The Art and Science of Public Affairs

Electoral Science, or...

I just received an email from friend, political colleague, and fellow Green Blogger Mark Taylor. The letter was an invitation to register for a Public Affairs Association of Canada conference, co-produced by Campaigns and Elections, and hosted by the Toronto Board of Trade.

‘Big deal’, and “Why are you blogging on this after a month of silence.’ are comments that immediately leap to mind. I’ll answer these putative questions with a list of conference topics. Before I plagiarise the promotional email though, I’ll suggest that this is a great professional development opportunity for GPC, and GPO staff. In addition, with a $50 registration fee for students, pretty well every EDA in Toronto can afford to send a couple of members who are registered students at a dirt cheap knocked down cost. (Regular fees are $775 plus GST). Hey if you’re an out of town EDA, then I’m sure that we can find a warm place to sleep if you want to send someone down to TO to attend.

Furthermore, I have been blogging for almost a year on many of these topics. As a mere grassroots member, I have often reminded that I have limited credibility within the GPC. OK, if I’m a clown and a joker, then perhaps exposing the so-called Pro’s to this stuff will have an impact on how the GPC manages our Party.

Electoral Art.

Heres the promotional email in full:

November 4-5, 2009
The Toronto Board of Trade

Just in Case: Develop the right crisis management plan for your organization.
Too often organizations find themselves in a difficult position with no way out. Who could have imagined “it” would happen to us, right? Every organization needs a clear and effective plan to manage the unthinkable. Learn how to develop one by engaging your whole organization on the internet with traditional means.

Polling
In this session, you will learn how to read a poll, know when a poll is flawed and ask the right questions of pollsters. Find out how the smartest pollsters are overcoming new challenges and gleaning more and more information from their programs.

Social Media – Best Practices and Finding the Right Metrics & ROI Measurements for your Organizations
Winning your Web 2.0 campaign requires a clear understanding of what defines success. What metrics do we use and what are false indicators? When it comes to social media, is it quality or quantity?

Communicating Your Message to the Media
Too often, folks just “do it” and then wonder why they aren’t getting their message across. Strategic communication is about developing the right message, targeting the right audience and using the right communication tools the right way at the right time. Planning is everything. Learn how.

New Media
Print media, as a standalone business, is disappearing. The only question is which media organizations will be smart enough to make the transition out of paper and ink. How do new media organizations differ from old? What are the new rules and tactics? How does one woo new media?

A moderated panel discussion about the role of government relations in the Canadian policy process
Four panelists talk about the role of government relations in Canada and whether it is part of the problem or part of the solution.

Microtargeting
Carpet-bombing your media is no longer effective, efficient or good business. Over the last decade, political and public affairs consultants have borrowed from successful consumer marketing campaigns to create highly efficient messaging campaigns. Learn what microtargeting is, where it is going and how it can help you win.

A Roll of the Dice: Effective public consultation in an age of accountability and transparency
Meeting the public on their own turf can be a risky business – you never know what they will say and who will hear it. For many organizations, public consultation is too scary to mention, yet there are ways to make it work for everyone. Learn from case studies about the 10 best things you can do and the 10 worst things you can do when going down the consultation road.

Five ways to ensure you hire the right consultant
From the pros, those on the buy-side and those on the sell-side, will help you identify your needs and get the consultant help best suited for you.

Recycle and Reuse: How secondary research can save your organization money while delivering the goods
Smart use of existing research can save money while getting you the information you need; identify sources; how to get them; what to use.

Winning political and public affairs battles on the phone
The telephone can be one of our most effective tools, but only if you use it right. Done wrong, political and public affairs telemarketing can hurt your campaign. Learn how to use phones to deliver an attractive message that can be instantly digested by tens of thousands.

US Advocacy Campaign Innovations
Billions of dollars per year are spent trying to influence legislation and public opinion. Find out here how the smartest advocacy organizations are delivering and targeting messages.

New Decade, New Issues?
A panel of pundits meet to look into the future and predict the issues that will be most prominent on the public agenda over the next ten years.

REGISTRATION:

By-Election Called: Is the Green Party of Canada Ready?

By-Elections Called

It’s official now, four by-elections have been called, with the vote to fall on Monday November 9. The lucky ridings are:

Hochelaga, in Montreal, with the Olympic Stadium on it’s West boundary.

New Westminster – Coquitlam, In Vancouver, where NDP Incumbent Dawn Black quit to run Provincially.

Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, Right next door to Central Nova.

Montmagny – L’Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, East of Quebec city, on the South Shore of the St. Lawrence.

It’s no big surprise, but it will have some interesting consequences. First off, Elizabeth May once promised to run in the first available by-election. Well, I doubt very much that will happen now. She has made a major commitment to running in SGI by picking up and moving to the West coast. It appears that  $62,000 has been commited to pre-writ spending, and the canvas is already in full swing. The die is pretty well cast, and I’d be surprised if Elizabeth’s next few months were spent anywhere outside SGI, meeting her prospective constituents.

Mike Nagy By-Election beneficiary

So if Elizabeth May isn’t going to be the Green Party’s focus in these by-elections, what’s the plan? We have

Chris Tindal in Toronto Centre

seen in the past how important By-elections can be for building up a strong EDA. There are two by-elections that spring to mind. Toronto Centre, where Chris Tindal’s campaign ID’d thousands of new supporters, and Guelph, where Mike Nagy and his team went all out, and posted one of the most competetive finishes ever for the Green Party. Then, of course, there’s London North Centre, where Elizabeth May surprised her sceptics, and pulled off a strong second place finish. Thousands of Green Party supporters were identified in London. It seems clear to me that every by-election is an opportunity to mobilise and target resources. We should always be ready to take advantage of the electoral opportunity to build another strong EDA to go forward with.

