It’s something I wrote early in the campaign when it seemed that no reporter or pundit could open their mouth without the words “Facebook” or “Twitter” popping out. There were even some declaring that as ’06 was the “blog election” and ’08 the “Facebook election”, that 2011 would the known as the “Twitter election”.
I disagreed, mostly because I know more about the role of blogs and the nature of online political discussion – then and now – than pretty much anybody else in the room. On April 6, I shared a few thoughts in an email to a friend in old media;
Unlike most in formal media, my real life has a very small overlap with politicians and journalists, and a huge overlap with people of all political stripes who seldom discuss them. My readers are people with a common interest in politics, as opposed to a common connection to it.
They (my blog readers) don’t use Twitter – they’re even a little turned off when I reference it. None of my personal friends use Twitter. Furthermore, none of the hundreds of people I know in dog sport are on Twitter.
The platform has a place as a fast communication vehicle for those inside the machine – but as a means for parties to engage the average voter? I’d say stop wasting your time.
Facebook has a different problem. The people we connect to most are friends and family. In my case, it’s peers and competitors in the dog world. Political discussion is very, very rare because it invariably causes friction – and Facebook hates friction.
For the average user (who are primarily women, by the way) – Facebook is about positive reinforcement. There may be plenty of FB political groups, but I see precious little cross-pollination of election talk into Facebook proper.
Political junkies will always be junkies, but they’re a minority simply moving around from platform to platform.
There’s way too much coverage of social media, way too little reporters shutting their own mouths for a change and listening to people on the street.
I’ll let you in on a little secret – about the time the punditocracy was authoritatively informing Canadians that high turnout at the advance polls was “a bad sign for the incumbent”, I got word that it was the work of the Conservative ground game, and that the party was pretty confident about how things were going.
I had no way of knowing if that was true until Monday, when SDA readers began reporting light to moderate turnout at your respective polling places. Maybe voters weren’t as motivated to “throw the bums out” as the excited few inside the Twitter echo chamber had willed themselves to believe.
There is no “blog election” or “Facebook election” or “Twitter election” for people who don’t eat, sleep and breathe politics. There’s a reason for that – the majority of Canadians don’t live with their faces glued to a screen. They’re out there driving truck, behind welding masks, hauling kids to hockey practice. They have neither the time or opportunity to follow Andrew Coyne’s multi-tweet essays on parliamentary history, Kady O’Malley’s tortured indifference to Jack Layton’s happy ending, or to engage The Phantom in the comments section at SDA.
When it comes to the mechanics of winning elections, it’s the ground game, stupid. And it will always be the ground game.
At any rate, Margaret Wente has written a pretty good column that ties up the loose ends, if you’re interested.
You are 100% right about Twitter. Hollywood was very excited about Twitter too at first. A studio would do high-fives if one of its movies became a Trending Topic. Then reality sank in. As one industry insider put it recently, if Twitter buzz really meant anything for a movie’s prospects then “Scott Pilgrim” would have been a box office blockbuster instead of a commercial flop.
Thank you Kate. I have been saying the same thing every day…mainly that we should not waste our time
on the so called social media. Feet on the street & door knocking gets votes, tweedle deeding doesn’t.
Thanks again for saying out loud what needs to said!
Excellent analysis Kate. Election by twitter/facebook/blog may happen someday but for most of the electorate we’re too busy living a real life rather then an electronic imaginary one.
[DELETED – OFF TOPIC. ED]
Ground game? In close elections it makes a difference. I would say the results in Quebec are an example of where it doesn’t rally matter – where you can spout all the BS you want and have people stupid enough to vote for you on that basis.
Damn, you’re good Kate!
Great post Kate. I think you’re right on about Twitter. I make a living with computers, interact all day with people who fix, run, support or program computers for a living, and not a word or comment is ever made about twitter. (I’m also embarrased to say I’m among those who are a little turned off when you reference twitter, mostly because I don’t use it, so I don’t really understand who’s saying what on the various tweets). However, you’re still the best!
Splitters!
Grrr! Bring ’em on!
Its true though, most people just want to be listened to, and the CPC looks like they are listening. 90% of immigrants don’t want their hands held, or hand outs. They want a better environment for their small businesses, and they want lower taxes. Pretty much all they talk about, besides who’s getting married this week. Conservatives offered them that, and now we have a majority in Ontario. Yay!
Now the hard job starts, we make them keep listening.
Agreed. Expain the NDPs non-existant ground game in Quebec though?
How right you are Kate.
I loved that post … trust Kate to keep things in perspective.
Nice post.
I told everyone that would listen that the real story of this election will be the turnout at the advance polls. I can’t wait to see how the numbers break down –but I bet they will reveal Tory support in excess of 50% nationally.
