Monday, April 04, 2011

Election notes on week 1 - Momentum with Harper

The Conservatives gain over the week and the Liberals grab 4 points from the NDP, then steadily go down and the media says Ignatieff has the momentum?

I'm not saying that the Liberals didn't have a good week campaigning.  They did.  No gaffes and Ignatieff has come across as well spoken and sincere on the trail and in their TV ads.

Jack and the NDP had a good week campaigning but initially lost support to the Liberals and now they appear to be gaining it back.

What's becoming clear is that Conservative support is solidifying and not being lost to the Liberals.  With  the Liberal platform moving way to the left, it's an obvious attempt at winning over 'progressives' and stealing soft NDP support.  It's the usual Liberal strategy, but in this case, it's for survival and it won't work actually to win the election.  It's not centrist.

The Liberal Red Book is difficult to decipher on what the policies actually are.  All the campaigns are still guilty of yapping about billions and millions to be spent on this and this over so many years, but this doesn't translate to the average Canadian and street politics and they'll ignore it altogether.  Voters want to hear how that money applies to them directly. 

What is winning people over is when Ignatieff said "four grand for each student" and Harper said "Thousand buck tax credit for your kid in fitness and 500 for you now too".

These types of policies bug me, but politically, they work.  It almost seems that by the time they've targetted every demographic with a tax policy specific to them, in the end, it almost seems like everyone will be covered.  What it does do is speak to you directly.  "Hey parents, we're thinking of you, so soon you'll be able to write off your kids' karate class fees."

For Stephen Harper, the past week could have gone much better, but the polls show who has the momentum toward the coveted majority, and it's the Conservatives, not Liberals.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the liberal red book dump was the biggest mistake Iggy made though. Now Jack, Harper and Gille will just attack that all the way to the end. Iggy's on defense until the end of the campaign.

Anonymous said...

No gaffes from iggy yet except for his defensive play on the coalition out of the gate. There was little talk about contempt.

The problem is that the gap is not closing. What happens if (when) the Cons. find their A game?

Anonymous said...

The red book.. is Iggy nuts? He coulda called it anything else? You see that is the problem with these Liberals, living in the past. The conservatives will find their A' game by moving into the future. (real conservative)

Anonymous said...

No no no
You've got it all wrong

Have you not been watching and listening to the main stream media???

Iggy and Liberals have the momentum...

It may be backwards but it's got momentum!

Mike B. said...

To previous comment: Exactly. All the polls except for Harris-Decima show the CPC gaining and Liberals gain then losing. Nanos is usually the most accurate. It's like there is this huge quiet denial about what the daily polls are really saying about the CPC gaining.