By-Elections are utterly predictable. You don’t know exactly where they’ll be, and you’re not exactly sure when they’ll be, but sure as rain, there will be a couple of By-elections every year or so. For the leadership, there will be a number of media opportunities, where they will have a few opportunities to speak before the national media. For the National Campaign team, there is an opportunity to ‘test drive’ parts of the national platform, and campaign theme. There is an opportunity to build the infrastructure for the central party to lend direct support to target ridings. For the local Electoral District, there is the growth in membership numbers, and profile of the Green Party of Canada. Local capacity to fight future elections will be dramatically higher after a by-election supported by an active Party apparatus.

I know the Election Readiness Commitee has been pretty pre-occupied lately. Small wonder, it’s always a daunting task to prepare for a General Election, and that was properly their focus in the past several months. I’m sure the search for a riding for Elizabeth May to run in took up a lot of attention, and ‘bandwidth’ at head office too. We can also remember though when the last by-election / general election tangle occurred, it confounded the national Party. They were seriously wrong footed by the general election call. I’m afraid that this has been the case for every election since 2004. There is a persistent problem with election readiness.

I find it hard to credit that out of all 23 staff listed on the website, only Catherine Johannson is tasked to election readiness. The Election commitee is Catherine’s election team, but they are all volunteers, not a permanent staff with resources dedicated to the job. We need to have a much more robust campaign infrastructure, and the mechanisms to effectively direct staff and volunteers to acheive strategic and tactical objectives. I mean things like phone banks, volunteer co-ordinators, and field workers to send to hot spots. Trained and experienced campaign managers to plan and execute deployment of resources. Obviously, they should all be prepared to re-focus quickly, as priorities change.

In the past, a relatively ‘green’ (pun intended), leadership made the assumption that elections were all about the Air War waged on the National stage. I think though that Elizabeth May’s experience should by now have taught her that the local election campaign cannot be won by the air war alone. The way she was constrained to choose between such a small number of viable EDA’s to run in for this election should drive home the need for many more well organised EDA’s, with lots of volunteers, money, and experienced campaigners. It would be natural to conclude the central Party needs to be supporting EDA development, and doing all in it’s power to augment local teams. This isn’t a small thing, as it would require a shift away from the current focus on communications. There are only so many salaries to go around, and putting real resources into election readiness, and EDA support will require re-thinking the current payroll. It’s not enough to have an effective public relations organisation. You have to have people on phones, and pounding the pavement if you want to realise your potential. The central party is in a unique position to put in place the infrastructure to augment local efforts, but it will take administrative skill, and some tough decisions.

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How can the Green Party of Canada co-ordinate Air War and Ground War?

Dan Grice Effectively Targeted Conservative support

In some prior posts, I blogged about just how weak and ineffective the GPC’s attack on the Conservative Party was in the 2008 general election. The basic fact is that in electoral politics, if you want to attack a Party, you do so by appealing to their supporters with a message that strongly resonates, and will draw them away from their allegiance. The heightened rhetoric coming from the GPC in 2008 was counterproductive if the objective was to actually hurt the CPC. By castigating Stephen Harper in such strong language, we gave no reason for softer supporters of the Conservatives to reconsider their position, and entrust their votes to the Green Party.

I am going to make a bold assumption about the GPC’s national campaign theme, and message for the upcoming general election. Federal Council has apparently decided that there is only one overriding objective in the upcoming election, that being to elect Elizabeth May. It is becoming equally obvious that the intention is to achieve this feat by unseating Gary Lunn in SGI. Hopefully, it’s become clear to the FCC that the only way to achieve this result is to directly target, and win over Conservative voters in  SGI. If the national campaign is actually going to be delivering a (partly) Conservative friendly message, then there are quite a number of campaigns in Canada who will have a great opportunity which they should be ready to capitalise on.

Yes, there are Liberal and NDP voters who could, and should be targetted everywhere. After all, these voters are much more inclined to vote Green, and in many ridings will represent the low hanging fruit. I will guess that Ignatieff’s rejection of Dion’s Green Tax Shift, and unequivocal promotion of the Tar Sands, will give a small, but significant opportunity for us to target Liberal voters. There are places though where the local Campaign will need to focus on small c Conservative voters. I’m thinking about the obvious candidates like Bruce Grey Owen Sound, or SGI, or pretty well any riding in Alberta. I would go so far as to argue that Alberta, (and Quebec), should be planning a regional campaign, with a dramatically different theme than the rest of Canada. Any riding in Canada that has concentrated pockets of Conservative voters should have an opportunity to crack the CPC vote open a little bit, without having to expend huge resources on it.

If the ‘Air War’ is in fact going to be broadcasting a message targeting conservatives, then this will present an opportunity for most EDA’s to expand their vote in previously barren grounds. I recently commented on the GPC blogs regarding targeting the CPC vote. Dan Grice, the GPC Candidate for Vancouver Quadra responded with a link to a campaign flyer they developed to target Conservative held polls in his riding. Anecdotally, he claimed a great response, including a big bounce in the vote in those polls, and plenty of sign requests. I ask you to consider, if your campaign were to do a flyer drop into strongly Conservative polls, while at the same time the national Campaign was emphasising the same, or very similar messages over the airwaves, would this not be a very effective tool for winning support?

Co-ordinating the ground war, and the air war are pretty important in my opinion. The National Campaign will undoubtedly have a 36 day plan, with key messages, and announcements planned for maximum impact. The timing of the Air War, and some of the content will undoubtedly be a closely guarded secret. That’s all very well and good, but the secrecy must be tempered by the need for local Campaigns to plan their efforts to coincide with the national Campaign. If, for example, a major media event is planned for the leader, and if, for example, the message for this event is conservative friendly, then the local Campaigns should have the opportunity to capitalise on the exposure. They might want to print flyers, issue press releases, revise and re-target their telephone and foot canvas, in order to take advantage of the exposure the Air War has generated, and reinforce it where it will do the most good.

