Extra-long election campaign favours incumbent

Canada’s prime minister has triggered the longest federal election campaign in the country’s modern history and that will advantage his Conservative party financially, but also cost taxpayer millions of extra dollars. Most campaigns last between 35 and 40 days. This one now underway will last 78 days with Canadians going to the polls on October 19^th.

The Conservative party has the most money in its war chest. In order to level the playing field Canadian legislator had passed a law setting out spending limits. But the Conservative government recently changed the law to increase those limits and that allows extra spending each day of the campaign.  At the end of the campaign, each party gets a tax refund of half of what it spent. That means the Conservatives are likely to get much more because they will spend more.

Long campaign to cost taxpayers extra millions

Taxpayers will have to pay for the extra refunds as well as for the extra time that the body governing elections, Elections Canada, will be in high gear. Some columnists say launching the election campaign is a cynical move by the prime minister to advantage his party, but it’s not clear whether Canadians will agree.

“I think the first week (of the campaign) will be a lot about that,” says Antonia Maioni, political science professor at McGill University. “As we move into the meat and potatoes of the election campaign however, I’m not quite sure that it’s going to damage the parties. It will probably just feed into the narrative that most Canadians have already in terms of whether they are supporters of the Conservatives, the NDP, or the Liberals.”

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Conservatives more able ‘to set the tone’

The Conservative’s extra money will allow the party to begin campaigning intensively, whereas the other parties will likely hold back on spending for now because so many Canadians are on holiday and likely not paying much attention to politics. Maioni thinks early spending will help the Conservatives. “It means the Conservatives will have more time to set the tone of the election over that period of time. It matters…because what you want in an election campaign is momentum.

So if the Conservative party can build that momentum steadily over the first few weeks of the campaign it means they will be better positioned once Canadians come back to work and are paying attention to what’s going on.

Parties will have ‘to keep their messaging fresh’

“On the other hand, the danger (to avoid) is the election campaign doesn’t just become simply wallpaper, so that Canadians, by the time we get to October 19^th are rolling their eyes and have had enough of it. The challenge for all the parties is to keep their messaging fresh over those 11 weeks.”