Month: January 2017

On November 9, the world woke up to a reality that many had deemed impossible: a President-elect Donald Trump. Ambassador David Jacobson takes a look at what the unlikely triumph of Trump means for Canada.

In what was probably the biggest upset in American political history, Donald Trump proved virtually every pollster and pundit wrong, including me. He will be the next president of the United States.

I leave it to others to explain how this happened.

I want to focus on what it might mean for the relationship between the United States and Canada.

It is important to keep the enduring nature of that relationship top of mind. Every other pair of neighbours in the world would be delighted to trade their problems for ours. So no matter how things play out with the new administration, the North American relationship will remain strong.

The place to start is the personal relationship between the president and the prime minister. It is no secret that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Barack Obama get along famously. And the personal relationship between leaders is important in getting things done. (Canadians and Americans no doubt remember President Reagan and Prime Minister Mulroney signing “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” on St. Patrick’s Day in Quebec City while they negotiated the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.) While I have no reason to believe the personal relationship between the Prime Minister and President-elect Trump will be troubled, the chances of drawing to an inside straight twice in a row are not great.

On a policy level there are four areas of focus: trade, the border, energy and the environment, and foreign and defence policy.

With respect to trade, the big question is whether Trump will actually “tear up” NAFTA. Even assuming he has the authority to do so, which is by no means certain, the likelihood he would do so is remote. The new president’s highest priority is jobs. Tearing up NAFTA would have serious consequences in all kinds of U.S. industries that depend on cross-border sales or integrated supply chains. So while NAFTA won’t go away, after 25 years it’s probably time to do some freshening. Several of NAFTA’s problems were to be remedied by the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Now that TPP is dead (or at least on life support), fixing things like labour mobility and environmental issues through amendments to NAFTA probably makes sense.

On the border, Canada and the United States have had two significant initiatives during the Obama administration: Beyond the Border to facilitate the cross-border movement of people and goods, and regulatory co-operation to make it easier for companies on both sides of the border to make and sell their goods throughout North America by minimizing small regulatory differences. (I used to talk about the differences between the Cheerios I ate in the United States and those I ate in Canada!) While there will probably be a pause as the Trump administration gets up to speed, the benefits to people and business on both sides of the border from these two initiatives will probably compel their continuation.

Perhaps the biggest change is likely to come in the areas of energy and the environment. Ironically, the Harper government was friendlier to energy production and transportation than was the Obama administration. Now the situation is reversed. The Trudeau government is very serious about the environment and climate change. The Trump administration is likely to be far friendlier to all forms of fossil fuel.

Another area of potential difference is in how the United States and Canada co-operate around the world. It is no secret that Trump is likely to endorse more muscular defence and foreign policies. As the enormity of his new job sinks in, Trump will probably be more moderate in his foreign policy than he sounded at times in the campaign. But there are likely to be some serious disagreements about how to deal with global troubles in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. One related point is that Trump will probably try to pressure Canada to meet its NATO commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence. Canada currently spends about one per cent as compared to more than four per cent in the United States.

What happened on November 8 was a shock. Under a Hillary Clinton presidency, Canadians could probably have expected a continuation of the policies of the last eight years. Not so now. But whatever the day-to-day differences, the relationship between Canada and the United States will remain the strongest in the world.

In the aftermath of the U.S. election, pollsters are facing some tough scrutiny about their relevance. But not all polls are created equal, notes Anne Kilpatrick.

One of many unexpected outcomes of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign was the failure of most research polls to accurately predict the election of Donald Trump.

This was all the more striking because, in an intensely emotional political race characterized by a deliberate disregard for truth, polls offered a familiar reference point. In the face of chaos, the enduring ability to measure, analyze and process data was one of the few ways to superimpose order.

Furthermore, in a frantic scrabble to meet a rapacious demand for new information about the campaign, media put forward any and all polls.

But not all polls are created equal.

We know that the voter population has become increasingly fragmented, and, in the aftermath of the U.S. election, critics point to the inability of pollsters to address this issue as a driver of their seeming inability to get it right. The criticisms focus on non-representative sampling of potential voters —noting that the voter population is more diverse culturally and that pollsters are under-representing or over-representing certain ethnic or racial groups in their polling, or that the more diverse set of channels by which pollsters need to reach voters (landline telephones, cellular phones and online) is presenting challenges in reaching a representative sample of voters. These challenges can be generalized to any election or referendum polling, and a lack of rigour in addressing these issues may indeed be a factor in determining why some pollsters just aren’t getting it right.

