Party platforms online

This post has been updated. Again.

With less than a week to go before election day, the Conservatives are releasing their party platform - it was to be released following leader Stephen Harper's speech to the Empire Club of Canada and the Canadian Club in Toronto - but so far, no sign of it, and now the Conservative.ca website seems to be experiencing some trouble, so watch this space. - called The True North Strong and Free - is now available here in PDF form - but caution that the site is still having trouble.

As the prime minister has alluded to recently, the platform does not represent a major departure from the "modest" announcements of the past few weeks. But there are some new items: more money for technology and innovation funds that will help hard-hit manufacturers, and a decision to drop controversial changes to the television and film tax credits that had brought accusations of censorship from filmmakers.

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The Liberals released their full election platform Sept. 22. The previously announced Green Shift is still there, along with details on the party's other major campaign announcements: increased infrastructure spending; plans to increase day care funding to the provinces; extending coverage for drugs for catostrophic illness; changes to funding for post-secondary students; and increased funding for arts and women's groups. The platform, titled Richer, Fairer, Greener, costs out the Liberal promises within a balanced budget. The full 72-page platform document is here - though demand must be high (among media?) because the Liberals' site has slowed significantly.

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The NDP released their platform Sept. 28, a Sunday, and received a good amount of Monday-morning press for the platform's previously-unannounced promise of a new child benefit for low-income families - up to $400 a month per child for children under 18. The 46-page platform document - which by the cover could be called the "Orange Book" - vows to return the corporate tax rate to 22.12% (the level before the Martin government) and recover unpaid corporate taxes in order to increase social spending while maintaining a balanced buget.

The platform touches on many of the issues that have played out in headlines leading up to the election: food safety, regulation of the banking and finance sector, consumer protection and the doctor shortage, as well as the NDP's core values: affordable housing, supports for workers and income supports. The party includes "explanatory tables" to support its math.

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The Greens released their "Looking Forward" platform online Sept. 17. The platform, which goes well beyond the party's environmental image, includes a promise to raise the GST by one cent and pass that money on to cities; a plan for investment in "green" industries; plus policy on health care and measures to address poverty. The Greens' platform launch included a separate website called www.votefortomorrow.ca that lays out the highlights of the platform, and the full 160-page platform document as a PDF. The party has also released a budget plan (both a snapshot PDF version and a longer, detailed document). The Green budget promises a balanced budget but no reduction in the federal debt over the next four years.

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NDP makes strides online

With two former candidates already done in by Internet posts and another under fire for comments posted earlier this year on Facebook, it might appear that the online campaign has been a disaster for the NDP. They've certainly been bitten by the "publish and perish" bug that thrives thanks to the low barrier to entry of the Internet, where everyone is free to say whatever they want and often do.

But from a party organizational point of view, the NDP's use of online tools and strategy has been very good, to this observer.

Leader Jack Layton early on in the campaign compared himself with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as an agent of change. Whatever one thinks of that comparison, the party has certainly taken a few pages from the Obama campaign's successful Internet strategy:

- Vistors to the party's main website (ndp.ca) are met with a fullscreen invitation to donate to the party, before clicking through to the main site. Obama set a new standard by raising millions from small contributors over the Internet during the U.S. primaries and used a similar splash page.

- Layton, like all the major parties' leaders, has a Facebook page - but unlike Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he didn't cut out comments on his site. That decision came back to haunt him briefly during the controversy over the Greens' exclusion from the TV debates, but made him look democratic and flexible when he responded to this negative reaction from his own "supporters" and dropped his opposition to Elizabeth May's participation.

- The NDP was quick to follow the Conservatives in using "micro-blogging" site Twitter to send out campaign updates - but the NDP has garnered more followers than the other party and has used the short-message service more effectively. They've incorporated a Twitter alert box on their website - and more importanly, are using Twitter to promote speeches and events carried live or archived on their multimedia site www.orangeroom.ca

- As a separate brand, orangeroom.ca it is clearly aimed at a younger, more Internet savvy audience. But beyond style, it gives supporters the tools to contribute their own blogs, videos and photos to the site - as the tagline says, "Create. Share. Be a part of it." Like the Conservatives' now discredited notaleader site, some of this is silly stuff, like a caption contest to put words in Stephen Harper's mouth - but mostly it looks like a sincere attempt to increase grassroots participation in the NDP campaign. Supporters can even sign up to be "rapid-responders" to combat attacks by rival parties - again, a page taken from the Obama campaign's handbook.

It's hard to know how all this will translate into votes on election day. Television ads still seem to reach the largest audience, and the televised leaders debate is still seen as the chance for a party to make a move or reverse a failing campaign. Various tracking polls have the NDP polling anywhere from 17 to 21 per cent of decided voters this week (it received 17% of the vote in the 2006 election).

But in the online arena, the NDP are out in front in terms of harnessing the democratizing tools of the Internet for their own advantage.

Free advice to politicians, part II

Political journalists have long been accused of the "gotcha" - blindsiding a politician with an ambush question to get a sexy story. Whether that's a fair accusation or not, it hardly seems necessary these days: the politician are getting themselves, with a little help from partisan bloggers.

Week 3 of the campaign is just underway and past Internet musings have claimed two more candidates (a second one from the NDP and one from the Tories) and forced another (a Liberal) to defend herself for her onine essays. The Conservative and NDP candidates resigned before the mainstream press even had much of a chance to pounce, so that new candidates could take their place.