A very well planned National Campaign would be ready to help make this one-two punch possible. By developing a sound, and targeted message. By targeting effectively, and then developing the collateral (flyers, press release templates, subsidy for EDA’s to do targeted mailshots, etc), they will empower the local Campaigns to take advantage. Above all, by having a well planned, and resourced internal communications strategy, they will be able to co-ordinate the timing, and ensure that the right information and material gets into the right hands with enough time to act on it. All the planning in the world is wasted if  there are no people in place to make the phone calls, order and deliver flyer print runs, and make sure that the plan gets implemented. Conversely, if the National Campaign feels they don’t have the resources (people), to co-ordinate release dates like a well oiled machine, then the decision should be to lift the veil of secrecy somewhat. It would be essential to allow the local campaigns to plan for themselves how to wring the maximum benefit from the planned ‘Air War’. It’s far more important that our own campaigns are able  to capitalise, than it is to prevent our Opposition from finding out what we’re up to.

Many local campaigns won`t really have the people to divert from their ID – GOTV canvas to start doing big flyer drops in short 1 or 2 day windows of opportunity. Here is a simple model for the National Campaign, and the local campaigns to consider. Research the theme and message centrally, and test with public polls to ensure that the theme resonates with, and will convert the target demographic. Purchase the broad form census results from Statistics Canada, and use geospatial mapping tools to map the target demographic onto poll maps. When the time is right, release the poll maps to the local campaigns, with suggested targets clearly outlined. Integrate this data into Grimes database, so that the local campaign can target the appropriate voters. The local campaign can then go to Canada Posts` unaddressed, or addressed admail site, and have Canada Post deliver the appropriate flyer to the target postal walks. Canada Post makes it pretty easy to target unaddressed admail by postal walks, (the last three digits in the postal code). The costs of delivery can be reduced to below $0.12 per piece, if the National Campaign were to negotiate contract rates on our behalf. If you assume printing costs of around $0.07 per piece, then you could deliver 10,000 pieces, to a well targeted audience, at a cost of about $2,000. I know that `junk mail` is a little, (lot), controversial, but the fact remains that it is a cheap and effective way to get a whole lot of literature on target in a hurry.

It should be obvious to all that this methodology should be the same no matter who our target audience is. While I am argueing here that the message will most likely be directed at conservative voters, this is how the National Campaign should be operating whosoever the campaign theme targets.

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Managing expectations and the Green Party of Canada’s ‘message’.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May plans to take on Tory MP Gary Lunn in the next federal election. Photo Credit: Tyler Anderson, National Post

There has been a lot of interest and discussion within, (and without) Green Party ranks regarding the big question: “Where will Elizabeth May be running in the next election?” There have been some pretty open discussions about the relative merits, and electability in given riding’s, in a kind of a guessing game based on public utterances by Elizabeth, and whatever drip-pets of information come from informal internal sources. This discussion is healthy, and without question serves a useful purpose in drawing out strategic analysis of varying quality from people both within, and without the decision making loop.

I am afraid that most of us that I am aware of, (With the notable exception of Bill Hulett, a leading light and long time organiser in the Guelph EDA), have more or less ignored the consequences of talking it up so heavily. Cast your mind back to the 2004 election, with tons of hype by Jim Harris, and GPC hacks that Greens were poised to elect MP’s all over the place. Remember the public, and media reaction to the election outcome? “Greens fail to elect MP” is a reasonably representative headline for you to think about. Again, in 2005-6, Bruce Grey Owen Sound was trumpeted as the ‘breakthrough riding’, with predictable results when the election was said and done. London North Centre by-election? Same deal, with the added salacious fact that the shiny new media star had failed to win, even in a by-election. Central Nova? There was a broad reaction that despite the presence of Elizabeth in the debate, the Green Party still came nowhere near.

Over the past few weeks, Elizabeth May has been giving interviews charging that the Green Party has a single objective, that overrides all other concerns. Electing Elizabeth May to Parliament. If you actually sit back and consider the past consequences of failing to meet very demanding self imposed expectations, this starts to look like a very very risky communications fiasco in the making. The downsides for both Elizabeth May, and the Green Party are pretty big. If Elizabeth fails to get elected in SGI, then the Green Party has failed once again.

I don’t believe it will be fatal, or even particularly injurious to the GPC. We will continue to grow our strength in more and more EDA’s, because we do have many hundreds of dedicated local activists. Every election pours resources into well organised EDA’s, and the teams get broader, and deeper in skills, experience, and raw electoral resources like ID’d voter lists. Nonetheless, it will further damage our credibility, and will provide plenty of ammunition for our political foes. For Elizabeth May, it will be a big drag on her personal profile, and will devalue her once impressive stature as one of the foremost environment advocates in Canada. It is likely, even probable that Elizabeth would lose the leadership of the Party, with the attendant loss of prestige and credibility. Not a very good outcome for somebody whose future livelihood depends on the high profile that she has spent a lifetime building.

I have been as guilty as anybody in inflating the rhetoric surrounding the choice of riding’s. It’s a choice that needed to be made, and many people wanted to influence the decision, in a positive direction. I apologise if Elizabeth thought it was needful to quell criticism by acknowledging the Party’s wishes in this way. I wonder if it is too late to wind back the clock, and start managing expectations better? What would the best route be to backtrack, and start publicising equally important, but less ’sexy’ objectives? Should we set up broader objectives to be given equal, (at least), prominence to the laudible, but very challenging task of electing an MP?

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Just read a great post on DemocraticSPACE.com

What does the Data mean?

