Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them (46 page)

Canadian political scientists have been keeping a close eye on the changing shape of the electorate and shifts in voting behaviour and motivation, too. Their findings are noted in repeated Canada Election studies and also in LeDuc, Lawrence.
Dynasties and Interludes: Past and Present in Canadian Electoral Politics
. Toronto: Dundurn, 2010, and Pammett, Jon H. and Lawrence LeDuc.
Explaining the Turnout Decline in Canadian Federal Elections: A New Survey of Non-Voters
. Ottawa: Elections Canada, 2003.

Very few political science books have focused on the machinery of campaigning in Canada. One of the rare ones is: Laschinger, John and Geoffrey Stevens.
Leaders & Lesser Mortals: Backroom Politics in Canada
. Toronto: Key Porter, 1992. Laschinger also generously talked to the author about the early days of direct marketing and the 1970s–1980s traffic between the political and consumer worlds.

First-hand chronicles of the early days of the Reform Party are provided in depth in Tom Flanagan’s book
Waiting for the Wave: The Reform Party and the Conservative Movement
. 2nd ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009. Manning and Flanagan also agreed to be interviewed for this book, as did Jason Kenney, who also helped explain the founding days of the Taxpayers Federation.

Chapter 5: The Brand-Wagon

To see how well consumer and political research merged in the 1980s and 1990s, see: Gregg, Allan and Michael Posner
. The Big Picture: What Canadians Think About Almost Everything
. Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1990.

Liberal forays into branding and political marketing in the 1990s were discussed formally and informally with many members of the party through the years, but with Peter Donolo and Michael Marzolini, at length, for this book.

For more on Tony Blair’s “New Labour” experiment, see: “Political Brands and Consumer Citizens: The Rebranding of Tony Blair.”
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
611 (May 2007): 176–92, and also BBC’s
The Century of the Self
documentary (see notes for Chapter 2.)

Jean Chrétien’s testimony came before Justice John Gomery’s inquiry into sponsorship and advertising activities: Canada. Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities. And John Howard Gomery.
Restoring Accountability
. Ottawa: Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program & Advertising A
ctivities, 2006. Transcripts of testimony available here:
http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/pco-bcp/commissions/sponsorship-ef/06-02-10/www.gomery.ca/en/transcripts/default.htm
.

A full article that sounded an early warning on how politics may not mix all that well with the consumerism and managerial values of the private sector: Whitaker, Reg. “Virtual Political Parties and the Decline of Democracy.”
Policy Options
, June 2001, 16–22.

Chapter 6: And Now, a Word from Our Sponsors

An overview of Industry Canada’s consumer-trends monitoring can be found online:
www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/ca02091.html
.

More details of the Delta Media focus-group findings were located using Access to Information requests. Statistics on household-spending patterns over the decades were obtained through conversations with researchers at the Conference Board of Canada.

For more on Canada’s (relatively new) popular culture surrounding doughnuts, see: Penfold, Steven.
The Donut: A Canadian History
. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2008; Cormack, Patricia. “‘True Stories’ of Canada.”
Cultural Sociology
2, no. 3 (2008): 369–84; Buist, Ron.
Tales from Under the Rim: The Marketing of Tim Hortons
. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 2003; Joyce, Ron.
Always Fresh: The Untold Story of Tim Hortons.
Toronto: HarperCollins, 2006.

Two new books, also dealing with doughnut culture and Canadian identity, were released after this manuscript was done: Cormack, Patricia, and James F. Cosgrave.
Desiring Canada: CBC Contests, Hockey Violence and Other Stately Pleasures
. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013; and Hunter, Douglas.
Double Double: How Tim Hortons Became a Canadian Way of Life, One Day at a Time
. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2012.

Chapter 7: Market Leader

The story of the Conservatives’ marketing switch is found in several books, particularly: Flanagan, Thomas.
Harper’s Team: Behind the Scenes of the Conservative Rise to Power
. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007, and Wells, Paul A.
Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism
. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 2007. The author is also grateful to Patrick Muttart, Tom Flanagan, Jason Kenney, Richard Ciano, Dimitri Pantazopoulos, Mark Cameron, Yaroslav Baran, Jim Armour, Geoff Norquay, Dimitri Soudas and other Conservatives (some who preferred to remain anonymous) who agreed to share their memories and insights in interviews.

Patrick Muttart gave an interv
iew to the American Enterprise Institute for a 2011 article in which he was described as “the leading authority on working-class voters in the English speaking world.” The article was posted online at:
www.aei.org/article/politics-and-public-opinion/legislative/after-the-wave/
.

