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Observations from close-by and afar

By DERMOD TRAVIS – communications consultant

The great thing about advice is everyone has some and everyone likes to share it. GPS is no exception to this rule.

 

So in this spirit: if real estate is about location, location, location, then Saanich-Gulf Islands (SGI) is about organization, organization, organization.

 

And by all accounts – from both inside and outside the SGI campaign – this is where the May campaign is in desperate trouble if it hopes to pull off a victory, favourable polls notwithstanding.

 

While the campaign may, as one commentator implied in the first installment of this series, be playing its cards close to its chest, it more likely has fewer cards than it needs to be able to play competitively.

 

As Norman Ruff, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Victoria, warned GPS: “don't under estimate the resources of the Conservative organization in that particular riding.”

 

A point supported by David Akin who recently noted in a Ottawa Sun column, ”the Conservatives found electoral success through smart campaigning and a labour-intensive ground war that harnessed thousands of grassroots volunteers to get out the vote and raise money one twenty-dollar bill at a time.”

 

And it’s this cautionary note regarding organization that the campaign may be ignoring at its peril.

 

For instance, after a year on the ground, there is no reason that the candidate herself should not have knocked on at least 15,000 doors.

 

While this number may seem incredible it represents only 75 doors per day for 200 days. Spread over a four hour shift that’s less than 20 doors an hour and it still leaves 165 days entirely free for additional party activities, not including the extra hours available in each of those 200 days.

 

But according to party sources door knocking is taking a far too distant back seat to local speaking opportunities and events in a riding that can only be won at the door, one door at a time.

 

It’s also why volunteers on the ground will be crucial to the campaign’s success not just in advance of the election but on E-day as well.

 

According to Andy Shadrack, who played a key role in Andrew Lewis’ 2004 campaign, they were lucky if they had 200 volunteers on the ground in 2004 when at least 1,000 were needed.

 

Shadrack, a political scientist, is the twice elected Director for Area D in the Regional District Central Kootenay and one of the party’s most experienced campaigners..

 

The apparent lack of door knocking and volunteers may be two of the reasons why the SGI team has only identified (as of August) 3,500 supporters up from 1,600 in January at a time when the campaign is being told it needs upwards of 15,000 identified supporters.

 

Results that need to be seen in the context of the fact that the campaign has already burned through $300,000, revelations which prompted one wag with a calculator to note on rabble.ca that “3,500 check marks would mean they have spent well past $80 each on getting them. Campaigns I've been in have ranged from under $4 to an outlier (sic) at $7 per check mark.”

 

And for history buffs: 3,500 identified supporters is less than a third of the vote Lewis won in the 2004 election. It also may or may not take into account lists provided by the Lewis campaigns.

 

But as Shadrack noted, the May campaign needs active and experienced volunteers and not in the hundreds, but at the very least one thousand of them.

 

For instance, does the campaign have 239 poll captains in place to cover each polling station in the riding? Do they have the additional three volunteers likely required per poll to mount both an effective campaign, and even more critically a successful GOTV effort?

 

This is not meant to diminish the incredible contribution that volunteers are already making to the May campaign, but rather a recognition of how many more can help ensure a victory. However, one clear loss to the campaign was the resignation of campaign manager John Fryer.

 

Why are thousands of volunteers so critical? Because if the Oracle poll results were to hold until election night. Elizabeth May would lose by 1,357 votes (based on the 2008 turnout), a difference of less than six votes per poll.

 

However, as both GPS and one of our commentators noted early on in this series, the Oracle poll is after all a pre-election poll and pre-election polls don’t always hold through a campaign.

 

Respondents can easily support a candidate months out from an election as a way to cheer them on, but as the party knows well thirty per cent of its pre-election national support in most polls evaporates in the closing days of an election.

 

It’s why this recent quotation from Elizabeth May to the Victoria Times Colonist is worrisome: "I'm fascinated by the disconnect. There's the media asking why I'm running against Gary Lunn and [saying] that I can't win. But that's not what I'm seeing and hearing and feeling from this community," May said.

 

Switch Gary Lunn in the above statement for Peter MacKay and it’s just too reminiscent of 2008 and Central Nova.

 

So, can May win in SGI? Theoretically, yes. Is it probable? Based on identified supporters to date and the number of volunteers actively working on the campaign, it’s a long shot and will stay that way until the campaign stops mistaking ‘best wishes’ for an ‘x’ at the ballot box.

 

 

 

The greenpartystrategy.com poll was conducted by Oracle Research who has conducted surveys for the Green party since 2001.

 

A total of 400 voting age residents of Saanich-Gulf Islands were interviewed in the survey.  Interviews were conducted between the days of August 5^th and August 10^th 2010. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 per cent, 19/20 times.

 

The entire Oracle report can be downloaded on this page below and will be posted in its entirety following this post.

 

 

Dermod Travis is former Director of Communications for the Green Party of Canada and organized the Green Party's 2006 National Convention

 

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