I just read a great post on DemocraticSPACE.com. Greg Morrow has constructed a matrix to do comparative analysis and ranking of  electoral potential for the Green Party of Canada. What a novel thought for the National Campaign, data driven decision making!  Greg has constructed a matrix whereby he ranks every electoral district in the country by relative standings for the following variables: Membership, votes won, gap between GPC and the winner, numbers of ID’d voters, and then compiles them into a ranking from strongest to weakest riding.

 Normally I have criticisms to make about anything that anybody has to say. Call it a personality flaw, or call it attention to detail  if you’re more diplomatic. In a previous post I discussed the importance of how the vote split falls in determining the electoral opportunities facing an electoral district. Greg’s matrix should probably include a measure of close 2-way, 3-way, and 4-way splits as well. The closer the split, the more different strategies, and opportunities will exist to win votes from other Party’s. For example, if there is a close 3-way split in the vote, and there’s a 20 point spread between the GPC and the first place, the GPC has the opportunity to win votes from each of the three front runners, and build up the 20 point deficit. If there is a way out there front runner, with a 16% spread between the GPC and the winner, then the chances are the deficit needs to be made up entirely at the expense of an incumbent. The incumbency factor is very difficult to overcome, and as far as the GPC annihilating a single Party, if you believe that possible, then I’ve got a bridge for sale you should really think about.

The only other significant criticism I could make would be regarding the ID’d voter data. I can only assume  that Greg has access to civiCRM, and/or GRIMES voter ID data. Many EDA’s don’t use them. I know at least two EDA’s that have significant numbers of ID’d voters resident on custom local d-base apps. Plus there’s the stacks of paper records in most campaign managers basements, waiting for somebody to do the data entry. (Unfortunately, the data entry seldom ever happens, and the data is lost).  In London North Centre by-election, I compiled data on over 9,000 identified Green Party supporters in order to quantify the outcomes from the GOTV effort. The scrutineers sheets were sent to the shredder instead of putting in the two hours of work needed to scan in the actual voters names, so the analysis could never be done, but surely the GPC retained the lists of ID’d voters?

The above paragraph illustrates a point that most professional users of data are aware of. When you formally start quantifying things, run sophisticated analysis, and present it neatly, the conclusions take on a life of their own. They become ‘THE NUMBERS’, and are inherently believable. You need to retain your critical faculties, and dig deeper into the underlying assumptions, and data quality. In conclusion, Greg Morrow’s matrix is a most excellent tool for targeting resources, and ranking Electoral districts. There are a few flaws and/or problems, but they are readily overcome. Be sure to check it out if you plan on holding an opinion on targeted ridings.

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More ‘Target riding’ news for the Green Party of Canada.

How about Genest earning his keep in the Montmagny By-election?

Every Monday, I trot off to the Hill Times website to imbibe the best political reporting in the country. This morning, I saw an intriguing article entitled: May ‘closes the door’ on a byelection run for Greens, seeking new riding . As usual, it was a little frustrating to find the balance of the article blocked, and I even, (briefly) considered ponying up for a subscription so as to get the whole story NOW. It isn’t only the Hill Times, apparently Elizabeth May has told several journalists that she is out of the running for any Federal by-elections, and is focusing on finding the best riding for herself in the next General election.

The Owen Sound SunTimes seems to think that Elizabeth is looking hard at Bruce Grey Owen Sound as a target riding. (As does the Toronto Star). It is also reported that there are still 2 other target ridings. Saanich – Gulf-Islands, (SGI), and Guelph. I had been under the impression that the decision had already been made to run in SGI, but unless Elizabeth is deliberately playing coy, these interviews seem to indicate the choice is still open. Two of these ridings are pretty serious Conservative strongholds. BGOS, and SGI. There is only one way to win in either of them. That is to campaign with the message that targets the Conservatives. Please read this post I wrote in January for a nice and simple explanation. Guelph is the obvious target though. The big caveat is that the Campaign Committee needs to actually discuss this with the Guelph EDA, and see if there is enough support for Elizabeth with the local membership. There were some very upset people in Guelph last fall, but maybe they’ve gotten over their ‘mad’ enough to give a leaders campaign a whirl?

 In the same article, the Suntimes report that CCMV has been discarded, because the by-election hasn’t been called yet. Since no by-elections have been called anywhere, I think that means that Elizabeth isn’t prepared to take the risk of declaring for any by-election, and then having the rug yanked out from under her if a general election super-cedes the by-election. I can understand why. She has to win in her next trip to the polls, and while a by-election  is the best opportunity, the ridings available aren’t very good candidates for her in a General election.

 The problem of course is that Elizabeth very publicly, and frequently promised to run in the first possible by-election, so now she has to find a graceful way to back down from that commitment. In my estimation, she will have to eat a wee nibble of humble pie, and back down. It will help a lot if she were able to make a grand announcement of a couple spare deputy leaders decisions to run in Quebec, and BC by-elections. Who to get for CCMV I don’t have a clue. Better get cracking though, the by-elections will be happening this fall, and the GPC cannot afford to lose any ground in the event the general election doesn’t happen this fall.

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Green Party of Canada and the Youth Vote.

'Too busy' to vote?

The Green Party of Canada has for many years enjoyed exceptional levels of support amongst younger voters. In fact, it could be successfully argued that the growth in Green Party support has roughly tracked the graduation of our youth into the ranks of voters at the age of 18. The most recent series of EKOS polls has simply re-stated something that pollsters have been telling us for the last 5 years. Green Party support comes disproportionately from young (under 25 years old) voters.

This is, of course a very positive signal for the future prospects of our Party. It comes with a built in problem though. The fact is that young people simply do not bother to get out and vote. I know that sounds harsh. I know that there are other factors to point to in every election, like exam schedules coinciding with the vote, or poor voter registration mitigating against the youth vote. These might be contributing factors, but the underlying reality is that turn-out amongst the youth is dramatically worse than any other population segment, and that has held true for many many electoral cycles. I would even go so far as to argue that a large chunk of the polled support, that always seems to evaporate on election day is due to the fact that the youth vote picked up in the opinion polls doesn’t get converted into ballots on E-day.

