mentions as positive, negative or neutral, they subtract negative from positive to come up with a “net tone.” The NDP’s net tone improved over the past two weeks, suggesting they’re getting more support in the newspapers. (So far, the NDP has a net tone of 0.01, while the Conservatives and Liberals both have -0.4. May continues to have the best results of any leader, with 0.6.)

But the papers’ increasing focus on the NDP has not come at Stephen Harper’s expense. “This campaign is clearly about the Conservatives, and whether other parties can catch up to them,” Soroka says. Last week, Harper continued to dominate media coverage, earning more than double the number of first mentions than did his rival, Stéphane Dion (36 per cent of articles mentioned Harper first; 16 per cent mentioned Dion). The economy is far and away the defining issue: last week, a whopping 55 per cent of election articles mentioned the economy or employment. Yet coverage of the environment, a Liberal centrepiece, has dwindled. While 35 per cent of articles mentioned environmental or energy issues in the first week of the campaign, last week just 25 per cent did.

While Harper continues to emphasize the economy, he “seems to be going out of his way not to talk about the environment,” Soroka says. “If his objective is to maintain the same kind of tone and issue emphasis, it looks like he’s done it.”

There’s a silver lining for the Liberals—their party finally got as much coverage as the Conservatives last week, when both earned 26 per cent of all first party mentions in the dailies. (The week before, the Liberals got 23 per cent, while the Tories got 35 per cent.) “This would be relevant, if Harper weren’t all over Dion,” Soroka says. Indeed, the Liberal party is faring better than its leader. Last week, Dion attracted roughly the same amount of media attention he did in week one of the campaign. For the Conservatives, “holding steady is a good thing,” Soroka says. For the Liberals, not so much.

So, should the Liberals be after the same slow growth achieved by the NDP? “I would say so,” Soroka says. But for them, “fast growth would be even better.”