Ottawa

It’s just that easy

Globe and Mail, today. Team Trudeau aims to create supporter-recruitment machines in all 308 ridings (just as Obama for America did in all 50 states). They will employ every tool, from old-fashioned door knocking to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Many of these new supporters will be young, female and/or minorities – the same base that rallied behind Obama for America. The riding campaigns will feed the names of these new supporters to campaign central, which will combine the information in a database that will, if it succeeds, contain hundreds of thousands of entries, each a mini profile of a Justin Trudeau supporter. Assuming Mr. Trudeau wins the leadership, that new base of support will grow and deepen between the leadership vote next April and the general election in October, 2015.

Globe and Mail, May 3, 2011Michael Ignatieff’s future at the helm of the Liberal Party was unclear early Tuesday morning as he and his team assessed the damage that’s reduced the party to a 34-seat rump … His original team, however, had tried to begin the rebuilding and renewal process. In fact, former chief of staff Ian Davey had looked to the United States and Barack Obama’s 2008 success for some clues, buying list management software to create the “Liberal list.” The list identified everything about individual voters from whether they were Liberals or Conservatives, if they had ever taken a lawn sign or even if they had once said they didn’t like Stephen Harper. “It was one of the multitude of initiatives we undertook to get the party into the 21st Century,” Mr. Davey said. Liberals – including Mr. Ignatieff and his campaign co-chairman Senator David Smith – had banked on this program to help them get out the Liberal vote. But it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

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