Those pollsters who were able to project a Trump victory did not rely solely on traditional questions about voting intentions or previous voting behaviour, and on demographic characteristics to project outcomes (e.g., likely voting intention if an election were held today; favourability ratings of a candidate; previous voting behaviour, gender, income, education, religion and race). While these questions and demographic characteristics often point to a potential outcome, they do not capture the ultimate insight—voter sentiment. And sentiment is the key word here.

The polls that appear to have been closer to the mark delved into voter sentiment by examining engagement with candidates and how that affected voters’ likelihood to turn out at the ballot box. These pollsters actively sought to measure the impact of the “undecideds”—the almost 15 per cent of voters who likely determined the outcome of the election. These voters helped make voter turnout patterns unpredictable, including the greater than expected turnout of Trump supporters in swing states, and lower than expected turnout among groups that were expected to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Who were these “undecideds”?

We now know they included people who:
• rode an emotional roller coaster during the campaign and were affected by the many twists and turns;
• were ambivalent, did not see themselves reflected in either candidate and were more likely to stay at home than cast their ballot;
• were engaged in the election, but were having difficulty assessing how the candidates would address their more personal concerns; and
• were affected by social desirability bias, the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favourably.

Successful pollsters are those who tap into the significant ambivalence or conflicted feelings that some voter segments face by introducing non-traditional survey questions and survey methodologies. One such poll, the USC Dornsife/LA Times Presidential Election “Daybreak” poll, engaged a longitudinal panel of voters and asked them a different set of questions than other surveys. It asked voters to estimate, on a scale of 0 to 100, how likely they were to vote for each of the two major candidates or for some other candidate. Rather than forcing respondents into an either/or vote position, they were able to obtain a more nuanced view of the undecideds (and the “decideds”) by measuring the level of engagement each voter had with the candidates. This approach has served USC Dornsife well in the past two U.S. elections, accurately predicting both outcomes.

The lesson for pollsters is that their models and approaches must evolve to meet the new challenges of political polling in the 21st century. And they also need a crash course in managing expectations.

French author Marcel Proust is famous for his gentle remembrance of things past, his eponymous character-revealing questionnaire… and his love of madeleine cookies.

It’s hard to imagine that the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson has time for reflection—let alone madeleines dipped in tea. Following a distinguished career in broadcasting and journalism, she became Canada’s 26th Governor General in 1999. She is a passionate advocate for the Canadian North and during her tenure she established the Governor General’s Northern Medal. Among many other accomplishments, she is a champion of Aboriginal issues and a co-founder of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Travelling in Italy with John.

What is your greatest fear?
To be cast into outer darkness.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Irritability.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Lack of a moral centre.

Which living person do you admire most?
The Aga Khan.

What is your greatest extravagance?
800 thread-count Italian bed linen.

What is your current state of mind?
Happy—but not complacent.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Frugality.

On what occasion do you lie?
To not hurt someone’s feelings.

What is the quality you most like in a person?
Humour.

When and where were you happiest?
When my daughter Kyra was born.

Which talent would you most like to have?
To sing like Maria Callas or Willie Nelson.

Who are your favourite writers?
Alice Munro, Tolstoy, Lee Child

Who is your hero of fiction?
Jack Reacher, who travels with a toothbrush, is respectful of women, speaks French, and can head-butt anyone.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Father Joe Maier, the Redemptorist priest who has worked in the Klong Toey slum of Bangkok for 40 years.
Mary Jo Leddy, director of Romero House, who looks after refugees in Toronto.
Leonard Cohen.

What is your motto?
I am human, nothing human is alien to me. (Terence, a former slave who became a playwright in Rome around 170 B.C.)

The United States voting to install Donald Trump as president has roiled the world. Much like when it became clear the United Kingdom had voted to leave the European Union, you could almost hear the collective gasp of financial, political and media establishments globally.

But the surprise was perhaps unwarranted. Signs that things were not favourable for the status quo proliferated for years: Democrats had lost down-ballot on the back of the Obama presidency for years, there was an insurgent movement on the right-wing fringes, and similar movements have met with increasing success in comparable Western nations.

In spite of this, within the U.S. establishment class, few believed their fellow citizens would in the end opt for Trump. But that’s precisely the point: those who assumed the status quo would prevail in the face of a challenge were concentrated in urban areas, centres of financial power. In contrast, the power behind the Trump campaign lay in rural, economically struggling areas of the country, where less affluent, less diverse and less educated segments of the American population live.

In short, those who form the establishment couldn’t fathom the possibility of a Trump victory, because everyone they knew wanted Hillary Clinton elected.

Just months earlier, a similar story unfolded in Britain. Powerful grassroots support for Britain’s departure from the EU—dubbed Brexit—was powered by the same rural, less-diverse population, an extreme example of the fragmentation that has framed our society for the last 60 years. Establishment Britons were similarly blind to the threat.