I just read Dave Baglers poston this issue. Dave has proposed that the solution is to mimic the other Party’s, and establish a full time Campus club organizer to improve the GPC’s presence on Campus across the country. Dave is right that this can have a huge impact in those few riding’s where a large Campus exists, like in London North Centre. I remember L.N.C. by-election pretty well. While the Campaign was overall a badly managed affair, the work that Ben West did to shake up the Western campus was extraordinary. I cannot stress enough though that this was a tactical effort, that was executed very well. Strategicallyspeaking, it simply doesn’t address the opportunity we are discussing. The resources required to duplicate this success in all the major University riding’s are not available. Even if they were, and everything went perfectly on every major campus, it would still only translate into 50,000 extra votes at best. The fact is that only a small fraction of young voters are accessible to us on campus, and at the very best this would be a small part of an effective strategy to mobilise the youth vote.

 There hasn’t been much in the way of serious tactical, or strategic discussion about what to do about it. In a sense, Jim Harris’s focus on Trippi’s social networking campaigns was driving towards a solution, but the Green Party has ultimately failed to work out a systematic approach  to boosting turnout amongst youth. In all fairness to the GPC, the NDP spent decades wrestling with the same issue, with the same result. (no change, or even a further decline).

IMHO, in order to achieve a big boost in turnout, we need to go back  to first principles, and define the problem, and proximate causes. Then we need to determine a strategy, and tactics required  to acheive the required result. This is a very ambitious project I’m talking about. In order to succeed, we will need to work it out pretty carefully, and focus a chunk of our election budget, and communications strategy towards achieving a concrete advantage.

I cannot speak for anybody but myself, but I haven’t let that stop me in the past! First off, we need to be able to target communications on this demographic. Since young people do not watch much TV anymore, the best way to reach youth is probably the ‘internet’. I would tend to agree that boring static sites are not going to help much, and interactive, and networking sites will pack the best bang for the buck. The real trick will be to focus on attracting, and retaining an audience. That includes using traditional media, ( TV and Newspaper), to promote, and highlight the online campaign. Every trick in the book should be utilised to identify, and collect contact information for Green Party supporters on-line. Self-identification, newsletter subscriptions, petition signers, ‘invite a friend’, and as many more great ideas as yet un-thought of as can, and will be forthcoming.

By itself, the exercise of identifying throngs of youthful GPC supporters will NOT solve the turnout problem. What will be needed is, (to paraphrase Monty Python), ’something completely different’. Like what? Well, lets start by making the act of voting something interesting, and above all FUN. What I would like to propose is to turn the advance polls into a big push for the Green Party. If we build this into the communications strategy for the next National election, then I believe that we can get an enormous amount of very positive ‘old media’ coverage by running a positive campaign to boost voter turnout. If we pop a serious budget at promoting the advance polls, with a ‘non-partisan’ theme of getting out to vote at the advance polls, then we will be the biggest beneficiary of whatever success the campaign enjoys.

 It will be a message that self-inoculates against any contrary message that the other Party’s may want to respond with. Like Mother, and Apple pie, the media, pundits, and other political actors can do nothing but make positive noises about increasing voter turnout, no matter how much they might gnash their teeth at the prospect of the GPC scoring a big win. It also goes a long way towards countering the strategic voting message that the Liberal Party will be counting on to steal our vote on E-Day. In the past, the Liberals have really poured it on in the closing days of the Campaign. We really, really have to forestall this tactic in the next election. What better way could there be than to take the GPC vote out of play a week before the Liberal strategic voting campaign message starts to saturate the electorate?

Green Party Party!

In order to really capture the imagination, and motivate youth’s to vote, then we could co-ordinate a network of advance poll parties across the country. If we can promise people a great party to go to after the advance polls close, with large venues in major cities, and small and large parties alike in smaller population centres, but really push it from coast to coast, then people will have a perfectly good reason to get out and vote. It will be associated with lot’s of fun. Who knows, maybe we can fill the coffers with some ready cash if we can work it right.

The possibilities are exciting to contemplate. The GPC frankly has no hope of commanding the attention of the electorate in the last week of the election, youth or otherwise. Even if we saved every penny we could, and spent it all in a rush just before E-Day, we would still be completely swamped by the spending power of the other Party’s. The Advance polls are another story though. If we only have enough resources to dominate the news for a couple of early campaign days, then rather than dribbling out our pennies to minimal effect, why not capture the airwaves for a few days before and during the advance polls? There is absolutely no reason why we should hang around waiting for E-Day to be clobbered by the firepower of the other Party’s. A ballot cast at the advance poll is just as precious and valid as a ballot on E-Day. It serves our purposes so well, in so many different ways, that I truly believe we should think ‘outside the box’, and re-write the book on getting out the vote. Besides, the timing is perfect for every campaign to take a break after the polls close, and have a great party to charge up the Party for the last lap of the National Campaign.

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GPC Fundraising: New initiatives needed.

