Well the consensus seems to be that Canadians voted for "change." The irony is that the Liberal Party is the oldest federal political party in Canada and Justin Trudeau is the son of one of the most famous Canadian prime ministers in our history. I make this statement tongue-in-cheek because clearly the "change" that Canadians sought was a change in leadership and in the articulation of Canadian values.
There is a lot one could say about the election but if I were only able to give one reason why I think that the Liberals won, I would argue that the length of the campaign was the key issue for turning the tide.
Usually a campaign is devised around a few key messages. You want to make it clear to the electorate that you can govern and that your policies are the best options for the country. In today's electoral arena we see that campaign messages are managed very carefully. Politicians are told to "stay-on-book" and the voters tend to hear, over and over again, the single most important sound bite that is the core campaign focus. Thus, in the case of this election, the key message from each campaign had to be powerful enough to be sustained and to be interesting to the electors for 78 days. Now, the Americans would laugh at the idea that 78 days is a long campaign, but since the 1980s Canadian elections have run from 57 days at the high end to only 36 at the low end.
The problem for the Conservative Party is that the message they started out with was a call to "stay the course on the economy." I know that they had other messages but the first key message was about the Conservative Party's capacity to regulate the economy and to create jobs. The fact is that this messaging has worked in the past and in a shorter campaign the Conservatives might have been able to keep the focus on the economy and keep the focus on their promise of economic stability.
From the outset of the election the CP had two opponents to deal with and on the issue of the economy the NDP provided the best counter example to the CP's fiscal conservatism. Remember that the NDP were largely touted as the real opposition in this election. But the NDP have never governed federally and when they have governed provincially they have generally been considered as weak fiscal managers. So, the Conservatives needed to frame the NDP as the spenders and to make it appear that the electorate should fear an "orange tide." The problem is that the NDP did not play into the Conservative message. They too argued for "staying the course" on deficits although they did suggest a shift in priorities in terms of spending. The NDP were able, over the course of the long campaign, to take the wind out of the Conservative sails on this issue.
On the other battlefront the Liberal Party had a long, long way to come back from the last election failure. The Conservatives had to articulate a reason why Justin Trudeau should not take the reins of government. The strategy, as we now know, was to paint him as "not ready." So they crafted what appeared to be a non-partisan commercial in which "typical" Canadians were seemingly assessing a candidate that was too young for the top job - as though a junior assistant in a corporate office had applied for the job of CEO. Curiously, the ad seemed to imply that sometime in the future Trudeau would be an appropriate choice and I am unclear as to why someone thought that it would be OK to set up their opponent as the potential best choice in the next election.
When the Conservatives lost steam for their key economic message, they needed to fall back on a key secondary message that would distinguish them: the Conservative Party's stance on security. But, the security strategy that invoked issues of immigration and citizenship oaths really only spoke to the Conservative base - a constituency that was already going to vote for them. In fact, by raising core social issues the Conservatives opened the door to a conversation about Canadian values and here is where the son of the former prime minister who brought us the Charter could walk through the open door and be the leader who could articulate the message of a diverse, multicultural, open, caring and, yes, youthful Canada.
And, bingo, you have a red tide that overpowers the orange wave and defeats the cynicism of the blue.
