HARD TRUTHS — MELANIE PARADIS has seen some things over the years. Paradis was deputy campaign manager on ERIN O'TOOLE's leadership bid, and then director of strategic communications in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. She was on a mat leave when the Conservative caucus dumped O'Toole. Evidently, she now has some things to say. Paradis wrote at The Line that her party must turn away from conspiracy theories and disinformation that have gained traction among its ranks. Playbook asked her if anything else was on her mind as the Tory leadership race rumbled to life. Here are three hard truths she's telling anyone who's watching from the inside or the outside. 1. The Conservatives faced a historic shortage of volunteers in the last campaign. The “base” isn’t ideological, it’s tribal. These are the people who always take a lawn sign and make a donation every election, regardless of who the leader is. The “grassroots” are the people who volunteer their time to call for that money or drop off that lawn sign. In the post-election review conducted by JAMES CUMMING , one issue that came up again and again in his interviews was the trouble ridings had getting volunteers for the 2021 general election. Maybe Covid played a role. Our volunteers skew older and maybe they didn’t want to risk exposure at that time — or conversely, maybe some decided to go help the People's Party instead. Or maybe they just weren’t motivated. Whatever the reason, they didn’t turn out to help get out the vote (GOTV, to use the jargon). So, has the grassroots changed? Is this reflective of a turnover? Have they lost interest in our party machinations? If so, how many of them? And what impact could that shift have on the direction of our party and therefore the selection of our next leader? 2. The party’s core membership can shift dramatically over time. Pollsters and pundits seem to assume that today’s membership is the same as it was in 2017 and 2020. It’s not a static membership. In both election years, we had around 270,000 members. But a lot of them don’t even vote. Like, 100,000 of them. Really. In 2020, about 174,000 members cast ballots. In 2017, fewer than 142,000 did. The core of the party’s membership may not change too dramatically, but different groups come and go, usually around a single issue, and they can have an outsized impact. Especially given that big chunk of members who don’t bother to vote. Consider this. In 2017, the Quebec dairy farmers sold a lot of memberships and were able to swing points for ANDREW SCHEER. In 2020, it was the Quebec firearms owners who did the same for O’Toole. It all depends on who feels motivated based on what the big issue of the election is. 3. Ballot math changes substantially after each round of voting. You are going to see a lot of polling, but it is almost all useless because of weighting and vote attrition. We use ranked ballots, in a points system that is weighted by riding. Whether you have 5,000 or 110 voting members, a riding is worth 100 points in each round. We have members who only vote for one candidate and when they drop off, that ballot dies and it changes the weighting of the riding it was from. In 2020, almost 12 percent of 174,404 ballots didn’t make it to the final round. In 2017, it was estimated to be more like 20 percent of 141,694 ballots. Perhaps more importantly, there are several dozen ridings that are worth less than 100 points because they don’t have 100 members. Only 32 members vote? That’s just 32 points. Now, it’s very likely that campaign teams will sell memberships and GOTV aggressively in those ridings. Consider this. In 2018, CHRISTINE ELLIOTT won the popular vote and the most ridings in the Ontario PC leadership, but because two of those were worth less than 100 points, she lost the leadership to DOUG FORD. That’s how important this calculus is, and how useless the public polling will be. — Catch Paradis, along with DENNIS MATTHEWS and LARISSA WALER, on DAVID HERLE's latest pod.
| 
