Election and Political Campaigns by Canadian Political Parties

Running head: ELECTION AND POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS BY CANADIAN POLITICAL
PARTIES
ELECTION AND POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS BY CANADIAN POLITICAL PARTIES
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ELECTION AND POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS BY CANADIAN POLITICAL PARTIES
Introduction
The aim of the essay is to shed light on the elections and political parties of Canada and
analyze whether the current system is suitable or not. Political campaigns have been an important
part of elections in the democracies of the world including Canada. These are the organized
efforts made by the people looking for public office to secure nomination. However, in the recent
past, some commentators have questioned the need for such campaigns. Pollsters have also been
critical about the importance of polling in times of elections. General or regular elections are
considered by the proponents of democracy to be the best way to make sure that representatives
are doing their job well. Voting is the vital part of the general elections that decides the fate of
the representatives. However, considering Canada’s single-member plurality (SMP) electoral
system, general elections, voting and even polling often becomes futile (Singer 2013). The main
reason is that the SMP system largely neglects the smaller parties, women and other minority
groups who deserve a fair chance to run the country. It is important for a strong democracy
thus, to have an electoral system that takes into account the popular majority and give
equal opportunity to every social class. Majority electoral system is an alternative that
Canada should consider as an effective system that gives fair chance to all the candidates
and parties.
Discussion
Political campaigns, as discussed in the introduction, are efforts by the political parties
and individual candidates to secure a position at the public office. Political campaigns allow the
candidates to pitch for their political party and in the process; they tend to demean other
contesting parties and candidates. Daignault et al. (2013) further brings in another interesting

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ELECTION AND POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS BY CANADIAN POLITICAL PARTIES
part of the political campaigns, which is the growing scientific interest in political
advertisements. Physiological and cognitive methods are used to record the responses of the
voters regarding the political advertisements they view during campaigns. This helps generate a
more “nuanced and precise evaluation of the effects of negative advertising on viewers”.
In Canada, political campaigning has evolved progressively over just about two centuries.
The campaigns are mostly adapted from the campaign practices of Britain and the United States.
The political campaigns take place not only at the federal level but also at the provincial,
territorial and municipal levels. The recent developments in the field of technology like the air
transport, television and internet “have dramatically influenced campaign practices in recent
times”. The Canadian political parties find political campaigns as the excellent opportunity to
attract their voters and boast their strengths and achievements. In particular, as Pastine and
Pastine (2012) notice, largely the big parties who have control over the majority of funds utilize
political campaigns. Many however contrast this view stating that with the availability of free
platforms like the social media especially Facebook and Twitter, smaller parties and candidates
can now effectively campaign during elections. In democratic politics therefore, political
campaigns are necessary despite criticism and opposition because these campaigns allow the
minority candidates to have a fair chance.
According to experts, the electoral database used during the 2012 presidential election in
the US for Barack Obama started a new era of political campaigning that had only helped
strengthen democracy. The experts further elaborate that the present political scenario in the
world is market-oriented where voters are treated as customers and political campaigning as
marketing. There is nothing wrong in this perception of political campaigning because although
democracy is an age-old system, the trends have changed and political campaigns are an

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important part of this trend. In any democracy including Canada, political campaigns give both
the ruling party and the opposition a platform to engage in healthy debates thus presenting a
clearer picture for the voters.
Another significant part of elections in the democracies is the use of polling. Polling in
elections refers to the polls conducted by several political parties with the help of different
agencies to predict election outcomes. Polling like opinion polling and exit polling provide a
rough picture of the election results and these are further utilized by the political parties for post
vote campaigning. Nevertheless, the results derived from these are ambiguous as the results are
sometimes spot on while on other times, opposite to the actual results. As Barber et al. (2014)
point out correctly, opinions expressed by the people are bound to differ because one issue that is
important to one part of the country might not important to other part of the country. “The way in
which one deals with information gleaned through public opinion polls must be conditionalized
through a sensitivity to the limitations of the information which is being measured”, state the
authors. They further add that a pollster’s activities must be seen as a “combination of science
and art”. In their views, polling used in elections in Canada has proved advantageous because
unlike other democracies like the US, India, UK, very few inaccuracies have been registered in
Canada.
Budurushi, Jöris and Volkamer (2014) contradict this view stating that although the
inaccuracies in results have been few, polling undermines the popular sentiment of the nation.
The reason is that polling includes only a specific part of the population that might not represent
sentiments of the whole nation. The authors give examples of the 1980 US presidential election
where most pollsters had predicted a close contest but actual results indicated a landslide victory
for Ronald Reagan. In the Canadian election scenario, polling exerts similar effects as it does in