There's been quite a lot written about polls recently. While all polls outside of an election can't be taken too seriously as campaigns matter, etc. we should all be worried about the trend in the polling numbers in recent weeks.
Ever since we announced our intention to have an election the poll numbers have been slipping, things like Denis Coderre didn't help that. Now, if the latest
EKOS poll is to be believed we're behind in every region of the country, which, if true, is disastrous. Even if that's not the case the trend from all the polling companies shows us falling further and further behind in Ontario, where we now risk loosing more seats. We're also falling behind with
female voters which was typically a safe demographic for us.
The main problem is we haven't sold Michael Ignatieff to Canadians. We made the same mistake we did with Stephane Dion and let the opposition define him before we could. That's allowed the message that he's only in it for himself to take root in voters minds.
It hasn't helped that we haven't presented any policy as a way to differentiate ourselves from the Conservatives. We seem to have decided that our entire plan for winning the next election is to wait for Harper to mess up big enough that we get voted in. But the message of Harper is bad for Canada no longer resonates with the majority of Canadians who have watched him govern for the past four years and have decided he's doing an okay job. Neither I nor other Liberals I've spoken with have any idea of what the Liberal plan is for the economy, or climate change, or any other topic you can think of. If party members who follow politics don't know what the Liberal plan is then how can we expect the average voter to want to vote for us when they have no idea what we'd do if we got into office?
Furthermore, to continue so much of our focus on winning in Quebec is to ignore the elephant in the room that is redistribution. When more seats are added to the House the lions share of them will be out west in BC and Alberta. Neither of those areas are Liberal friendly right now. If we want to start winning again then we can't continue to assume that the Bloc will simply disappear and we'll go back to taking a majority of Quebec seats. The past few years have shown that the Bloc is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Therefore we have to get serious about building the party out west. We also have to accept that process will take a long time and be ready to commit to taking that time instead of simply trying to find ways to get instantaneous results.
Our focus right now should be on fixing the party in Quebec (which recent event have shown to still be an absolute mess), building the party out west, and creating policy that will clearly show Canadians what they would get with a Liberal government vs what they are currently getting with the Conservatives. If we simply continue pushing for an election without addressing any of these issues when the election finally comes we're likely to do worse than we did last time. We can't continue on simply hoping that the Harper government will defeat itself and we'll be swept back into office. We need to actually rebuild the party and offer an alternative to Canadians even if that means we stop pushing for an election for a couple of years.
Labels: advice for the Liberal party