Jason, Scott and Joe Couture have all discussed the first month’s financial reports from Saskatchewan’s NDP leadership campaign. But I’ll add a couple of other points that jump out at me. First, the fund-raising numbers show just how different this leadership campaign will be compared to the 2009 version. While
Continue readingTag: Fund Raising
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Ottawa Citizen asks whether Stephen Harper’s Conservatives think Canadians are stupid enough to fall for their asinine carbon tax spin. Aaron Wherry confirms that the answer is an emphatic “yes”. – But then, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the Cons
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On political legacies
Ready the fainting couch for Warren Kinsella, because I’ve got a scoop that he’ll find shocking and appalling. The NDP has been fund-raising for years based on appeals to Jack Layton’s public image. In fact, Layton’s face and signature regularly appeared on financial appeals to his party’s supporters not just
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot discusses the effect of inegalitarian and austerian policies imposed by the UK Conservatives: (T)he neoliberal programme has closed down political choice. If the market, as the doctrine insists, is the only valid determinant of how societies evolve, and the market
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: And now a word from John Cleese, the devil
This explains a great deal. Alltop is fond of burning things too.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: First impressions and lasting involvement
Others have already commented on the NDP’s first set of ads with Thomas Mulcair as party leader. But I’ll take a few minutes to highlight both the job the ads seem perfectly suited to do – and the more important work only hinted at in Mulcair’s first set of leadership
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 Roundup
As we enter the last few weeks of the NDP’s leadership race, we’re of course seeing loads of attention. But what from the flurry of activity might actually affect the results of the leadership race as well as the party’s future development? – Niki Ashton took questions at Rabble, including
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 Roundup
A few leadership notes covering the gap between Sunday’s informal debate and tonight’s version in Saskatoon… – Niki Ashton unveiled her justice platform, proposing a “judicare” program to ensure greater access to the legal system as well as soft drug decriminalization. – Nathan Cullen took questions from Aaron Wherry, featuring
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On close competition
Alice has taken a thorough look at the 2011 Q4 fund-raising totals in the NDP’s leadership race and mused that fund-raising may serve as a proxy for first-ballot support. But I’ll follow up on a couple of points. Let’s start with a couple of reasons to take yesterday’s numbers with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On responsible management
Tobi Cohen’s report on fund-raising in the NDP’s leadership race ends up serving largely as an analysis of Nathan Cullen’s position and fund-raising to date due to his willingness to provide a donor list before it’s required. (Which nicely signals the value of working with media on that type of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jim Stanford highlights a trend of employers forcing work stoppages in order to force massive concessions out of their employees – and notes that the Harper Cons seem to be entirely in favour of that kind of economic disruption as long as it’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Stephen Maher nicely summarizes Tony Clement’s sad committee appearance yesterday:The evidence shows that Clement chose the projects himself, in some kind of mysterious process in his riding office. He has stea…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On backup plans
As part of rabble’s discussion of what the NDP can do to increase its membership in Quebec during the course of the leadership campaign, one commenter has suggested a targeted donation system to reward candidates who sign up new members. And the idea m…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012: Rulebook Review
As promised, let’s take a quick look through the NDP’s official leadership rules. On the whole, the regulations don’t look to particularly favour any one candidate – but they do include a few noteworthy twists which may help to shape the outcome.The So…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012: The Playing Field
With the NDP set to discuss the rules for its upcoming leadership campaign. So let’s take a quick look at a few of the basic issues involved, along with the answers which I’d think would best serve the goal of developing into a sustainable progressive …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Tom Mills challenges the Cons to show any job creation whatsoever as a result of their non-stop corporate tax slashing:The thing is, if corporate tax cuts really do create jobs, Flaherty should be able to dem…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On equalization
One more note on today’s fund-raising news which is best seen in Alice’s historical quarterly data.For 2011 Q2, total fund-raising for the NDP, Libs, Bloc and Greens was $7,918,876.12 – while for the Cons, it was $8,205,078.88. Which looks to mark a lo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Not quite comparable
Alice notes that all three official parties in Parliament amassed record fund-raising totals during the course of this spring’s election campaign. But it’s worth adding one asterisk to the raw numbers.While both the Cons and the NDP mostly raised money…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On successorship strategies
Naturally, Jack Layton’s announcement that he’s taking a temporary leave from the NDP’s leadership has led to a wide assortment of speculation as to what might come next for the NDP, particularly if his absence does prove to be more than temporary. But…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Fund-Raising Review By Province – NDP
Following up on my previous post, let’s take a look at the NDP’s partial fund-raising numbers from 2007 to 2010. (I’ve kept the 2010 data in the chart as an FYI, but a keen-eye reader notes that we shouldn’t compare to previous years’ data since it reflects quarterly returns rather than annual ones.)