I am often pretty critical of current practices in the GPC. I hope that my readership understands that the criticism is seldom meant to denigrate, it’s intended to promote positive change. When it comes to fundraising, the GPC has done a couple of things pretty well since Elizabeth May took over. First and foremost, the Party has worked out that emails are free, can be deployed in a matter of hours, and are a pretty good tool to gather in resources. In the past, (pre-2006), fundraising efforts were sporadic, and had an ad-hoc nature. “It looks like an election is coming, set up something to go and get $250k from the membership.” A temporary phone bank would get set up, a small group of people would learn on the job, and just when everybody had it figured out, Jim Harris would pull out his magic rolodex, and raise the other $200k in an afternoon or two. The website was the primary fundraiser, and relied pretty much on passive traffic to leave a present as it visited the website. It was a pretty good website, and with the kind of traffic it generated during an election, it was capable of raising some pretty impressive $.
What has been done since then is that fundraising has actually focused on the proven returns of systematic communications, coupled with issues based, and results oriented asks. A recent example is the plea in Elizabeth Mays words to reach deep into our pockets and help retire the election debt. This is a very good way of couching an appeal for money. People can readily agree to serving this objective, and for a certain proportion of recipients, it will justify making an impulsive decision to shell out some cash on the spot. Over the past couple of years, this approach has helped to raise on the order of $250k per quarter, which compares pretty well to past ad hoc efforts.
I have also noticed a second trend in action. When Elizabeth May heads out on the road, she often makes appearances at local EDA events, and fundraisers. There is a revenue split between the local EDA, and the central Party that is very wise. Elizabeth gets to go out and galvanise the troops at a local level. The EDA gets a nice boost, and probably an impressive turnout at a local event. A thousand or two dollars are raised, and shared, so it’s a win-win. This is a laudable effort, and in my mind it is starting to justify the recent focus on Elizabeth’s book tour. With Elizabeth on the move across the country, she was able to hook up with EDA events at a minimal cost. The nicest thing about it is that it is systematic, and provides an ongoing stream of resources, not just a one time dribble of cash, but a regular flow of new recruits, motivated EDA memberships, and cash on the barrelhead.
That’s enough gushing praise from Bluegreenblogger. We currently only have one Leader to gad about the country, and the main thrust of fundraising has a couple of serious limitations. From the standpoint of the fundraising staff, the world is divided into those for whom we have email addresses, and the rest of the world which doesn’t count. The world which counts, (current email addresses of known supporters), is continuously augmented. The website provides a regular flow of new members, sign takers, etc. to populate the email lists. Active EDA’s are out there recruiting new members, and contacts, which eventually flow back into the fundraising database. Elizabeth’s event appearances are probably pretty good at harvesting new names and email addresses to feed into the passive fundraising ‘machine’.
You would think that with the constant flow of people being introduced to the mailing lists, that fundraising would be on a continuous growth curve. Well it isn’t, and the reason why is one of the two factors that will determine our fundraising success. What it boils down to is that for every new contact shelling out a $100 donation, there is a previous donor deciding not to do so anymore. In fact, if it weren’t for the frequent elections, which periodically restock our membership numbers with thousands of new donors, the numbers would look more like one new donor being matched by two donors taking a step back, and donations would be in decline.
There’s no question that money is the mother’s milk of politics. Right now the GPC needs to clobber our $1mm plus election debt, and it would be nice to actually start banking some serious cash, instead of relying on bank loans to fight future elections. Based on the discussion above, there are two ways to do it. Firstly, we could focus on developing new data sources, and adding larger numbers of new names to our fundraising database. This approach is fine, and neccessary. Ideally it would not be a one-off effort. It would involve different communications channels, would be repeatable and ongoing, and would have a quantifiable payoff. After all, in the long run we’d be better off with programs that deliver 2 new prospects per week than a non-repeatable initiative that delivers 20 new propsects all at once. The problem is that no matter how large the email lists got, based on current, and recent past practices all those new names will quickly reach the point of donor fatigue, and the growth in funds raised would level off at a point somewhat, but not dramatically higher than todays numbers.
The second approach is to get to the root of donor fatigue, and improve the retention rate of members, and donors. In the world of Sales, and Marketing, customer retention is extremely important. It boils down to the fact that it is much cheaper, and easier to keep a customer happy and loyal than it is to go out to the big bad world and win new customers. It is in fact so much cheaper that corporations large and small alike set up call centres, offer loyalty rewards, put TV’s and free coffee in their waiting rooms, and put great creative energy into finding and improving ways to meet their customers needs. We are a political Party, so it’s actually not true that it costs us more to gain new ‘customers’. Every election is a blizzard of free publicity, and the outcome is a blast of new resources. That doesn’t change the other side of the equation though. Provided the costs of retaining members for longer is lower than the resulting revenue stream, the GPC is ahead of the game in financial terms. I won’t even get into the bonus in terms of volunteer hours, larger pool of prospective candidates etc.
So what? you ask. We’re not an auto service business that can put a large screen tv in our waiting room, and provide nice loaner cars to help retain customers. In order to find what motivates the membership, then what better way than to ask them? It will take resources, and good planning to actually go back to the membership and systematically uncover what motivates every person. First of all, it will take dedicated staffers, with a proper call centre suite of tools to effectively manage their time and tasks. This will not be pure overhead though. We currently hire Key’s direct marketing to make outbound fundraising calls on behalf of the GPC. This expense could be saved, while the outcomes for the GPC would be enhanced as we widen the scope of the phone bank, and start reaping more rewards than just the membership renewal, or enhanced donation level. By maintaining direct contact on a regular basis we can build a stronger relationship with the members, find out what motivates them, reatin their interest for longer, and therefore put fundraising on a growth track again.

I would also like to add some anecdotal evidence to back up my proposal. Over the years, I have made about 4,000 or more phone calls directly to members of the Party. Far and away the most common response I have had from members is gushingly positive, because for the majority, no-one has ever contacted them unless it was to ask for money. I can definitely tell you that a simple courtesy call to ask about the members interests, and perhaps refer them to the shadow cabinet member responsible for their particular interests WILL result in a dramatic increase in funds raised. Couple this with an ongoing outreach program, and you can start to do things like build volunteer teams to achieve Party objectives. Involve people in their local, and National Party institutions, and generally provide a support team for the Field Organisers out there shaking the bushes for more resources.

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Bad news for Provincial Green Party’s in Canada.

What a depressing story I just read. Apparently, according to the Edmonton Journal,  the Green Party of Alberta is about to get decertified. This comes on top of the recent news from Nova Scotia, where according to the CBC,  the GPNS is purported to be at the brink of decertification.