But these developments reflect a broader shift. Urban centres have expanded as economic and governmental hubs, concentrating affluence and education, expanding the gap between rural and urban residents.

Furthermore, as globalization has taken hold, smaller groups with special interests have formed, splintering the public agenda. The advent of social media has accelerated and amplified this movement.

Over time, social media has arguably eroded the value once placed on dissenting opinion. Reasoned argument and genuine debate have increasingly been replaced by tight—often partisan—alignment. People want to have their existing views reinforced, not challenged. And there are now any number of social media platforms to ensure that like-minded people only connect with one another.

This compartmentalization has sweeping ramifications for politics, governance, finance, media and business. At Navigator, we have considered the many ways it affects how these sectors interact with one another and how they engage with stakeholders.

The conclusion? We believe that many of these challenges in fact present opportunities.

That’s why we advocate that a research-driven approach inform every strategic plan, be it crisis-response or a long-term campaign designed to shift attitudes and prompt action.

Granted, this has become more challenging as fragmentation has increased. People are less willing to participate in focus groups than they once were. Millennials have rejected landlines, making them difficult to reach for traditional surveys. Entire segments of the market are more comfortable in their mother tongue than in English.

To overcome these hurdles, Navigator’s research and digital teams have collaborated to ensure that we have the right tools to mine information from consumers and provide a complete picture to all of our clients. Innovative practices in research aid in the effort; social data allows us to gauge and understand the way consumers are speaking about products, ideas and companies, giving us key insight into how and when a crisis is developing.

This same research can also enrich business and organizational understanding of core markets, allowing for strategic targeting of resources, and messages crafted to appeal to the groups and markets of specific interest.

In 2000, Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone altered the way many think about society, and led us to believe our society was breaking down into a seething mass of individuals. In 2016, we understand that we are still bowling with others—just a highly selective number of others.

It is with this in mind that in this issue of Perspectives we explore the subject of fragmentation, what it means today and what it will mean tomorrow.

Touted for building community and consensus, social media contributes equally to fragmentation and isolation

“Books are beginning to read people in a more careful way than people read books.”

Social media exaggerates our differences. It lets us indulge in eclectic interests we would otherwise keep private. But online, nothing is quite private. Social networks assign our personal profiles to virtual identities. The collection of these virtual identities forms the foundation for every social network. Each identity leaves a footprint. Each footprint tells a story of who we are. Each story helps social networks provide a news feed tailored to our individual interests. Each individual feed is a silo of information. Each silo displays a fragmented view of society.

This increased fragmentation has implications for how we communicate online. When we communicate via a digital screen, we get information without context. Offline, we rely on our senses and memories to contextualize interactions. Online, our user profiles perform a similar action—providing social networks with context. By staying logged in, we build a record of our interactions much like memories do offline. With memories always a quick search away, this means forgettable memories become unforgettable. And that’s not always a good thing—some memories should stay forgotten. Today, we walk around with a big sign above our heads. That sign tells everyone where our hometown is, what interests we have, what we like, and what we share. By relying on social data alone, we see people by the fragments they leave behind.
Today’s social platforms encourage people to celebrate their individuality. Each piece of data we provide or leave behind brings our individual fragments to the surface. By providing this data, we can coalesce in communities around our own specific interests. Social media socializes our fragments. But because we are not alone, it can also heighten apathy.And that can have profound implications for how we communicate and engage people online.

Of course, digital technology helps us reach a mass of people with hyper-targeted content. We can present information with phenomenal detail, at the individual level. To do so, we rely on massive data, which will inevitably fragment any sample. But it also makes it possible to distill a complex message in a way that motivates people to take action. And that’s why the most successful campaigns involve a digitally focused team at the outset. In these campaigns, digital isn’t a question of “if,” but “how.”

The questions digital teams ask address how we take advantage of the incredibly specific targeting options, how we leverage online communities, and how we inspire people to act on their personal preferences.

To run a successful campaign is to run a successful digital campaign. The best campaigns use the fragmented nature of the Internet to inspire individual action for a common cause. Yes, digital campaigns stress our differences. But they also let us use our shared individual interests to connect. In truth, our differences were always there. Now we can speak to them, rather than ignore them. In so doing, we can engender more passion than any broad message could. And with just the right amount of passion, we can engender action.

With shared experiences occurring on data platforms, we’re becoming characters in a book. As the communications scholar Harari writes, “books are starting to read people.” Social media “reads” us. It provides a platform for individual expression and uses our choices to serve us new content. It uses our browsing habits to display related material, wrapping us in a comfortable cocoon. From the outside, we appear fragmented by our individual cocoons. But in reality, we are far from isolated. We’re part of a broader story. Indeed, if today’s “books” are starting to read people, public affairs practitioners need to read these books.