We asked three different analysts what the main party leaders have to do to win the federal election. Here's a rundown of what they had to say.

The pollster: 'Make it about the other guy'

Nik Nanos, CTV News' pollster and chair of Nanos Research Group, dismisses the notion that becoming prime minister is about being well-liked. Instead, he says many voters assess candidates and parties in terms of risk.

"How risky or not risky would it be to have Stephen Harper as prime minister again? Well, people have a sense of that, because he has been prime minister since 2006," he told CTVNews.ca.

Stephen Harper

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, face different challenges.

Canadians have become familiar with Mulcair during the four years he served as Opposition Leader, but a "question mark" remains o­n whether the NDP has what it takes to form a federal government, Nanos said.

On the other hand, Trudeau faces the opposite situation, where Canadians are familiar with the Liberal Party, but are less familiar with its leader, Nanos added.

He noted that the Tories have been successful in past elections, in part because they understand that a candidate's perceived riskiness is often more important than their likability.

"The Conservatives know that being prime minister is not a popularity contest… it's pretty clear. They don't even try to be liked because they know it's not important," he said.

In terms of winning enough seats to form the government, the Conservatives and the NDP will have to expand beyond their regional bases (out West and in o­ntario for the Tories, and in Quebec for the New Democrats), while the Liberals will have to identify a region where they can start to build, Nanos said.

Each of the parties will be looking to pick up key ridings in British Columbia and in the Greater Toronto Area, where there is still some degree of fluidity, he added.

Nanos offers the same piece of advice to all three candidates: Focus the election o­n your opponents.

"In my experience, whoever the election is about usually loses," he said. "The last federal election was about Michael Ignatieff, the previous o­ne before that was about Stephane Dion, and the o­ne before that was about Paul Martin.

"Sadly, our state of political discourse is such that making it about the other guy, many times, works."

The political correspondent: Fear and a referendum o­n change

This federal election is shaping up to be a referendum o­n whether a change is needed at the top, says CTV journalist and host of Power Play Don Martin.

"I would argue that the overarching theme to motivate voters for the NDP and the Liberals is 'Get rid of Harper,'" he said. "In many ways they're trying to frame this as a referendum o­n our current Conservative government."

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair

Watch for the Tories to try to drum up support by scaring Canadians about the potential consequences of the Liberals and NDP, who they'll argue are just waiting to "raise taxes and ruin the economy," Martin said.

"There's nothing necessarily in their histories to make that a realistic fear, but (Harper's) going to try and raise those bogeymen," he said, also noting that succeeding in politics often involves attacking your opponents.

"It's about trying to stop the other guy from winning; it's not about, necessarily, getting votes for yourself."

His advice differs for each of the candidates.

For Mulcair: "Make sure you have a rock-solid plan for the economy, that's going to pass all of the tests from economists and journalists, because the fear of the NDP taking over the levers of the economy is going to be the big fear factor that Stephen Harper will be advancing."

For Trudeau: "He has to impart a sense of gravitas, and show that he has the right stuff to be a leader, and not just someone who's doing this based solely o­n a family name and political charisma."

For Harper: "He has to put himself up as a hand of experience in a troubled economy, and make sure that the other leaders are deemed unfit for the prime minister's chair, or at least make that case pretty compelling."

The communications professional: Likability is key

With the parties running in a tight race, and no single ballot issue so far dividing the electorate, the candidates' respective likability will play a large role in who will win o­n Oct. 19, says Laura Babcock, president of PowerGroup Communications.

"What Canadians are looking at is which of the parties has a leader that represents my values and my concerns," she said. "It really becomes about the leadership, so it will become critical for each of these leaders to be accessible."

Justin Trudeau

She has different advice for the candidates as they play up their respective strengths in the long campaign ahead.

Harper, who by this point is a well-known commodity to Canadians, has so far offered a "stay the course" campaign, she said.

"There's not a lot of ground for him to make up in terms of likability or in terms of his negatives," Babcock said.

He should aim to get through the long campaign, touting the party's strongest policy planks, while also making the case that the current global climate is too uncertain for a leadership change.

"That being said, it is not an aspirational message. It's not something that will energize a strong call for change," she said. "He's got the most difficult task in terms of being someone Canadians are drawn to, because he's already known."

Mulcair isn't as well known, so there is a potential for the NDP to present him to Canadians as a real alternative, Babcock said, cautioning that this could change as the campaign drags o­n.

"He needs to be extremely careful that he doesn't try to be too much like Harper by being overly controlling in his messaging," she said.

Meanwhile, Trudeau has the advantage of entering the race with high likability, but he will have to convince Canadians that he is ready for the job, she said.

The Liberal leader has committed to running a positive campaign, but questions remain o­n whether Trudeau’s personal likability will ultimately raise the status of his party, she said.

Key for Trudeau will be staying positive, aspirational, and putting substance in all of his public appearances, Babcock added.

"Aspirational platforms can be extremely effective if they succeed in energizing and mobilizing the electorate," she said. "That's where a campaign with big ideas and big excitement can get new voters out. It's extremely difficult, but it can be done."


“Immigrant Vote” to Gain Strength in 2015

Written by  New Canadian Media
Will immigration be an issue in the 2015 federal elections? Unlikely, say academics.
Will immigration be an issue in the 2015 federal elections? Unlikely, say academics.Photo credit: Conservative Party campaign flyer.

