Loser, I declare thee Sona

Setting aside the allegations about "ethnic costumes" or Tamil candidates, I'll focus on what happened late in the day in Guelph. I don't know what exactly happened, but according to some students there, local Conservative Communications Director Michael Sona attempted to reach for and grab a ballot box at the polling station, arguing that it was an illegal poll.

From everything I've seen, he appears to have had a legitimate argument (and local Conservatives claim that he did not in fact reach for the ballot box). Regardless, this is EXACTLY the kind of publicity the Conservatives don't need right now, and precisely the wrong way of going about things.

While Stephen Harper has been condemned for the ruthless discipline he exercises in controlling his caucus, it must be remembered how utterly savage the national media used to be with every misstatement by a Canadian Alliance or Conservative candidate. Now that candidates are on such a short leash, the press has moved onto seizing on Conservative staffers.

Conservatives will argue that it was unfair, but one cannot campaign against both parties and the press, and so they should expect attention to be drawn to everything. The name of the game for the Conservatives now is to avoid controversy - and having anybody associated with a campaign openly confront voting officials is a prime example of what NOT to do. Allegations of disrespecting democracy already abound, and anything that reinforces that impression must be avoided at all cost.

While this may be attributed to it having been such a slow campaign day, this has the potential to grow. I'd even go so far as to say Guelph just started leaning more into the Liberal camp after today's incident. This one could be a costly loss in the quest for a Majority. This story fits a compelling Liberal narrative of Conservative contempt for democracy, and is already being seized upon by Liberal columnists. Just wait until the press finds out Mr. Sona works on the Hill and we'll see how much traction this will get.

So, no clear winners today, but the Conservatives lost on this front. They're going to get hammered even harder in the coming weeks. We'll have to wait to see what the full impact will be for them.

DAY 21 LOSER: Conservatives

...and the Debate Winner Is: Day 18

Was there a knock-out punch tonight? After 27 years of relatively calm debates, yes!

Who was involved? Simply, Jack Layton when he zinged Michael Ignatieff for his attendance record in Parliament.

Who benefited from this? Layton will for sure -- the NDP numbers will certainly be going up after tonight. That said, Stephen Harper will have a big smile on his face tonight. The attendance zing symbolized the lacklustre performance of Liberal leader Ignatieff and was not able to throw Stephen Harper off-script.

Winners: NDP and Conservatives

NDP Benefits, but Liberals Could be Big Winners: Day 18

Benjamin writes a fine analysis below on why the NDP won today -- so much so that we're inclined to give his analysis the benefit of being the deciding basis for turning the 11th on the calendar orange to the right of this posting.

That said, while the NDP is certainly going to be endeared by the eruption caused by a leaked Parliamentary report on spending at the G8 summit, the way that the rest of this week plays out will really determine where the Liberals end up on May 2 -- and the ball is firmly in their court now. Michael Ignatieff's herculean task of taking on the Prime Minister in tomorrow night's debate, and winning, becomes all the more crucial in light of this revelation, but a word of wisdom to the Liberal leader -- one of his predecessors, John Turner, quickly saw a supposed advantage over his Tory opponent turned against him when he took an patronage accusation against one Brian Mulroney too far 26 years ago; the rest, as they say, is history. Mr. Harper is a formidable adversary who, despite his perceived weaknesses, has proven that he learns from his mistakes over time; while the Liberals might be seeing today as a miracle, it could quickly turn into a curse if the Liberal leader enters tomorrow's debate overconfident and unattentive to his own weak spots.

Winner: The NDP...for now

The Day the Tories Needed: Day 11

As with most things during this campaign, it's what didn't happen today that really made a difference. After a Monday where the Prime Minister was asked the same question that inevitably comes up every election -- will he change any laws with respect to abortion -- and he invariably lost votes from both sides of the issue as a result, the Conservatives have bounced back quite nicely today by not letting the issue linger. In short, this may be the election when the Tories finally outgrow the "secret agenda" tag that was put upon them back in 2000 when Stockwell Day led the Canadian Alliance.