Prov/Reg | 2007 $ | 2007 % | 2008 $ | 2008 % | 2009 $ | 2009 % | 2010 $ | 2010 % |
AB | $307,001.80 | 10.31% | $406,575.72 | 9.23% | $307,350.79 | 10.01% | $143741.94.50 | 9.44% |
BC | $805,217.20 | 27.04% | $1,109,104.94 | 25.18% | $680,108.02 | 30.22% | $504,443.60 | 33.13% |
MB | $148,937.94 | 5.00% | $251,361.54 | 5.71% | $174,442.71 | 5.68% | $64,005.27 | 4.20% |
NB | $34,410.77 | 1.16% | $42,393.92 | 0.96% | $38,635.19 | 1.26% | $13,144.86 | 0.86% |
NL | $13,894.00 | 0.47% | $22,273.00 | 0.51% | $22,290.00 | 0.73% | $11,340.00 | 0.75% |
NS | $105,734.34 | 3.55% | $155,442.45 | 3.53% | $110,203.00 | 3.59% | $37,112.50 | 2.44% |
NT | $7,146.00 | 0.24% | $21,542.00 | 0.49% | $9,433.00 | 0.31% | $2,150.00 | 0.14% |
NU | $2,830.00 | 0.10% | $2,420.00 | 0.05% | $4,018.00 | 0.13% | $2,040.00 | 0.13% |
ON | $1,199,357.72 | 40.28% | $1,841,233.15 | 41.81% | $1,364,679.90 | 44.46% | $583,063.67 | 38.29% |
PE | $7,145.00 | 0.24% | $8,300.82 | 0.19% | $5,952.00 | 0.19% | $2,470.00 | 0.16% |
QC | $94,120.42 | 3.16% | $120,570.19 | 2.74% | $65,811.41 | 2.14% | $30,502.58 | 2.00% | SK | $243,518.12 | 8.18% | $411,029.18 | 9.33% | $278,655.30 | 9.08% | $124,664.37 | 8.19% | YT | $8,300.92 | 0.28% | $11,703.92 | 0.27% | $8,174.92 | 0.27% | $3,887.34 | 0.27% | Total | $2,977,614.23 | n/a | $4,403,950.83 | n/a | $3,069,754.24 | n/a | $1,522,571.13 | n/a |
The NDP received $23,019.67 in other donations included in La Presse’s dataset; as with the Cons, that extra amount looks to consist generally of donations from Canadians living outside the country. And another $1,237,818.50 was linked to a province but not classified by year.
I’ll note that the above chart doesn’t include one of the ways I played around with the data, which was to compare the parties’ 2008 donations to their votes in each province. Based on the Cons’ numbers alone I wasn’t entirely sure what to look for, but there are some rather interesting comparisons to be drawn between the Cons and the NDP:
– Both parties posted their top fund-raising take per vote in…the Yukon, with the Cons raking in $11.85 per vote and the NDP $9.17. The Northwest Territories also rank near the top of both parties’ lists, but Nunuvut breaks the territorial trend as the Cons’ lowest per-vote source of income.
– The Cons’ most efficient province for fund-raising is predictably the one where they hold a stranglehold on the popular vote, with $4.53 finding its way into party coffers for every vote won in Alberta. Next in line were B.C. ($3.89), Ontario ($3.69), Manitoba ($3.52) and Saskatchewan ($3.36).
– For the NDP, by far the most efficient province for fund-raising compared to votes received (and the lone one where it exceeded the Cons on that measure) was Saskatchewan, with $3.83 raised by the NDP for each vote it won. Surprisingly to me at least, Alberta ranks second at $2.52, followed by B.C. ($2.37), Manitoba ($2.24) and Ontario ($1.96) – making the fund-raising bases substantially the same for the NDP and the Cons, even if they’ve had varying success in cultivating them.
– Meanwhile, the NDP had two provinces far below the rest in dollars raised per vote. In Newfoundland and Labrador ($0.34), the party’s vote was itself based largely on Danny Williams’ ABC campaign, making for an obvious explanation for the disconnect. But even that effect couldn’t win the bottom place on the NDP’s list of dollars raised per vote – which leads us back into the discussion of the NDP generally.
While I noted that the Cons’ returns in Quebec has always been less than impressive, the NDP’s (at least for the years covered by La Presse’s data) have been substantially lower…and declining by the year as a proportion of the NDP’s overall fund-raising. And even in the 2008 election which saw the party make modest gains with a 12% showing at the polls and its first ever general-election seat, the NDP raised only 27 cents for every Quebec vote it won.
Which isn’t to say that the NDP can’t indeed build up its capacity in Quebec now that it has 59 MPs and a majority of popular support to work with. And one can’t say that the model of working toward winning votes based on relatively soft support which doesn’t yet reflect a donor base has been anything but a stunning success.
But there’s an awfully long way to go for the NDP to turn what had previously been its least efficient fund-raising generator into a national power base. And I’ll be highly curious to see whether the party’s fund-raising base shifts substantially based on its Quebec success.
I’ll note one other trend in the NDP’s data, as the close relationship between the NDP and its provincial sections looks to have a significant influence on how the party raises its money. The 2007 and 2009 years offer an ideal basis of comparison since the dollars raised are such a good match, and they show an almost unbroken pattern: where a provincial party faces an election (including Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario in 2007, and B.C. in 2009), the federal party’s fund-raising is lower for the year.
And the exception that proves the rule is Nova Scotia – where despite the euphoria of winning a provincial election for the first time and the added attention from hosting the party’s federal convention in Halifax, the federal NDP improved on its 2007 fund-raising numbers by less than $5,000.
Continue reading