The campaign leading up to anticipated federal elections in Oct. 2015 is likely to shift gears. The so-called “immigrant vote” is very likely to be in play, and, according to academics who’ve studied this topic for many years, this electoral bloc is going to be even more crucial in 2015.

New Canadian Media interviewed Prof. Phil Triadafilopoulos of the University of Toronto, who last year published a chapter titled “Immigration, Citizenship and Canada’s New Conservative Party” (co-authored with Inder Marwah and Steve White), (in Conservatism in Canada, ed. David Rayside and James Farney. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).

We also reproduce relevant abstracts from the chapter to support his responses. 

1. What were the main findings from this study?

 I believe the key point is that the politics of immigration in Canada is the way it is because of the intersection of settlement patterns, our citizenship law, and our electoral system.  There is a structurally induced predisposition for relatively pro-immigration policies and rhetoric, shared by parties across the ideological spectrum.

  • We argue that the combination of immigrant settlement patterns, citizenship laws, and Canada’s single member plurality (SMP) electoral system create a context in which appeals to immigrant voters are required of any party with aspirations to national power.

  • [T]he interplay of these structures ensures that immigrants are able to express their interests and have them acknowledged in a politically meaningful way.

  • In sum, immigrants are concentrated in politically important urban regions.

  • To alienate large numbers of immigrant voters in dozens of federal ridings would almost certainly mean surrendering those ridings to other parties.

  • Data from recent Canadian Election Studies consistently show that visible minorities and immigrants tend to be more conservative than non-visible minority and non-immigrant Canadians o­n a number of contentious social issues.

2. You note that there was a dramatic change of stance o­n immigration as Reform/Canadian Alliance morphed into the Conservative Party. How do you explain this transformation? 

Yes, this is o­ne of the arguments we make in the chapter. The party had to compete in o­ntario and to do so it had to get beyond its predecessors’ reputations as being anti-immigrant.  The Conservatives could not simply declare this –[Minister] Jason Kenney had to go out and prove it in what amounted to political hand-to-hand combat (using handshakes as his weapon of choice).

  • [O]ne of the central impediments to the Reform Party’s national ambitions was the widely held view of Reformers as anti-immigrant, anti-French, and generally intolerant.

3. Do you think Conservative policy changes serve Canada's national interests in the long term?

Unfortunately, some do not.  The expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program will likely lead to trouble in the future (as people overstay and slip into undocumented status). Changes to citizenship policy were heavy-handed and based o­n political reasoning and weak ideologically-based reasoning.  Changes to refugee policy has been unnecessarily punitive (and, again, taken for largely political reasons).  There have been many other changes as well – judging their long-term consequences is difficult at the moment.

 4. How were these changes different from o­nes that may have been made by the Liberals or the New Democratic Party, NDP?

The Liberals were similarly interested in narrowing access to asylum seekers and reforming the citizenship law – they failed to do so in part because the political incentives in the party were weaker.  It’s likely that the NDP would have hewn to the status quo circa 2006.

5. Do you anticipate that immigration and citizenship will be major electoral issues in 2015?

No – immigration is typically not featured during elections, though all the parties will look to gain support among new Canadian voters.

6. Given your findings, what does your study suggest o­n the subject of immigration generally being a non-partisan issue in Canada?

It will likely remain the case. There’s no political pay-off for populist anti-immigrant rhetoric at the federal level.

  • Canada is unique among major immigration countries in the degree to which immigration policy is de-politicized, and immigration itself is enthusiastically embraced by federal political parties. Quebec’s provincial politics since 2007 may be a partial exception to this pattern, but this has not had a discernable impact o­n Quebec voices in federal policy debates over immigration.

7. Do you have any further thoughts o­n the "immigrant vote" in the 2011 federal elections (you said it was inconclusive at the time of writing)?

We have not done the necessary analysis to move beyond what we have.  We hope to do so soon.  The key point is that all parties in Canada support a relatively liberal immigration policy, as reflected in annual admissions.  There is also consensus o­n the utility of an official multiculturalism policy – our Conservative Party is rather different than similar parties in other countries.

[In a separate study presented to the Canadian Political Science Association 2012 conference in Edmonton, Prof. Triadafilopoulos, Zack Taylor and Christopher Cochrane (all of UofT), concluded with this finding:

  • We focus especially o­n the Greater Toronto region because (a) 20 of the 23 seats gained in the 2011 election were located there, and (b) 41 per cent of foreign-born Canadians live there. Of the 20 new Conservative seats, eight were majority-immigrant and none had less than 30 per cent immigrant population. Similarly, three of the six seats picked up by the NDP were majority immigrant and none had less than 35 per cent immigrant population.
  • Our findings suggest that the Conservative Party enjoyed marked gains among immigrant voters in the 2011 election, and that these gains appear to have come largely at the expense of the Liberal Party. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the party’s ethnic outreach strategy may have indeed borne fruit in 2011. The NDP(New Democratic Party) also appears to have benefited from the support of a different segment of support that overlaps with the immigrant electorate: visible minorities.]

8. Do you think the "immigrant vote" will play a more critical role in 2015?

I do. Canada is changing quickly and the trends we identified are still playing themselves out.

This content was developed exclusively for New Canadian Media and can be re-published with appropriate attribution. For syndication rights, please write to publisher@newcanadianmedia.ca