Balancing this, the governing party also unveiled a pair of ads today which put the focus squarely on the economy -- this is a winning issue for the Conservatives and, as noted here on Sunday, the Liberals might have done themselves in with their platform by releasing a document that belongs in a "times are good" season, not one where jobs and the economic well-being of the country is on the brink. With two new ads, both of them heavily borrowed from the US (for the record, all parties here steal from south of the border), but both of them well-executed to deliver the Tory message effectively. If the Tories continue to follow this strategy, they will win many more days to come.



Day 11 Winner: The Conservatives

Liberals Convert the Choir, Seek After Faithful With Platform: Day 9

For those following the election closely, today was bound to be a monumental one, either for good or ill, for each of the main parties. The Liberals announced their platform today, titled "Your Family. Your Future. Your Canada.", which borrowed heavily from the Tory strategy in 2006 to provide 5 key planks and then a bundle of other details. The question is did it work though?

The answer heavily influences who won today's battle on the campaign trail and, given the feedback and optics of this platform release, there is relative ease in saying that the Tories were quite happy with what they saw today. While it was obvious in reading through the highlights of the Liberal document that the opposition party is heavily relying on retail politics, the scope of target voters that would appreciate the document, combined with the fact that the economy is hardly highlighted will be giving the Conservatives an extra edge during the remaining month of the election period. The media has been constantly reminding us for years that Canadians don't love Stephen Harper, they just respect him and it's hardly a struggle to see the average Canadian's opinion of Harper's premiership during the economic downturn as being a major influencing factor. The Liberals, while running a very good campaign, image-wise, so far, have mistaken people warming up to Micheal Ignatieff's smiling face for a budding trust in him to manage the economy. If the Tories begin to wake up and put these factors together, it would be a lethal month that the Liberals are now facing. The document is far too insular, attempting to appease recent Liberal base grievances with the Conservatives while failing to understand just why Canadians sent the blue party to Ottawa with successively stronger minority mandates during the last five years.

Put another way, for those who loath the incumbent Prime Minister are frustrated with his ability to attain 40% nationally in recent polls just by hum-hawing through the last week of campaigning, just imagine what he'll be pushing if his team clues into the gift that Mr. Ignatieff just handed him...

Week 1 in Review

As part of a continuing effort I hope to present a reoccurring strategic summary of how each party did generally against three criteria:
1) Were they effective in shaping the national ballot question?
2) Were they effective in responding in attacks?
3) Did they position themselves effectively in the policies and promises made thus far?

I’ve made the intentional decision to exclude the Bloc Quebequois from my assessment, because the Bloc doesn’t fit the normative paradigm of a Canadian political party.

The NDP

I would criticize the NDP’s ineffective attempt at framing the ballot question for voters, if I could discern a clear message from the NDP whatsoever. I suppose the biggest problem the NDP face is that they need to frame a drastically different message from one end of the country to another. In BC it’s more about the Tories. In Ontario – it’s all about taking down the Liberals. But I think it’s more than that. The NDP’s ballot question, I believe, needs to be the only one that counts – you need to elect NDP MPs to keep a minority government honest. When the electoral prospect of a majority government becomes more and more a reality, it leaves the NDP little room to manoeuvre in.

In terms of policy I am truly baffled at the NDP’s decisions. I would think their main strategy would be to press the Liberals from the margins. That means wherever the Liberals are, the NDP is a little bit more. Yet Mr Layton’s recent policy announcement of increases in the same corporate taxes that the Liberals want to raise while at the same time lowering some business taxes has put the NDP in unfamiliar ground – more centrist than the Liberals. I fail to see how this benefits the NDP significantly (except for possibly the highly competitive battleground of BC). Yet the NDP’s recent credit card interest rate cap announcement provides that sharp contrast one would more expect from the NDP, and positions them a lot more favourably with respect to the other national parties. Overall I would say the NDP has chosen a mixed policy positioning that risks it being ignored exactly in a campaign where it cannot afford to be ignored.