(the other) James
Twitter and Facebook are to real politics what The Parlaimentary Press Gallery and CBC are to Journalism.
Alex: “Expain the NDPs non-existant ground game in Quebec though?”
A) Propaganda counts as ground game.
B) Many of those ridings didn’t even have a CPC candidate, because the majority of constituents are actively hostile to the CPC. Think of the bone-hard lefties we get on here sometimes, you think they can be swayed by argument? Same deal.
People think that the average Quebec voter is very strategic, but in fact, the average Quebecois is very unsophisticated and provincial and internalized and run by the gangsters in both governance and industry. That is not to say they are not a very good and hardworking class of people (in rural ridings) who used to vote according to what they were told from the pulpit but dnow, from their political masters. That said, there is no doubt that the universities have become hugely politicized.
I tried following twitter – mostly a useless tool. But considering the bias of the main media, I looked so I could get articles from various newspaper across the nation. That did help a little.
Great analogy Fred
One of the tools the Conservatives had in their arsenal is the most comprehensive voter/supporter data base in history. It developed from the riding and townhall meetings of Reform-Alliance days to the larger supporter mobilization of the CPC. Any Mom or Pop who ever supported the party is on that data base.
Part of the “ground game” was to mobilize CPC supporters by phone, e-mail, door knocking. They got the vote out. One of the master strokes the CPC used this election was to mobilize their supporters to vote in the advance polls.
This election saw the largest turn out to the advance polls ever. Most of those voters were Harper supporters. What did the MSM make of it? Dead silence.
Margaret hits it out of the park.
I particularly liked this analogy: “The Bloc, which squatted in Ottawa like a toad for 20 years, is gone.” LOL! How apt.
We’ll now be treated to Jack and Thomas’s kindergarten/facebook MP’s from Quebec. Beats Saturday Night Live!
Quebecers, if anything will do a slow burn with these “representatives”. Oh, the embarrasment!
Looks good on them.
And the MSM spent next to no time watching and reporting on the ground game. That would meant leaving the plane and the buffet line.
Eric duhaime has an excellent column on how PMSH killed the bloc not the ndp.
http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/05/04/duhaime-stephen-harpers-handsoff-plan-killed-the-bloc
Twitter is a useful tool for me, as it’s really, really fast on breaking news. For example, it was particularly useful on the Ignatieff hockey game booing story, providing multiple sources both in sports media and general audience to back up info I got via email.
And as a platform that puts the pettiness, bias, and narcissism of certain media personalities on full display – Twitter has no equal.
The surprise NDP winners really were place holders for the vote subsidy. Another reason to dump that present from Chretien, as it encourages running for the sake of running to get money as opposed to spending money on a campaign and losing.
One of the Mcgill student winners told her mother that was why she was placed as a candidate. Those 4 girls were too busy working on Mulcairs campaign in his riding.
Twitter and Facebook are what smoking was in the first half of the last century.
Smokers were cool, and if you didn’t smoke you were out of touch with fashion. It was addictive, and cigarette companies were extremely wealthy. Late 70’s early 80’s, the general population finally saw the foolishness of it. Those who saw the foolishness of it from the get go where the ones who enjoyed healthy lives later in life.
I am already teaching my young kids to keep as far away from Twitter and Facebook as they can, just as my parents kept me away from cigarettes. Twenty years from now my kids will thank me when they see all their friends agonizing over the fact that their private lives have permanently been recorded on the Internet for all time.
The business models of Facebook and Twitter are based on people exposing their private lives to as many others as possible. And expose they do. I am amazed by what I see sometimes. The fad won’t last.
“Social media” is a misnomer, i.e. marketing bullshit. It might be qualified as social computer media or something because it is the most social thing you can do by yourself in front of a computer. Social really means looking people in the eye.
This little gem is at the bottom of that page:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/cartoon/editorial-cartoons-may-2011/article2006332/?from=2010333
Wow for the Globe and Mail, that’s pretty solid…
The last part of Wente’s column is very insightful about what the next 4 years will likely look like. Expect only a few changes, folks, and very incremental ones at that. I, for one, won’t be one of those insisting that we create a new party. Indeed, the Conservatives take conservatives for granted mais c’est la vie.
Bill Elder makes a very good point about the Conservative database. I dealt with the first iterations of it back in the Alliance days. It was a great tool, all it lacked was data. Four elections in seven years, or whatever the heck it’s been, took care of the data problem. Identifying the vote and getting it out has been at the core of election management for many years. However, previously this was done riding by riding in all various forms of databases, spreadsheets, etc. with no guarantee that the next election team would get their hands on the information from the previous team. The Conservatives system (previously the Alliance’s system) has taken care of all that. I stand to be corrected, but I doubt the other parties have anything comparable, certainly not data-wise.
