In this election, candidates are going back to the school of hard knocks

Canadian politicos of all stripes have been in love with high-tech campaign gadgetry for a couple of decades now — big data, sophisticated vote tracking and social media metrics.

But Campaign 2019, due to roll out across Canada in a few weeks, has a decidedly, maybe even surprisingly, low-tech feel.

Sure, the parties still love all those gadgets they’ve amassed over the past four or five federal elections, but as another vote looms, the backroom wizards also seem very attached to good old-fashioned, door-by-door canvassing — maybe more than ever.

“Our big emphasis has been on doorknocking, which may be seen as oldfashioned, but is actually the best way to convince people to vote Conservative,” says Hamish Marshall, the campaign chief for Andrew Scheer.

At any given moment, Marshall can pick up his smartphone and see at a glance what’s happening in the field, just by clicking on an app. What’s he checking? Invariably, it’s doorstep activity. He knows which Conservative candidates have been busy rapping on the doors of their ridings, and Marshall is paying close attention to the count.

“We have invested significantly in our door-knocking app and support to make sure that we use the best of 2019 technology to make door-knocking as effective and as efficient as possible,” Marshall says.

The Liberals approach door-to-door canvassing with similar zeal.

Justin Trudeau’s team has been organizing mass “days of action” for years now, dating back to before the last election, sending troops out to #goknockdoors, as they boast on Twitter.

Just this week, when I was asking a senior Liberal about the fallout of the latest SNCLavalin news, she also checked her phone to get doorstep reports from candidates out on the hustings. “Only came up at two of about 200 doors last night,” she reported.

Every weekend through August, the Star has been publishing reports on the state of the party machines as the big four — the Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats and Greens — get ready to hit the federal election trail this fall. The final piece in the series, on the Liberals, by Bruce Campion-Smith, was published this weekend.

What’s striking is how 21stcentury campaigning is still rooted deeply on the ground. No matter how much information is stored in those burgeoning, still-secret databases that all parties have been assiduously building, the backroom strategists still talk about making that in-person, emotional contact with the voter — at the doorstep.

Of course, several things have happened since the 2015 election that may have taken a bit of the sheen off high-tech campaigning of the past few elections.

There was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which one of those secret data wizards (a Canadian and former Liberal, as it turns out) revealed how Facebook data had been improperly used to help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. election. Suddenly Facebook, which had seemed like such a cool tool in the Canadian election of 2015, became associated with dirty tricks.

To its credit, Facebook has done a lot to increase its transparency and lock down personal data since Cambridge Analytica, but those measures — including an ad registry, where everyone can see what parties are spending and where it’s directed — have also made it a bit less of a secret weapon for politicos.

Trump has also happened since Canadians last went to the polls, and that’s not an insignificant factor in the backto-basics tilt to campaign thinking. While the U.S. president hasn’t single-handedly devalued Twitter — that really is a crowd effort — Trump has heartily contributed to the idea that a Twitter feed is more a medium for partisan ranting than voter persuasion.

Trump’s surprise victory, as I see it, anyway, has done two other things to change Canadians’ outlook on campaign sophistication since 2015.

First of all, he won, despite all the Democrats’ vaunted expertise in modern campaign methods, and he won with a ground-based, emotional appeal to the disaffected in the U.S. — the kind of people who aren’t swayed by snazzy, hightech machinery. Barack Obama’s political machine was built like a smartphone; Trump’s was more like a bullhorn.

Second, Trump’s win made Canadian politicos a little less enthusiastic about going on pilgrimages to the U.S. to learn campaign mastery from the pros south of the border. Before 2015, Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats were always talking about what they were learning from American political strategists. You don’t hear that boast that often these days. I’m assuming it’s because we’re no longer sure that we want the kind of politics that Americans are selling at the moment.

Certainly there is no turning back the clock. None of the parties has taken a vow against data-mining or using social media tools in 2019. But all the parties seem less enchanted these days with the brave new world of campaigning they were talking about so much in 2015. To see the future of modern campaigning in Canada in 2019, then, you probably don’t have to look much farther than your front door.

Several things have happened since 2015 that may have taken the sheen off high-tech campaigning