I really can’t comment on the NDP’s ability to respond to attacks, mainly because they have had scant attacks launched against them. Most of the attacks come in the veiled threat of a “Coalition”, which I think overall the party and the leader has been much more capable of defending, and counter-attacking than either the Liberals or the Bloc Quebequois.


The Liberals

The Liberals have not really shaped the national debate whatsoever this past week. The question they need out there is “are you better off now than you were five years ago.” That question has gotten buried somewhere in the talk of “Coalition” or of one-on-one debate shenanigans (Memo to National Party Leaders: no one cares who doesn’t want to debate who one-on-one). I don’t think Ignatieff has been particularly on message, though I suspect it must be very difficult him to do just that right now.

I do think that this past week has show cased some very important policy for the Liberals that places them very well strategically - but not perfectly. The new education bursaries and the new home care EI supplement are sticking to areas that are true “winnable” issues for the Liberals: education and social policy. The Tories aren’t going to be able to easily nullify these sharp policy differences and the NDP seems almost uninterested. That being said, I believe firmly that the Liberals should have never committed to ending the corporate tax rate reduction for this year. Taxes are not a winnable issue for the Liberals. Providing this sharp policy difference allows the Tories to charge Ignatieff with the “high tax” label.

I think that the Liberal response to NDP and Tory attacks has been surprisingly well this past week. From what I’ve seen there wasn’t a single headline the Tories could make with the Liberal response finding its way directly in the story. Whatever they’re doing on this front they need to keep doing.


The Tories

The Tories have been an abysmal failure this past week at responding to opposition attacks. It’s been almost a joke. News article, after article this past week (that I’ve read) has shown no political response from the right wing party. This leads me either to conclude that the Tories are either utterly disorganized or (believing they are ahead) they are more afraid to respond and screw up to actually respond. There is the possibility that the decision to limit reporters to 5 questions a day has given every excuse for the press to ignore Harper’s response team. Either way this past week I was stunned to see a national governing party so utterly unable to counter attacks.

The Tories did do one thing right this past week: They announced the Income Splitting promise. The measure will allow Canadian families with children to save thousands a year in taxes – a true bread and butter issue for the Tories. The economy and taxes are a natural “winnable” issue for the Conservatives. Poignant is the fact that the best opposition response so far has been to criticize the late implementation period. Very few on the left have actually come out to criticize the measure and national opposition leaders seem to have become very quickly silent on the issue.

The Tories started the week tarring and feathering Count Ignatieff with the “Coalition” label. That issue, it’s becoming obvious, is the central ballot question Harper wants to make. It has dominated the debate of the last week. If it were only for this reason, and this reason alone I think that I could say that the Tories were the most effective national political party this past week.

That was the week that was. The Tories didn't perform spectacularly - they just did less bad than others. To me it's them that therefore wins this week.

And The First Week Ends With A Whimper: Day 7

In all its glory, the first week of the 41^st General Election concluded with what has been possibly the dullest day thus far. Aside from Stephen Harper’s policy announcement that the Conservatives plan on eliminating the $2 per vote party-subsidy – an unsurprising proposal since the media has been hampering the Conservatives on it for a while now – there was really no story to tell.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff spent most of today in southern Ontario working to garner as much support possible in the key background electoral districts of Kitchener-Centre and Kitchener-Waterloo. The Conservatives must fight tooth and nail to keep these ridings – only winning them in 2008 by the slimmest of margins – especially since their incumbents, Stephen Woodworth and Peter Braid respectively, are not stellar candidates. From what I have heard, the Liberals intend on releasing their party’s platform in the coming days, so Ignatieff stayed clear from proposing any grand ideas – all he promised was another one billion dollar program for family care. Besides, the Liberals already promised their billion dollar national day care boondoggle (the 6^th time I believe since 1993) yesterday, and they would hardly want to take away from the remarkable and mind-blowing astonishment voters get from hearing about it for the first (6^th) time.

Instead, Ignatieff filled the void of policy talk by relishing the fact that Stephen Harper went back on his word on a possible one-on-one debate between the two, writing an open letter and then twittering about it. Also, according to my sources from the region, he went on the radio airwaves to answer a few questions from the regionally popular commentator Jeff Allan (507 News: All New Radio). It was thought he did well and answered clearly.