What the hell is going on here? I can sort of understand the Nova Scotia greens. They have a miniscule membership, and despite the public funding they received last year, are pretty small potato’s. There isn’t much of a Federal organisation to piggy back on, and despite Elizabeth May’s heavily funded Central Nova campaign, there just isn’t much on the ball there. Clearly they don’t have anybody hanging around who can prepare a basic set of financials. While it looks like there’s a chance to avoid de-certification now, it’s still touch and go.

Now what about Alberta Greens? In the past, the Alberta Greens have done a lot of things right. The Province has a real wealth of political talent for the Greens, and the Green activists have been as effective as anybody in Canada. The GPC has approximately 1,000 members in the Province, and that is despite a certain level of hostility to Elizabeth May, our current national leader. In Alberta, the need for a credible provincial voice for the environment is really important. The Conservatives have been running the fiefdom on behalf of the Oil patch for several generations now, and with an increasingly diverse population, people need a clear choice on election day to voice their displeasure.

I know that this blog is primarily about the federal Green Party of Canada, but this one-two punch is relevant to the GPC’s fortunes. I have posted often on the importance of organising in between elections. The bare truth though is that the resources available outside an election period are a tiny fraction of what happens during an election. The entire electorate gets galvanized, and starts to actually pay attention to politics. For the GPC, this has meant that many thousands of people come to our website under their own steam, and join, donate, volunteer, take signs, and attend our events. The funds raised, and more importantly, the big spike in membership numbers is a huge fillip to the GPC organisers everywhere.

What is true Federally is also true Provincially. Every Provincial election is an opportunity for the Provincial unit to draw in thousands of new members, volunteers, donors, etc. In Ontario, where I live, the GPC and the GPO have an awful lot of informal attachments. If you look at the websites of the most succesful Riding Associations, you will find that the Federal, and Provincial executives are often mirror images, with roles swapped, but the names being the same. When supporters are identified, then obviously the sister organisation benefits at the same time. Electoral skills are honed by fighting more elections. ID’d supporters lists grow in leaps and bounds with every election, Federal or Provincial. Donor lists can be worked in rotation, depending on when the next election is. Oh, there are all kinds of ways in which they re-inforce each other.

With the loss of Alberta Greens, this mutual re-inforcement is gone in Alberta. It’s not only that, there’s the big loss of credibility with the electorate. All of you GPC activists out there can expect a few embarrasing moments as a result of this news. Expect to be buttonholed at the office by gleeful colleagues asking you about the joke Party you belong to.

I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done. For some reason, the GPC has been a little bit hostile to some of the Provincial Party’s, where they should be recognising the dynamic I have written of here. Certainly the best and strongest EDA’s in the country understand full well what I am saying. It cannot be a surprise to the GPC’s paid organisers that their greatest successes have been where there is a strong Provincial organisation to backstop the GPC organisers. Should not the GPC lend a helping hand?

Well irrespective of whether the GPC should formally help out or not, I encourage all my readers who have contacts in Nova Scotia, or especially in Alberta to get on the phone, or email, or smoke signal, or however you like to communicate, and get in touch with them. This matters to us all, and every bit of pressure we can bring to bear to resolve these farcical issues should be brought to bear. For the Alberta Greens, bury the goddam hatchet for an hour, and file the goddam returns. I have no interest whatsoever in the merits of the dispute, or who did what to whom. The failure to file, and the withholding of statements is inexcusable, and worthy of a kindergarten class, not grown ups.  Resolve the issue, then continue with your bun fight if you still feel so inclined.

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Green Party of Canada: Governing council elections, background and picks.

While it is true that I am allergic to council politics, it’s not true that I think it’s irrelevant, or un-important. I just don’t have the patience to unravel the tangle of personal, policy, and parochial conflicts, alliances, and armed neutrality. Over the last 5 years or so, council has been a bit of a revolving door. During the actual Council elections, there are a bare sufficiency of candidates stepping forward. During the actual working year, council sheds members on a pretty regular basis. This results in the ‘losing’ factions retreating to the sidelines to plot their revenge. It’s not a very entertaining prospect to get involved in this cycle, so I have the utmost respect for those people who go into the fray with eyes wide open. On the flip side, there is always a fresh crop of cannon fodder, who don’t realise what they are in for. Someone they sort of trusted told them: ‘Run for council, Elizabeth really needs your support’, or conversely ‘Run for council, we need to stop Elizabeth from controlling everything’. These are the people most likely to throw up their hands in disgust, and resign after a few months. I feel sad for both the individuals, and the Party, as often these are the hardest working organizers, and as often as not they are lost to the Party after they have been used up and thrown away.

In the period between the 2004 election, and the 2005-6 election, much of the conflict was over what to do with the per vote subsidy for Political Party’s. The Leadership, under Jim Harris wanted some serious funding to run the Leaders tour, hire staff, hire consultants, and generally beef up the ‘Hub’ in Ottawa. Much of the Party, especially at the EDA level wanted the revenues to devolve to the Electoral District Associations, to help fund the expansion of the most local units of the Party. Both arguments had significant merit, and the debate was spirited to put it mildly. Ultimately, a Revenue Sharing Agreement was put in place whereby a significant chunk of the vote subsidy was channelled back to the EDA’s, according to a formula taking into account the depth of the EDA executive, the number of members, and the number of votes won in the last election.

It’s not as simnple as it sounds of course. For example, the RSA funds were not supposed to be disbursed until the election debt was paid off. Surprise, surprise the election debt was large, and the Hub got to spend a lot of money in the election, which was subsequently repaid from the subsidy funds. It should really surprise no-one that the fight over how to spend millions of dollars would be hard fought, and that the various constituencies used any number of tools to fight the good fight. The issues have changed a little bit, but it is, and will remain true that the next council will be the arena in which the GPC’s strategic direction, and resource allocation will be decided.

