Five lessons from this election could help stop Harper in the next campaign

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper can be stopped, but it will take at least one more election to accomplish this task. That was amply demonstrated by the numbers in the October 14 federal election. However, it’s going to take a lot more brains on the part of the opposition parties in the next election to get rid of him for good. Based on the history of minority governments, the next election could come before the end of 2010, so those who dislike Harper’s policies had better get to work immediately.

The Conservatives won 37.6 percent of the popular vote in an election that only attracted 59.1 percent of registered voters. The low turnout made it easier for Harper’s party, which had more money and better organizational capacity to get supporters out to vote. Even with the advantages of incumbency and the editorial support of big newspapers like the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Vancouver Sun, and the Province, the Conservatives only won the support of 22 percent of registered voters.

Here are five lessons from the 2008 election that could help anyone who wants to stop Harper in the next campaign.

Stephen Harper will lie to get elected.
And the media will let him get away with it. The Conservatives erroneously claimed that the Liberals’ Green Shift would increase retail gasoline prices in radio ads. Harper characterized the Green Shift as a tax grab, repeatedly refusing to mention its substantial income-tax cuts, corporate-tax cuts, and tax credits for low-income Canadians. The lesson for opposition parties is to expect Harper to lie in the next election. They should mount vigorous counterattacks that go beyond relying on the mainstream media to get the message out.

Strategic voting works.
The evidence was on display across Metro Vancouver. In Vancouver Quadra, Vancouver South, Burnaby-Douglas, Burnaby–New Westminster, New Westminster–Coquitlam, Vancouver Centre, and Newton–North Delta, the Conservative candidates had to settle for second place because enough voters used their brains to back incumbents who had the best chance of defeating Harper’s factotum. Political parties are loathe to endorse strategic voting because they collect $1.85 for each ballot cast for their candidate under Canada’s electoral rules. It’s up to citizens to promote more strategic voting over the Internet, through ad hoc groups, and by talking to their neighbours and friends.

Ethnicity matters.
The Conservatives probably looked at demographic changes in ridings like Vancouver South and Burnaby-Douglas, and knew that there was a large number of immigrants, many of Chinese descent, who might vote for a Harper-led party. The Conservatives fielded a diverse slate, which ensured that their candidates got lots of coverage from ethnic media outlets. The advantage of having Chinese-speaking candidates like Ronald Leung and Wai Young is that they can reach hundreds of thousands of voters, some of whom live in neighbouring ridings that the Conservatives were targeting. The NDP hasn’t run a candidate of Chinese descent in this region in the last three elections, which undermines the prospects of its entire slate. Even though Liberal Wendy Yuan wasn’t elected in Vancouver Kingsway, her presence in the Chinese-language media probably boosted the chances of other Liberal candidates, such as Joyce Murray and Ujjal Dosanjh.

Male party leaders must be alpha males.
It’s sad but true. Stéphane Dion is the latest in a long line of brainy male politicians who lost the big prize because they appeared to be too vacillating or not athletic enough to lead the country. Dion didn’t help his cause when he repeatedly supported Conservative legislation to put off holding an election. Former Conservative leader Robert Stanfield, former B.C. NDP leader Bob Skelly, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, like Dion, also didn’t connect with a majority of voters because they weren’t perceived to be “leaders”.

The Greens will have to be neutralized.
The Green party has contributed great ideas, but in elections it invariably ends up assisting right-wing parties that are hostile to the environment. The Greens do this by siphoning progressive votes. In 2001, Green candidates helped Gordon Campbell’s Liberals win 77 out of 79 seats. In 2005, the Greens played a role in Campbell being reelected in B.C. In 2008, the presence of Green candidates on the ballot in Ontario helped elect more federal Conservatives. Green leader Elizabeth May said she didn’t want to be the Ralph Nader of Canadian politics, but her party came close to helping deliver a majority to Harper. If there was no Green candidate on the ballot in North Vancouver, voters would have elected a candidate whose party supports a carbon tax. Instead, they are represented by a candidate whose party favours greenhouse-gas-intensity reductions, which won’t help the planet. The Greens should stick to civic politics and work for proportional representation within the larger parties at the provincial and federal levels.