Somewhere in the political wilderness (actually Sudbury, Ontario), Jack Layton promised something about health care – judging from the podium he spoke from he wants “More Doctors & Nurses”) – but considering the fact I actually had to exert effort to find out what the NDP were up to today by spending a wasteful minute googling Jack’s name, they may as well have not existed. With that said, it was important for Layton to visit northern Ontario, because his party captured five seats in the region in the last election. Their lack of enthusiasm for scrapping the gun-registry may yet to haunt them, but I suspect they are more worried about the Liberals taking their seats than the Conservatives.

As mentioned earlier, Stephen Harper made a typical policy announcement from Moncton. According to Harper, the per-vote subsidy – as enormous welfare cheques to a political party’s war chest – is the means to why we are constantly having elections in Canada. In part, I agree with the Conservatives on this one, but I suspect this policy announcement will have the effect of energizing their base, rather than attracting new voters to vote for them. There is a slight change to the proposal, compared to their attempt to rid of it in 2008. They plan on phasing out the subsidy in 3 years, rather than suddenly eliminating it.

And that is pretty much it for the national leaders. Nothing special. Nothing bizarre. Nothing captivating. Nevertheless, it looks like Quebec Premier Jean Charest is determined to be a thorn in Stephen Harper's side. He came out today condemning the Conservative plan that would provide financial support for Labrador’s Lower Churchill hydro project to build power lines from Labrador through Nova Scotia and potentially into the United States. Charest is afraid that this would make the Lower Churchill hydro project into a possible competitor with Hydro-Quebec (from my understanding the Atlantic provinces would be able to sell their energy directly to the U.S. rather than through Quebec as the current arrangement has them doing), and is telling Quebeckers Stephen Harper is betraying them by giving a subsidy for Atlantic Canada. The implications of this could be bad for the few Conservatives they have in Quebec. It will hurt their chances from taking a few seats from the Bloc as well.

For the most part, election coverage for today has been a bit dull and will have little effect. Perhaps Charest’s bashing of Stephen Harper will play in Quebec, but nationally nothing will change. I will argue, however, this works in Ingatieff’s favour, since Harper really needs to step up his “A” game if he wants a majority. In fact, a new Nanos Leadership Index released today has shown that, as of 31 March, Ingatieff’s leadership rank has gone up 4 points since two weeks ago – from 40 to 44. Although Harper's leadership score remains far ahead at 98 points, Ingatieff’s small gains make me assess the Liberals as the winners for 1 April.

Day 7 Winner: Liberal Party of Canada (slightly)

One Week Later, Canadians Still Ask 'Why'?: Week 1 Post-Mortum

Dull as this campaign has become, one wonders how each of the three main federalist leaders are looking upon their efforts after week 1. It is clear that the Liberals have picked up the most momentum after the first seven days (see Shane's post above for more details on how this played in Day 7); their leader is beginning to be questioned about the budgeting of big ticket items from daycare to scholarships, but you wouldn't know it if the Liberals are worried right now as their events are energetic and Ignatieff is clearly finding his stride with the debate over a one-on-one debate.

If the Liberals have an issue that they should be concerned about, it is that the coverage of their campaign has been cotton balled to a certain degree -- if Michael Ignatieff looks like he has a good chance of becoming PM after May 2, he'll have to begin answering 'why': why the campaign now (aka what is the real reason to punish the Harper Conservatives?); why is he a valuable asset to voters? This will be the real test for the Liberals; one which the Tories failed in 2004 when they were in that position, but that the Liberals can draw lessons from.

