Until the Last Vote is Counted

Media pundits and pollsters seem to forget that elections are decided by voters who see past the political spin.

As one surveys the various media stories over the last few months, you get the sense that the media has written off Michael Ignatieff. The public has been bombarded with opinion polls and articles that question his ability to lead, and more importantly his ability to win. The Liberals are shown as fractured, while unnamed insiders comment on their dismal election prospects, and the Conservative machine appears to be quite formidable.

But this is not necessarily the case. If voters always followed the predictions of our pollsters or media outlets, there would be no such thing as an “upset” victory. Such victories do indeed occur on a regular basis both at the national level and certainly at the local level. One only has to look back a few years to recognize that voters have minds of their own. If we add in the unpredictable nature of elections, no one is a guaranteed winner, and that includes the Conservatives under Stephen Harper.

If you look back to 2003-06 when he was the Leader of the Opposition, Stephen Harper was pretty well dismissed by the media for most of that period. He was never a politician who excited the imagination of the media or the voters; polling numbers were consistently low, and he didn’t shine in Question Period. Every staff change in the OLO was written as though it was catastrophic. Newspapers were predicting an unprecedented and historic election victory for Paul Martin. Predictions went as high as 250 seats for the Liberals under their supposedly unbeatable leader. The actual results as determined by the voters were dramatically different. Martin was humbled in 2004 and beaten in 2005-06.

Between 2006 and 2008, the Conservative attack and spin machine effectively destroyed Stéphane Dion’s political reputation. Going into the 2008 election the general assumption was that the Conservatives were up against the weakest Liberal leader in decades. They were virtually guaranteed a majority. Yet a couple of policy slip ups in mid-campaign turned things around and the Conservatives saw support slip away, resulting in another minority government. Once again, the voters, not the media, decided the final results.

At the political level, the real problem begins when political leaders and senior staff start to believe their own spin. It gets reinforced when it’s repeated in the media. As long as the Liberals continue to question the ability of their Leader to win, they remain distracted from the real task at hand: building the political machinery, creating the policies and the winning conditions that they need to succeed.

On the Conservative side, they need to stop believing their own rhetoric and focus on winning the hearts and minds of Canadian voters. Canadian voters have little patience for parties or governments that become smug or arrogant. The win by Joe Clark over Pierre Elliot Trudeau is a testament to that.

The test of a true leader is one who can set a course and move forward without being distracted or knocked off course by media predictions of their imminent failure. This was one of Harper’s greatest strengths. It remains to be seen if Ignatieff has that same dogged determination.

Canadian voters have shown that you don’t have to be charismatic to win. They vote based on how they see the issues, and how they view the leaders. Certainly the media plays a role in shaping their vision, but voters have never been sheep, nor are they ever deprived of their independent decision-making ability.

To quote former prime minister John Diefenbaker, “I would never have been prime minister if the Gallup poll were right.” Voters, not the media, decide elections. Voters have the final say, and it’s not over until the last vote is counted.