Like po’ed in AB, I loved Wente’s “The Bloc, which squatted in Ottawa like a toad for 20 years, is gone.”
Re virtual voting: there was a discussion of that on SUN TV’s Byline with Brian Lilley last night: too much latitude for error—e.g., computer crashes—loss of confidentiality, and hacking to make it practical—or even ethical.
And why make voting, a RESPONSIBILITY, easier for the “Whatever” crowd? If they can’t bother to make the time to get out—just down the street—and mark an X with a pencil, they don’t deserve to vote. IMO, if we do get on-line voting, it will only help the idiot sector of the population that votes in fellow idiots like Obama and the Quebec toddlers—not to mention the likes of Jack Layton and his lovely bride. No thanks!
My wife and I received six or seven phone calls in the last week – did we know where to vote (a good ting because Elections Canada information was confusing)?
Would there be any problem getting there?
What to do if we didn’t have a voters’ card (Elections Canada rather fooled that up here in St. John’s).
And a couple of recorded messages from PMSH on his platform.
The Conservatives sorted out problems and in general got the voters out.
The Bloc squatted like a toad? More like a Frog, I think.
This election was about The Coalition.
Quebecers realized that the Bloq would never be part of The Coalition with either NDP or Liberals. So Quebecers went with the Bloq’s closest idealogical brethren, the NDP, hoping for The Coalition of Libs and NDP. Thereby continuing Quebec’s unearned dominance of Canadian politics.
Once Liberal supporters sensed the shift to the NDP, they abandoned the Liberals (the platforms were nearly identical, anyhow). But of course some Liberal supporters voted Conservative out of fear of the phrase “Prime minster Layton”.
The attempted Coalition of 2008 was the biggest political blunder since confederation and the Liberals will be wearing it for many years to come. It was the gift that gave Harper his majority, and it may lead to at least one more in 2015.
Rick
This post was very insightful and probably correct. But I am enjoying the backbiting on twitter among the media hacks.
Two good things about twitter;
1) Trolls/flakes have no platform on twitter. They can yak all they want but will have very few readers/followers.
Blog hosts have no choice but to waste a lot of time monitoring comments because of trolls, off topic comments and frivolous “discussion”. That or a ‘no-comments’ policy.
2) Prominent nut-cases who have lots of followers, not because of quality but because of the Media Party, can be easily and instantly outed on twitter.
IOW, as Kate said “And as a platform that puts the pettiness, bias, and narcissism of certain media personalities on full display – Twitter has no equal.”
aka, a way to yell back at the radio.
Am I wrong?
Having been part of a riding association, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of the ground game. I worked for the Reform Party, and the Alliance before I left Canada. Both organizations had issues with organizing. The experience with the Alliance contrasted the difference to the Reform Party. Raising money, talking to voters, banging on doors, and on voting day driving people to the polls and calling those who have not voted yet are all very important if you want to win. I suspect that the NDP didn’t have enough volunteers and money to fulfill all of that since they were surprised by the support they received. The Conservatives would have been very well organized.
The lefts’ immaturity, sense of entitlement, mean spiritedness, and blame, blame, blame we see described in Wente’s fine column (thanks, Kate), and what’s happened/happening in Quebec/Ottawa re the NDP nippers is the (il)logical conclusion of decades of pampering and dumbing down in our public school systems.
The left, of which there is a disproportionate number in Quebec, is full of spoiled brats, who have been taught to behave that way by schools that refuse to enforce their behaviour codes. Yes, there are written consequences for specific infractions. But, as a teacher, especially if the infraction is serious, try actually carrying through on a serious consequence. It either doesn’t happen—administration’s terrified of being politically incorrect—or, if there’s a compliant—ones from the miscreants, themselves, are accepted—the teacher faces an unpleasant consequence. It’s a travesty.
Thank goodness the grown ups are now in charge in Ottawa. They’ll be excoriated, but they’re used to it and now have a choice: continue to ignore the babies or really push back. I’ll be sleeping better—and enjoying the show!
I know nothing of Twitter or Facebook. I do enjoy the links though. Usually they are things that appeal to me. It seems disjointed but I don’t have a lot of context.
I love a good line.
I love one-liners.
For the first time in memory I can watch political shows without fear of a spike in blood pressure.
Yes, we have grown ups in charge, the NDP pop corn gallery/NDP can get busy with their pea shooters.
I meant “complaint” (above), but I think my typo is quite apt!