Speaking of the Conservatives, their 'why' this week is why they are asking for votes at all? The blue campaign has actually been well-managed overall; the gaffes are small and likely already forgotten by Joe and Jane Canadian, Harper's policy announcements will stir the Tory base into action and the ads have done a good job at getting the governing party up to 39-41% in most polls. The air of staleness is quite the stench the Tories are giving off now though; they're not dead but they're certainly not lively either. The coalition talk has likely taken the party as far as it is going to get them and, going back to the why question, Harper's team would do well to spend the weekend trying to define their own vision of Canada for next week's campaign events. The flip-flop on the debate with the Liberal leader will hurt Harper's public image as a stable and decisive leader but, like the rest of the Conservative effort thus far, the party can recover if they pull it together in the coming days...or this could be the beginning of a slow and eventless implosion -- death by a thousand gradual cuts the Tories cannot be bothered to bandage.

The leader most in trouble tonight though has to be Jack Layton; as noted yesterday, he's at risk of becoming "Sideshow Jack" in this campaign by promising a few frivolous items that would find dye-in-the-wool NDPers hard-pressed to be inspired about, and by having his party almost completely shut out of the daily narrative. Even Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe and Green head Elizabeth May have earned themselves more influence so far in the English media than the NDP has; if this does not change soon, the NDP will find itself completely squeezed out by a polarized Con-Lib electorate and will have to fend for seats in already-parched Alberta, Saskatchewan and industrial centres in Winnipeg, Windsor and Hamilton. The NDP will have to find a defining attribute that it can attach itself to which the Liberals won't steal and the Conservatives won't touch. Otherwise, the 'why' the party will have to answer is why are you relevant in this campaign; a deadly question that has decimated the NDP in previous elections where it has failed to properly respond in kind.

Weekly Winners:
1st: The Liberals - for gaining momentum on the campaign trail
2nd: The Conservatives - for a stable, decent but hollow front runner campaign effort
3rd: The Bloc - for finding an effective Quebec narrative that even captured English Canada's attention
4th: The NDP - for failing to maintain a relevant place in the daily campaign happenings thus far

Liberals Find Their Big 'Mo: Day 6

Not since the weekend has there been a day so clearly won, and so clearly lost. The Liberals clearly had a good day today, buoyed by a trio of news stories which reinforces the truth that this is no longer Stephane Dion's election.

To begin with, in what has to be the first major self-inflicted wound of the campaign by a leader, Conservative leader Harper was painted as a flip-flopper on the issue of whether he would debate Liberal leader Ignatieff one-on-one. The Tories were quick to add that they never promised to do a full leaders' debate and a manno-a-manno version with the Liberal leader but the damage was already done -- regardless of who true or untrue this is, in politics image is far more important than reality and no voter or scribe has the attention span to sift through the lengthy party that the governing party provided.

To add extra sugar on the Liberal cake today, a new poll came out which put the Liberals well above the psychologically charged 30% milestone for the first time in recent memory. The Nanos poll, which can be found in full here, is interesting in that it has the Tories moving up in battleground Ontario while only losing steam in the largely irrelevant Prairies (where they'll likely win 110% of the seats anyway) and Atlantic Canada. The fact that the overall picture has the Liberals jump around 5 points at the expense of the NDP serves as a warning to Jack Layton's team that they risk becoming a side show in this election and will undoubtedly drive more Liberals to rethink sitting out this election -- a key win for the Opposition since any politically experienced person will tell you that a party which appears to be headed to destruction gets only a fraction of the volunteers while the rest sit the game out.

Finally, the Liberals released fundraising numbers that would make even the Tories blush. This will again help to motivate the Liberal base as money is a big deal; a party which has lots of it (as the Conservatives have for the last five years) will naturally be able to make the case that they are capable of fighting a top tier campaign.

Aside from the good vibes the Liberals are feeling, much of the coverage focused on the role the Green Party will (or won't) play in the upcoming debate. The Tories once again are showing signs of inability to react quickly to the campaign and have received little positive press coverage -- Liberal blogger and campaign mastermind Warren Kinsella's assessment that the Prime Minister is "phoning [the election] in" might start to resonate if the lack of Tory war room presence continues to be felt. On that note, where is the NDP today anyway?