I have my own opinions about what the Party needs to do to become stronger, and to ultimately elect members of Parliament. I guess that my opinions start at that point. The direct route to influence is to elect sitting members of the house. The indirect route to influence is to grow, and earn a significant proportion of the vote at the ballot box. As our vote grows, the incentives for our opponents to win the votes back grow, and they adopt those of our policies that they believe are best in the effort to win their coveted minority government status. EVERYTHING stems from our strength at the ballot box, so that’s where we must focus on winning.

When I paint the broadest strokes of a general election campaign, there are three main elements. The Air War, and the National Campaign, which are the province of council, and the Ground War, which happens at the local campaign level. All three elements are very damned important if we are to become a serious force in parliament. The Air War has to build up a willingness to support the Green Party across the country. That means that there needs to be a coherent strategy to target potential voters with a compelling message. Then the strategy needs to be implemented, and the War Room, (or whatever we want to call it), needs to ensure that the earned, and paid media delivers the compelling message on target.

The National Campaign isn’t just the War Room, and the Leaders media presence. There is also the neccessity to provide a degree of co-ordination between the National Campaign, and the local Campaigns. The Party structure needs to provide a degree of assistance to weaker, inexperienced, or non-existant EDA’s. There are a lot of mechanistic details, like Candidate recruiting, literature design, election sign bulk orders, candidate deposits ensured, liability Insurance coverage, and tons of other legal, and practical requirements co-ordinated. The third element is the local ground war.

The ground war happens locally, and is the ultimate key to electoral success. When the Air War succeeds in delivering the right message, on target, then it becomes the job of the ground war to put the puck in the net, and win the vote on E-Day. While the National Campaign can demonstrably increase the vote by hundreds of thousands, the effectiveness is multiplied many fold by having a strong local Canvas, Candidate, and Campaign to identify and get the new supporters out to vote on E-Day. The Green Party has a growing number of EDA’s that are capable of running an effective ground war. Those EDA’s come out of every election with a larger membership base, and bigger lists of ID’d supporters. In short, they capture, and retain resources with every election. Unfortunately, there are still hundreds of ridings where there is no EDA, or the EDA is too weak in human and monetary resources to do  much good. In those ridings, membership is static, or falling between elections. Lists of ID’d voters get lost, and they have to start all over again with every election.

In the coming council election, I will be supporting candidates who are prepared to focus GPC resources on building capacity for future ground wars. In practice, that means effective field organizing, with measurable objectives like EDA formation, membership recruiting targets, fundraising goals, local earned media impressions, candidate recruitment, etc.

Rob Routledge - BlueGreenBloggers pick

The two candidates for Ontario Rep. are Camille Labchuk, and Robert Routledge.  Rob Routledge is my

Camille Labchuk

pick for Ontario Rep. He has extensive experience as a Field organizer for the Obama campaign, and can speak from experience about building local campaign organizations. I like Camille well enough. She is competent, and has plenty of experience with Air War type issues. She is handicapped by the fact that her mother, Sharon Labchuk is the director of organizing, and I would expect that she will support a continuation of current practices. That doesn’t cut it for me.

There are a whopping 16 candidates for Councilor at Large. There were enough good candidates that I had genuine difficulty deciding on who to vote for.

Mark Taylor wins top pick. I know him well enough to be certain that he will work hard to ensure that Air War, National Campaign, and EDA

organization will all be emphasized in the right degree. My next four picks are as follows: Huguette Allen, Lynne

Champoux-Williams, Rob Ewaschuk,

and Sonny Day. Dan Murray, and Paul Maillet get honourable mentions, and both would make good councilors, but I only have 5 votes, so I had to bump somebody! I was quite surprised to see that my picks exactly mirrored Kersten’s Kolumn picks. This was NOT co-ordinated, so I guess it’s a case of great minds thinking alike.

The two candidates for Manitoba Rep. are Michael Moreau, and Ed Driedger. Michael has helped me with some number crunching for my past blog on the impact of spending on vote outcomes, and he is very much a data driven decision maker. I think he is pretty new to the Party, and provided he doesn’t become disillusioned ‘roadkill’ from council infighting, he will bring some valuable skills to the council table. I do not know Ed, and so I’ll have to say that Michael would get my vote, were I in Manitoba.

The two candidates for Nova Scotia Rep. are Sheila Richardson, and Aaron Victor Podolsky. I will have to leave the pick for the NS membership to make for themselves. I have to confess that I have been pretty embarrassed by the recent performance of the Provincial NS Greens. They got totally shellacked in the Provincial election, and are at the edge of being decertified Provincially, according to media reports. Nova Scotia needs to be grabbed by the ears, and shaken, so please don’t elect an ‘insider’ to be your rep. Vote for somebody who will actually try to build the Party profile, not just a ‘loyal’ vote on council.

For the Territories, the two candidates are Mike Ivens, and Kim Melton. I don’t know either, despite the fact that Mike has been on council for awhile. I’ll reiterate what I said about the Nova Scotia candidates. Make sure it’s not another placeholder you elect!

As for the uncontested positions, I don’t want to go making any negative ‘None of the above’ picks, so I’ll leave it to my readers to qualify, and/or disqualify candidates. In general, if your’ candidate has no history of local organizing, then please do NOT pick them. We don’t need fly-by-night place fillers, or ‘loyal’ councilors, in place to vote as instructed. We need people who can think for themselves, and who will be an asset in our quest to organise the hell out of Canada!

You can cast your e-ballot any time now. I encourage you to do so promptly. With any luck, we’ll have a strong council, prepared to make some tough staffing and budget decisions, that will lead to many more members, EDA’s, and strong local candidates to complement a data driven National Campaign, and Air War.

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