Alright twitter haters here’s a tweet that kind of sums up what I think is going through the #votemob heads right about now (talking about the Vegas NDP MP in Quebec) :
@keshavmathurcom : @RosieBarton how is it she got elected? what’s happening? this is not the #NDP I thought it was
Don’t worry kids @RosieBarton is on the job tracking it all down for ya.
Nowhere was the ground game more evident, for me, than in the removal of Mark Holland from the Ajax riding by Alexander. Holland earned the enmity of Canada’s gun owners by mendacious attacks on them, and his efforts to keep the Long Gun Registry going.
Gun owners ended up donating 10-25K to Alexander, so much so that we were told to stop donating because he was at his limit. The participated in community meetings, put up signs, and turned out on election day just to help in any way they could.
That’s ground game!
I hope the lesson is not lost on both the CPC and its competitors in the future.
Regarding social media, you’ve all seen this, right?
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/08/28/the-venn-diagram-of.html
[Canadians] will have a clear choice of competing political philosophies. Critics warn that our politics will become polarized between left and right. But if Mr. Harper aims to turn the Conservatives into the Natural Governing Party, he’ll have to govern as a moderate.
Until recently political parties have not declared clear ideologies. Instead each party put out their slightly personalized version of vagueness hoping to appeal to the broadest spectrum. The legacy media would then spin that all-purpose pap into whatever ideology would best support their favourite party, usually the Libs, and then force feed the truck drivers, welders and hockey moms that Kate referred to.
The parties either didn’t need to (Libs), or were afraid to (Cons) define an ideology because the media controlled the narrative. This is how the Libs became the natural governing party when their main political philosophy was simply “we deserve to rule”.
I agree that the “new” media doesn’t supercede the ground game in winning elections, but does decrease the old media’s control of the narrative between elections.
To me the best politics can be achieved by forcing the various factions to rigorously define their ideologies and have an honest media do the real job of communicating. If such was the case, there would be few surprises and Margaret Wente wouldn’t need to say “he’ll have to govern as a moderate”
I agree that the “new” media doesn’t supercede the ground game in winning elections, but does decrease the old media’s control of the narrative between elections.
Exactly true. I just don’t like to mention it very often in case they catch on to what we’re doing.
The real significance of the federal election–a Globe and Mail story, “Canada’s new electoral divide: It’s about the money” (May 4), states that “The true divide, the new reality of Canadian politics, is between the economic heartlands that the Conservatives now dominate throughout the country and the economic hinterlands won by the NDP.” I differ.
The true divide, as it was in the 2008 election but ever more so now, is between Québec and the Rest of Canada (RoC, once quaintly known as English Canada). The Conservatives in Québec this year won 16.5 per cent of the popular vote and only six seats out of 75, that is eight per cent of them.
In the RoC the Conservatives won 48 per cent of the vote (almost a majority, in a contest with three other serious parties) and 167 of 233 seats, that is a whopping 72 per cent of them. The difference with Québec could hardly be more pronounced.
The clear fact is that the Conservatives are dominant at this point in the RoC while barely a force in la belle province. Moreover Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia are in line to receive significant numbers of new seats to reflect their increase in population. Most of those seats will be suburban ones, just the sort of seat very likely to be picked up by the Conservatives. So it seem probable that their dominance in the RoC will increase; meanwhile it is hard to see any great breakthrough for them in Québec in light of the three most recent federal election results there.
So the true great Canadian political divide looks well set only to widen further.
Mark
Ottawa
@ 12:34pm Liz J wrote: “Yes, we have grown ups in charge, the NDP pop corn gallery/NDP can get busy with their pea shooters.”
This immediately brought to mind an image that I think aptly describes what the next 4 years of Parliament will resemble:
Imagine an old style movie theatre with a balcony on a Saturday afternoon. All of the parents (Conservatives) go to the balcony for some relative peace & quiet. But down below their children (NDP’ers) have a free-for-all – popcorn fights, spitballs, soda throw all over each other.
A few black eyes and lots of screaming will result but none of it will affect the parents whatsoever.
Imagine an old style movie theatre with a balcony…
OMG they don’t have balconies any more?
Anyways I’ll be looking for coverage of question period on The Comedy Network.
Awhile back a Chris Selley column had a rather ambiguous sentence about the thought process of Harper and journalists. I remarked that it would be more interesting to see the thought process of journalists than Harper. So I joined Twitter for the remainder of the election out of curiosity. I was actually surprised that not all journalists were as shallow and superficial as I expected. The biggest difference between them and blue-collar guys is the sense of humor – tradesman are much funnier. Anyway since my curiosity is now satisfied, I’ll probably discontinue my Twitter account.