Day 6 Winner: The Liberals

Liberals Gain One, Liberals Lose One: Day 5

And they're finally off! In what was one of the most bizarre campaign days in a generation (and that's saying a lot!), an NDP candidate in London quit to endorse the Liberals, a move that saved the coalition issue from being otherwise taken off the table today. This would have been a banner day for the main opposition party, except that their former by-election candidate and party stalwart in Vaughn publicly endorsed Tory MP Julian Fantino later today, marking a second defection. The headlines responded in kind and the two items will be making the newspaper front sections tomorrow morning.

The other major item today revolved around the leaders' debate, Green leader Elizabeth May's participation and Prime Minister Harper's open challenge to a one-on-one debate with Liberal leader Ignatieff. This will obviously be a game changer down the road, either if Ms. May gets an invitation that many did not expect her to receive again, or if there is a separate debate between the two poll-leading party leaders.

The Tories did get stuck with another ex-staffer-who-is-being-investigated-working-on-their-campaign story today, but as the headlines aren't keeping up with the fact that there was a first one, it is unlikely that this will stick to the Conservatives for now.

Summary: a more exciting day, but still not any major shifts in momentum that would see a different result.

Day 4 Winner: The Conservatives

Consistency Without Much Substance: Day 4

It might be premature to dub this "the coalition election" but with over 10% of the campaign over with now (yes, these things happen fast!), the opposition parties that brought down the government last week have failed so far to change the page from talk of a coalition, and have in fact encouraged it in the cases of Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton. How attacking Conservative leader and Prime Minister Harper for an alleged coalition deal almost a decade ago will help their causes remains to be seen; the times have changed so radically that Harper is on the offering end of "secret agenda" theories, not the receiving end.

The four party leaders spent the day making modest, routine stops (Harper in Saskatchewan/Winnipeg; Ignatieff in Oakville; Layton in Brantford; Duceppe in Montréal) while most of the headlines still focused on coalition talk. Harper made a stop late in the day to do another piano performance in Winnipeg (this time with Youtube star Maria Aragon). Very little of the day focused on policy development: the Tories had to defend against an ex-staffer campaigning for them in Edmonton but who also is under investigation by the RCMP; the Liberals were discovered for a typo in how their $1000/yr scholarship could actually give Quebec students $500/yr and Layton promised to freeze credit rates for families. Overall, very dull and very boring which, again, works to the Conservatives' favour.

At this stage, the other parties will be banking on the debates becoming a game changer ala 1984 (the Greens, it was announced today, won't be participating), or they will have to change the discourse on the campaign trail. Time to get cracking guys!

Day 4 Winner: The Conservatives

The First Policies Don't Shake Coalition Talk: Day 3

I made a mistake at the beginning of this campaign in stating that my opinion for "who is going to win" is simply "this is Harper's majority to lose". A lot can happen in six weeks and, as 2004 showed, Stephen Harper has been on the receiving end of a rude electoral awakening. The dynamics of 2011 are different than that of 2004 though; Harper is on the inside, has a history with voters now and entered the campaign with the lead (2004's days of the Tories struggling in the upper 20s seem like a distant memory to most politicos, let alone voters).

That is why I go on the record to say that if the campaign continues to be days like today, the Prime Minister is likely to be handed 154+ seats in exactly six weeks; the Tory vote is currently in the upper 30s, with some polls showing it cracking the 40 threshold while the Liberals hover around 25%, sometimes more, sometimes less. The job of Michael Ignatieff is to rattle the cage and turn this into a dog fight.

If you look at the policy planks that the two leading parties released today (a somewhat distant promise of income splitting from the Conservatives and scholarships for poorer students from the Liberals), the boring theme seems to take hold. The Tories didn't announce their income splitting plan to attract new voters to the fold; this was purely targeted at that socially conservative base that will come out in droves on election day for the CPC; often it's not how many supporters you have in close elections but how many bother to vote! The Liberals, for their part, are targeting the wrong group if history offers any insight; students only vote 15% of the time, on average, and it's fair to say that most of those 15% are committed to a particular party anyway. The highschooler parents that Mr. Ignatieff is banking on might not materialize either -- middle-class families don't consider themselves "poor" and the tuition policy stipulates that one must be in the lower class to qualify; lower-class families likely already look at university as an unattainable dream. In summary, the Tories did a classic maneuver in shoring up the base early; the Liberals aren't likely to do more with their move than reinforce the Tory line that they're spend-thrifty.

