Month: February 2017

The Trump and Trudeau campaigns also proved that what politicians do still matters — both on the campaign and in government.

To say that election campaigning has changed significantly over the years is to state the obvious. And nothing has propelled campaign teams to grow more sophisticated and develop sharper insights than the rise of technology.

At one time, local campaigners would stand in front of the local Tim Hortons and meet every voter who came by. Now, campaigns mine data bases to find the three people on a given street most likely to vote for their candidate and go talk just to them.

It’s a whole new world. Big data has given political parties a greater understanding of not only who votes for them and why but how they think and feel as well. Facebook clicks, tweets, and TV-watching habits are parsed by campaign teams. Knowing your favourite TV show allows them to predict your opinions on climate change policy.

By and large, this new world order works: Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign’s ability to do a superior job of mining information propelled it to victory. The Stephen Harper Conservatives were masterful in targeting their voters and hammering home their message, ignoring the distractions of the media.

Both campaigns successfully, and with intention, spoke to voters who were open to their message and to their policies.

Both also had an important understanding of the shape of the electorate.

Both campaigns delivered wins based on their strategic appeals to specific segments of the population.

But, as anyone who has experienced a computer meltdown knows, technology is not always king.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and the Republican party that chose Donald Trump as its presidential candidate are very different: one party prides itself on its evidence-based approach and thoughtful co-ordination, while the other stakes its claim on brash talk.

But both have similar electoral roots. Donald Trump’s victory relied on blue-collar white voters across the Midwest who had grown increasingly conservative in their outlook over the course of the last two decades, but who tended to stay home on election day.

Before the election, the media and the Democrats seemed to think states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio would all remain part of the Democratic coalition simply because many disaffected white voters would simply sit out the election and not vote. The states were discounted by media and the Democrats as part of an immovable ‘blue wall’ that would see them remain part of the Democratic coalition for years to come, in spite of the disaffection that was swirling within them.

Justin Trudeau’s victory relied on young voters, whose voting participation was historically far below that of middle-aged and older Canadians. Their views, which were stridently out of touch with Harper’s, were discounted. As people who conventional wisdom said would never vote, they were simply of little concern to the Conservatives.

The 2015 Canadian election and the 2016 U.S. election delivered stunning rebukes to those who believed citizens who were unlikely to participate in elections never would.

One of the under-reported facts of the last Canadian federal election is that the Conservatives lost few actual voters. Instead, the Liberals’ margin of victory was in large part due to the large turnout of young voters who had been discounted as non-voters.

Hillary Clinton’s lumbering, data-heavy campaign was similarly overtaken, against all expectations and prognostications, by a surging white vote.

The campaigns proved that, for all data can account for, it can’t account for passion.

The campaigns also proved that what politicians do still matters — both on the campaign and in government.

When Donald Trump announces a travel ban against people from seven countries, it may enrage media pundits, but only cements his political future, because as much as it upsets some of the electorate, it makes it much more likely that those former non-voters will become ongoing members of his voting coalition.

When Justin Trudeau announces a marijuana policy that ignites criticism from social conservatives and older Canadians, it doesn’t hurt his government: rather it reinforces the idea that he is something new and exciting for young voters and helps ensure they will return to the polls in 2019.

In fact, Trump and Trudeau have to govern in a way that keeps the faith of their target voters. Should they fall in to the trap of the same old politics that led their target voters to sit out previous elections, they risk losing the enthusiasm they generated with the result that those newly animated voters will return to their La-Z-boys.

It’s a data-driven world, to be sure, but these two transformative political figures have demonstrated that organic enthusiasm can still trump cynical technocracy.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.

In this era of shrill, untested and unverified political extremes, we need to amplify voices in the middle and to represent clearly and fairly what is balanced and reasonable and true.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s political career started with a lie. He emerged on the political scene by repeatedly questioning whether then-President Barack Obama had been born in the United States. The highest-profile ‘birther’ is now the leader of the free world.

Consider how far he has departed from reality. His spewing of ‘alternative facts’ or more appropriately termed ‘bald face lies’ include saying Obama founded Daesh, also know as ISIS or ISIL, calling the Clintons literal murderers, and declaring false numbers for the size of the crowd at his inauguration.

In Trump’s mind, if he believes it, it must be true.

Politifact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking initiative, currently lists as entirely true only four per cent of the statements Trump has made since the election. Fully 17 per cent are listed as ‘pants on fire,’ Politifact.com’s most egregious grade. For comparison, on his last day in the Oval Office, PolitiFact graded 21 per cent of Obama’s comments as ‘true,’ and only two per cent as ‘pants on fire.’

Otto von Bismarck, the 19th century German chancellor, famously said: ‘People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.’ This is now truer than ever.

In what is being called ‘post-truth politics,’ politicians frame the debate largely by appealing to listeners’ emotions and without addressing the factual underpinning of a policy. Then, when confronted with factual rebuttals from credible sources, these politicians simply repeat their talking points and ignore the facts.

The digital world makes it easier for politicians to get away with this behaviour. Social media outlets allow people to get news from sources that echo their own opinion; to surround themselves on social media with commentary that affirms their biases. The result? The traditional value attributed to evidence, consistency and scholarship is both weakened and diminished.

In fact, citizens have now told politicians that they have had enough of experts.

But in throwing out the experts, we have thrown out the fact checkers. The holders-of-feet-to-the-fire. And in doing so have, perhaps, made the rise of a politician like Donald Trump inevitable.

The Trump administration’s corrosive, deliberate lying is very different from the usual broken promises we have experienced from politicians, of all stripes, in the past.

A broken promise impacts the future. A political lie impacts our perceptions of the past.

In Canada, countless prime ministers have been elected and have then broken promises. Take, for example, Jean Chr’tien’s promise to do away with the GST, Pierre Trudeau campaigning against imposing wage and price controls and Stephen Harper running a deficit.

On the other hand, Trump dismisses facts. He alters his positions on a whim, and depending on the audience, declares that which will guarantee him the most attention and the loudest applause.

The consequences of this practice will be far-reaching. His administration has already begun destroying American credibility internationally.

When Trump is, inevitably, forced to respond to an international confrontation, America’s ability to rally support will be diminished. Its allies will doubt America’s intentions and facts on which those intentions are based.

Sadly, post-truth politics is not confined to the United States. Other international leaders are trying to make gains by lying to their electorates.

Britons voted to leave the EU in June on a campaign largely based on false information. Among the lies is that EU membership cost the UK 350 million pounds a week; money that would be better spent on such things as the National Health Service. It was also falsely propagated that Turkey was guaranteed membership in the EU by 2020.

The era of post-truth and alternative facts is not going away anytime soon. The refrain ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’ has been lost on political leaders and campaign managers everywhere.

In consequence, in this era of shrill, untested and unverified political extremes, we need to amplify voices in the middle and to represent clearly and fairly what is balanced and reasonable and true.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.