Raising voter fears helped Trudeau to victory: sources
OTTAWA — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pulled off a second consecutive election win on Monday with a late change in tactics designed to scare progressive voters who showed signs of abandoning Liberal candidates, four Liberal campaign sources said.
As polls indicated he could lose, Trudeau ditched his “sunny ways” persona that had swept him to power in 2015 and started hammering away at three smaller parties on the left, warning their supporters that if they didn’t vote Liberal, the progressive vote would splinter and allow the opposition Conservatives to take power.
During the last two weeks of the campaign, Trudeau repeatedly told supporters that voting for the rival New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Greens would result in a progressive opposition, not a progressive government.
“We’re doing this because it works,” one Liberal official said of the strategy as the campaign reached its climax last week.
He and the three other Liberal aides and strategists in this story declined to be named because they were not authorized to discuss campaign strategy.
Rival parties lately complained about what they saw as fear-mongering by Trudeau, who won a healthy minority and should be safe for the next two years.
“The Liberals like to talk progressive, but they govern conservative,” Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democrats, said on Oct 15.
“I want people to dream big. Don’t settle for less.”
Former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin used the same fear-inspiring technique in the last week of 2004 election, during which he managed to fight off a challenge from the Conservatives.
“It’s absolutely a legitimate strategy by people who want to drive votes toward them based on fear of the worst result,” said Tim Murphy, who was Martin’s chief of staff at the time.
Former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley said Monday’s results in the populous province of Ontario, where the party held onto virtually all of its seats, showed the tactic had worked.
Support for the New Democrats, seen as a major left-leaning challenger in some seats, fell markedly in the last few days, allowing Trudeau to stay in power, he noted.
“You’d rather people voted enthusiastically for you rather than against someone else, but at the end of the day, who won?” Manley said in a phone interview.
Neither the Liberal nor Conservative campaign spokespeople were immediately available for comment.
The victory was all the more remarkable because Liberal campaign officials had heard from the first day about deep dissatisfaction with Trudeau from long-time supporters.
Trudeau came into the campaign trying to shake off the effects of an ethics scandal and ran into further problems when photos emerged of him wearing black face.
Liberal parliamentarians and strategists described what they saw as a poorly-run campaign that did not focus nearly enough on the party’s economic successes and spent too much time talking about progressive issues.