It’s the last weekend of the election and it’s time to look back at the campaign. I’ve also looked back at the blogging we’ve been doing. I went back to the post where I argued that the election wouldn’t make much difference in the campaign. Obviously, I was wrong. The election has come to dominate the campaign in a way no one could have foreseen. In that post, I argued that the economy wouldn’t make much difference because there’s a lag between economic changes and voters’ perceptions of the economy. As a general statement, I think that holds true. But my argument that voters in Canada wouldn’t yet perceive the economic downturn turned out to be incorrect. In my defence, what we’ve seen in the markets is almost unprecedented. But obviously panic has set in and people have become very concerned with the economy.
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Interesting American perspective on Canadian debates
One of my favorite TV critics, Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star, was vacationing in Canada during the Canadian debates. He talks about our media situation and our debates in a short podcast that you can find on his website. Canadians often compare their politics with those in the United States, especially when we’re both in the midst of elections. It’s unusual and refreshing to hear an American perspective on the same comparison.
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What happened to the social conservative issues?
I was going through various interest group web sites, looking to see what they had to say about the election when I came to the website of the Canadian Family Action Coalition, a group of Christian social conservatives. They don’t endorse any particular political party, but they identify five key issues for the election: abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage, human cloning and stem cell research. What struck me about this list is how absent these issues have been from the campaign.
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A proposal to fix an outdated provision in election law
With just a week or so to go to the election, we’re about to run into a part of Canada’s election law that always irks me. Section 329 of the Elections Act prohibits the publication on election results while the polls are still open locally. As someone who grew up in Alberta, I understand the reason for this. We’re better served by not knowing what is happening out east. In 1980, I remember turning on the TV at 8:00 PM (poll closing time back then) and being informed that there would be a Liberal majority government. At that point, they had not counted a single vote from Alberta yet. It’s a nice reminderof why your vote doesn’t matter. It’s hard enough to get people out to vote now; more disincentives are not useful.
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Will the NDP wake up and respond to the threat the Greens pose?
It’s been interesting listening to the post-debate analyses. One theme keeps coming up and that is that Elizabeth May impressed a lot of people. As Andrew Coyne pointed out in the CBC’s post-debate "At Issue" panel, the debate cemented the Greens’ place on the national stage. Talking to people around here, I’m surprised to hear the chord that the Greens seem to be striking with a lot of people. Some of this is a "none of the above" vote; the Greens have never been in power anywhere and are fresh and new, so people see this as a way of registering dissatisfaction. Other people find their policies refreshing: it’s pro-environmental and socially progressive without without the baggage of the traditional NDP.
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English debate: Harper gets pounded, but nothing that essentially changes the campaign
The Engish debate was actually pretty entertaining. I took a few peeks at the replay of the US Vice-Presidential debate and I actually thought the Canadian debate was more interesting. I actually thought all five party leaders were reasonably effective and the debate clarified a few things in the election. I’m not going to talk about Gilles Duceppe: he’s a good debater, but basically irrelevant for the English debate.