To read more about former CBS correspondent’s Lesley Stahl’s observations with regard to the importance of imagery in Ronald Reagan’s presidency, a good overview can be found online at:
http://archive.pressthink.org/2004/06/09/reagan_words.html
.

Chapter 8: Retail Rules

The transcript of Frank Luntz’s talk to the Civitas group was supplied to the author, with much thanks to Elizabeth Thompson, the reporter who diligently sat outside and recorded the meeting. For more on the fresh marketing wisdom the US consultant was sharing with Canada’s Conservatives, see: Luntz, Frank.
Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear
. New York: Hyperion. 2007.

Advertising Standards Canada’s bulletin from the 2008 election is available online:
www.adstandards.com/en/standards/2008Advisory.pdf
.

Stephen Harper’s book introduction appears in: Henderson, Paul.
How Hockey Explains Canada
. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2011.

Chapter 9: Sliced and Diced

For a very thorough look at how micro-targeting changed Republican fortunes in the 2004 US election, see: Cillizza, Chris. “Romney’s Data Cruncher.”
Washington Post
, July 5, 2007. Online at
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/04/AR2007070401423.html
.

Also see online archived interviews from PBS’s
Frontline
:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/architect/rove/2004.html
.

The further US refinement of political databases, post-Rove, is thoroughly laid out in: Issenberg, Sasha.
The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns
. New York: Random House, 2012. Also see: McCoy, Terrence. “The Creepiness Factor: How Obama and Romney are Getting to Know You.”
The Atlantic
, April 2012.

To view an early PowerPoint presentation on the CIMS database, see online:
http://thestar.blogs.com/politics/2012/02/the-campaign-machine.html
.

Mitch Wexler’s article in the Canadian version of
Campaigns and Elections,
June 2010, pp. 45–48, is available online:
http://content.yudu.com/A1o5eb/CandEIssue2610/resources/48.htm
.

Wexler’s work for the Manning Centre for Building Democracy has been posted online in this larger, 2012 report: “The State of the Conservative Movement,” at
http://manningcentre.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/SOTM2012_web.pdf
.

The author is grateful to Wexler, as well as Richard Ciano and Nick Kouvalis of Campaign Research, for repeated interviews and explanations of the micro-targeting business in Canada.

In the spring of 2013, Elections Canada released a report calling for tougher laws and codes of conduct around the use of political party databases and telephone communication with voters. It is called “Preventing Deceptive Communications with Electors” and is available online here:
www.elections.ca/res/rep/off/comm/comm_e.pdf
.

Chapter 10: This Little Party Went to Market

The New Democrats’ embrace of political marketing is explained at some length in this article: Lavigne, Brad: “Anatomy of the Orange Crush: Ten Years in the Making.”
Policy Options
June–July 2012, pp. 93–101. Online:
www.integritybc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/AnatomyOrangeCrush.pdf.

The author also benefited from interviews and conversations with Lavigne, Anne McGrath, Brian Topp and Nathan Rotman.

An unusually candid post-mortem on the 2011 election, written by former Liberal party president Alf Apps, was a valuable resource for this chapter, as were conversations with previous party directors and presidents, former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, his former chiefs of staff Ian Davey and Peter Donolo, and Justin Trudeau (before and after his ascent to the Liberal leader’s job in 2013). Apps’s document, though not officially a Liberal party publication, is available online:
http://djsvoutqo4b1q.cloudfront.net/files/2011/11/BuildingaModernLiberalParty.pdf
.

In 2012, Canada’s privacy commissioner released a study on political databases, carried out by University of Victoria professor Colin Bennett and consultant Robin Bayley. The report is available online at:
www.priv.gc.ca/information/pub/pp_201203_e.asp
.

The author thanks the NDP’s Nathan Rotman and the Liberal party’s Issie Berish for extensive primers on their respective parties’ databases.

Chapter 11: Checking Out

The full poll results on Canadians’ perceptions about advertising, conducted by the Gandalf Group for Advertising Standards Canada, can be found online:
www.adstandards.com/en/MediaAndEvents/canadianPerspectivesOnAdvertising.pdf
.

André Blais’s research into the roles of duty and choice in civic participation is too plentiful to list in entirety here. In January 2012, in honour of Blais’s sixty-fifth birthday, a special conference on these very questions was organized at the Université de Montréal, and this link directs readers to various papers presented there:
http://rubenson.org/duty-and-choice/
.

During Jean Chrétien’s tenure, Donald Savoie was the first to alert Canadians to how government in Ottawa had been dangerously centralized. In 2013, with Stephen Harper in power, Savoie released a book that critiqued how consumer-citizenship and managerial governance is chipping away at our civic institutions: Savoie, Donald J.
Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher?: How Government Decides and Why.
Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.