Now, before I end tonight, looking at the NDP and the Bloc, it's amazing again to see how much Gilles Duceppe has been commanding attention so far this campaign -- the coalition talk is still in the news, largely thanks to the BQ leader and the Quebec party is coming across as important and instrumental, which will serve the third-place party well on election night if it holds. Jack Layton went to the former NDP heartland of Saskatchewan today in an attempt to shore up support. It's no surprise that Jack is spending a lot of time out west since that's where the NDP hopes to make big gains this year. Aside from being a pain in Iganatieff's side by also talking of coalitions (both the alleged 2004 one with the Tories and a possible one later this May), the NDP leader is having difficulty in conveying anything more than a protest movement -- this will hurt Jack as he has, for the fourth time in as many elections, begun his campaign by stating that he's "running for Prime Minister"; he risks being seen as too reactionary and not as proactive as a PM should be if this continues to be the main coverage the NDP gets.

Day 3 Winner: The Conservatives

Harper Has His First Challenge In A While: Day 2

Gilles Duceppe can be forgiven for being a little sore today. After doing what few have done, put Stephen Harper on the defensive during a campaign, as he skillfully did yesterday by reintroducing the 2004 letter signed by Harper, Duceppe and NDP leader Jack Layton and in 2008 with the cultural funding, he would only go on to see the Liberals reap the harvest of his work.

Such was the case today when the media was quick to react and shifted the coalition question from Michael Ignatieff to the Prime Minister. Harper was somewhat buffered by Jack Layton's response later in the day which indicated that no talk of a formal coalition happened seven years ago, but the damage has been done -- tomorrow's headlines will be about Harper's hypocrisy instead of Ignatieff's hidden agenda. At this stage in the campaign, it's not likely to be a major factor but it does throw the Conservatives off their game since they've been quite clear that their intentions for the last two years were to make this campaign a referendum on a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition; now that the spotlight has shifted, they will either have to reframe their message to focus more on the alleged secrecy of the idea rather than the idea of a coalition itself.

If there is a silver line that the governing party can turn to tonight, it's that the longer the coalition issue is in the news, the more Canadians will focus on a topic of their choosing and not that of Mr. Ignatieff's. What is more beneficial to the Liberals at this point than the topic itself is the fact the Tories have done very little to control the message this weekend; the Liberals and NDP are frequently getting their responses into election articles while the Conservatives are only getting news on their activities so far. It's almost as if the Tory war room is asleep at the campaign bus wheel, allowing the Liberals to cruise through a good-news day and take the win by default today.

Day 2 Winner: The Liberals

Canada 2011: Day 1

Perhaps it was the weekend start or the fact that the parties have been using the last week as their unofficial start to the campaign, but today was a rather dull affair. Conservative leader Harper went straight to Quebec after meeting with the GG, Liberal leader Ignatieff stayed around in Ottawa, while Jack Layton was out west in Edmonton. As this blog will be providing our thoughts on who "won the day" during each leg of this campaign, we've got to chose somebody but it's fair to say that today wasn't the most dramatic beginning to an election season.

While Michael Ignatieff's team put out a press release to clarrify their coalition stance, the document quickly met with mixed reviews as to how sincere the Liberals are to avoiding a formal coalition with either the NDP or BQ in the event that the next Parliament looks similar to the one that was dissolved yesterday, while leads me to grant today's vote to the Tories -- this is still a campaign being defined on their preferred topic of the coalition and not one about the recent controversies that the government has suffered.

Often in politics, the first punch is the one that counts the most and the Conservatives deserve credit for making this an issue out of the gate. That said, the Liberals have plenty to distance themselves from the coalition issue if they can convince the media to look to more interesting stories. The governing party might have landed a clean opening hit, but they are far from winning the round.

Day 1 Winner: The Conservatives