‘ Doing it for the five per cent’
In swing ridings where national campaigns dominate, candidates fight for the margins
If you’re looking for an intense workout program, try running for political office.
For all the technology available to modern campaigns, there’s no substitute for door- knocking. It gives candidates a personal connection with voters, but even more importantly, it feeds crucial information into a party’s system about where their supporters live.
This means a candidate must knock on thousands of doors in the lead- up to voting day, multiple times if possible. And that’s only part of what it takes to be competitive. There are local events, debates, media interviews. You must constantly fundraise. You must learn your party’s position on every policy question a voter or reporter might ask about. You must show up every time your party leader visits the area, and get in on that precious national coverage.
It is an exhausting regimen, not to mention a drain on your family life. But if you’re serious about winning, you have to do it every single campaign.
Yet all that work may turn out to be for nothing on election day. You can work harder than any other candidate, and still get crushed if your party leader stumbles. This is true in many ridings, of course. But it’s particularly the case in swing regions like the Greater Toronto Area suburbs, where voters tend to be less attached to their local candidate and more focused on the national campaign — and especially how they feel about each party’s leader.
“I know you can’t take it personally,” says Stella Ambler, the Conservative candidate for Mississauga-lakeshore, on a sunny Friday afternoon while out door- knocking. The city of Mississauga, population 830,000, has six battleground ridings that often move in lockstep. Ambler has been on both sides of this. In 2011, when the Conservatives formed a majority, she won her seat — as did every other Mississauga Conservative. In 2015, when the Liberals formed a majority, she lost her seat — as did every other Mississauga Conservative.
“You have to be sanguine about it; it is what it is,” she said about knowing her fate may be out of her hands. But that doesn’t mean she gets complacent.
“Many ridings, if not most, are won by a margin of about five per cent,” she said. “So if I did nothing at all, and lost by 1,000 votes or 1,500 votes, it would be my fault.” She says the party lost the riding in 2008 by just 2,000 votes because their candidate didn’t have enough money or volunteers to get the job done.
“I think that everything we did here in 2011, 2015 and this time, any one of those campaigns could have won that election in 2008,” she said.
( Ambler was rattling off numbers from past elections in nearby ridings as well, despite having no warning this topic was coming up. It is a subject she clearly spends a lot of time thinking about.)
She also warned about getting carried away with the idea one party will always sweep Mississauga, just because it happened in 2011 and 2015.
“Only two elections in, everyone looks at that and thinks, ‘ Oh, those ridings either go Liberal or they go Conservative,’ ” Ambler said. “No, you just have to go back one more election to find that in ’08 we won one here.”
That’s a reference to the former riding of Mississauga- Erindale, where Conservative candidate Bob Deckert won by just 397 votes in 2008. It’s a race Ambler draws lessons from.
“He was running there for the third time,” she said. “He lost twice: ’ 04, ’ 06. And then he won in ’ 08 narrowly. I believe it was the buildup of effort, right? He was able to win in ’ 08 because by ’ 08 he had a fundraising machine. He had a volunteer team. And he knew what he was doing. People knew his name. So it made enough of a difference that he was able to pull through with 400 votes. So if this election is anything like that one, I think we can do it.”
In her own third campaign in this riding, people here definitely know her name. On Friday afternoon, multiple residents had that flash of recognition and said, “Oh yes, Stella!” when they opened their door. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll vote for her, but at least they know who she is — that’s half the battle right there.
“Luckily I have a unique first name, it’s not like Bob or something,” Ambler added. “So that’s good.”
Of course, being the incumbent is the strongest advantage when it comes to name recognition. In this case, Ambler is up against Liberal candidate Sven Spengemann, who ran for the first time in 2015 and won by just under 4,000 votes. ( Spengemann’s campaign declined a request from National Post to join him for a canvass.)
Based on current polling for the Toronto area, Spengemann has a very good chance of winning again. Some polls show the Liberals at around 40 per cent in the Greater Toronto Area, which should give them most of the seats.
But those regional polling numbers certainly do not mean Ambler is destined to lose. For one thing, the Conservative numbers could rise throughout the campaign; they have already been inching up. But more importantly, her riding may well be much closer than what regional numbers show. The one sure thing is she’ll be campaigning every day as if that’s the case.
“You’re doing it for the five per cent,” she said. That’s her slogan. That’s what all the exhausting work is for. If that margin is within five per cent, she’s not going to lose because she didn’t knock on enough doors.
“There are always going to be ridings where people are surprised on election night. And I don’t want them to be surprised by thinking, ‘Oh, too bad. We lost that one by 100 votes. You know, Stella could have worked harder.’ I want it to be, ‘ Wow, she won by 250. That must be because she put in the work, she had a great team, and had lots of money, and knew what she was doing.’”
Then she adds, with a bit of a sigh: “But you’re right. It’s a lot of effort to put in for five per cent.”