Things get a bit more serious now though. With the passing of the candidate nomination filing deadline, the parties are locked in to their current slate of candidates - they can drop out but can't be replaced.

P.S. HE'S BAAAACK: The former Conservative candidate, Chris Reid, has returned to the pologosphere following his exit from the campaign. His first return post puts to rest earlier claims that he quit the race because he didn't want to commit to four years in Ottawa:

This is where political correctness has gotten in this country - a Conservative Party that is affraid to proudly be conservative, and a media that can't be bothered to analyze anything. The media is simply focused on the "gaffe" this caused the campaign, with no analysis of what I actually said. So don't worry liberals, there is no hidden agenda to the Conservative Party, because it has sold it's soul to the MSM, you can freely vote Conservative and still have your ever expanding nanny state!

Update: The parties' social networking

Time to update our site audit chart, listing the social networking offerings of the four major national parties.

The Liberals got their online act together in the second week, adding Twitter and MySpace pages and expanding their use of Flickr and YouTube. But it is the NDP that reaping the greatest rewards from these tools, adding more than 2,600 "supporters" in Facebook in the past week to the Conservatives 1,550. The Liberals and the Greens each gained about 650 supporters over the same period.

The NDP also gained about 350 Twitter "followers" to the Conservatives' 240. The Liberals are new to the Twitter game, adding 292 followers in their first week. Based on those numbers, I suspect that most (for all the parties) are insiders.

If the Greens have started using Flickr, Twitter or Friendfeed to get their message across, they aren't effectively promoting that on their website, hence all that white space under the Greens. But they are making effective use of YouTube now to share videos of Elizabeth May's campaign speeches on their party website, adding five new videos in the past day. And if you search hard enough on YouTube, you'll find their page.

Finally, the Conservatives show no signs of stopping on the electronic campaign trail, adding a Digg page to their site links this week. No friends there yet, but the campaign is still young.

Site or tool	Conservative	Liberal	NDP	Green
Facebook (# of supporters)	14,673	13,155	17,277	3,158
Flickr	Yes	Yes	Yes
Friendfeed	Yes		Yes
MySpace (# of friends)	Yes (45)	Yes (37)
RSS feeds	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Twitter (# of followers)	Yes (693)	Yes (292)	Yes (786)*
YouTube (# of videos)	Yes (16)	Yes (51)	Yes (55)	Yes (17)

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Free advice for politicians

In the newspaper business it is common practise for editors and reporters to search the archives and the Internet for an unfamiliar newsmaker's name to see what comes up. When we forget to do that (been there, done that) we are sometimes embarassed the next day by our competition.

NDP Leader Jack Layton might be feeling some of that morning-after regret today upon learning that his party's (now former) candidate in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast posted video depicting his apparent use of illicit drugs on marijuana advocate Marc Emery's site PotTV. That's a habit Google could have revealed to curious party officials in 0.14 seconds.

(Maybe the innovative folks at Google Labs should create a more focused search engine: Google Background Check?)

There's a reason "google" has become a verb and could also be a synonym for "cover your butt." If, for example, the Liberal party had Googled "green shift" they might have avoided an embarassing spat over the name of their green plan and whatever licensing fee they agreed to pay to settle the disupte. (Or maybe not, given they were aware of the conflict enough to try sticking a "the" in front.)

Okay, better example: if your humble bloggist had bothered to google the name "Campaign 2.0," he might have found his clever moniker had already been used several times before, including by the aforementioned competition. So, in the spirit of things, let me say I am embarassed by this lapse of judgment and take full responsibility. I apologize without reservation to my family, colleagues and leader and beg your forgiveness. I'm a human!

MORE FREE ADVICE: As my friend Paul Gorbould noted in a message yesterday about the Conservatives' disappearing Dionbook site, thanks to Google cacheing and the Internet museum site The Wayback Machine, you can't un-publish on the Internet. He should know - he works for the CBC's Digital Archives, which has compiled historical gems from past Canadian election campaigns - and archival footage of the current party leaders - from the CBC's unrivalled library.

There's a bluebird on your shoulder

  For those of you still blissfully unaware of the "micro-blogging" site Twitter, think of it as an Internet-age telex service for the personal details of your life - or Facebook's status update without all that other stuff. (For all you need to know about Twitter, read their FAQ. Icon at right by AODDesign)

With a Twitter account, you can send out 140-letter messages that answer the question "What you are doing?" Other Twitter users who have chosen to "follow" you will get your messages on their Twitter page, or on their mobile phone.

Predictably, what started out a couple of years ago as popular site for 14-year-old girls has become a compulsory part of any company's or political party's (or newspaper's!) online marketing campaign.

Here's a sampling of yesterday's "tweets" from Canada's three largest political parties:

pmharper At the Halton campaign rally with our Halton candidate Lisa Raitt.

jacklayton LIVE on CKTB 610am (Niagara Falls), at 5:20pm or shortly after. Listen at http://www.610cktb.com/

LiberalTour Stéphane Dion joined by all NS candidates, Bob Rae, and provincial leader, Stephen MacNeil, at lunchtime meeting. 250 Liberals to boot.

The Harper and Layton campaign are so far making the most effective use of Twitter, by including weblinks to coverage of events, campaign videos etc. Barack Obama's campaign does this in nearly every Twitter post, case in point:

BarackObama Speaking in Golden, CO. Watch the event live at http://my.barackobama.com/livestream

There is a viral aspect of Twitter in that when you choose to follow someone on Twitter, they'll likely return the favour. Which leads to rather creepy notification emails like this in your inbox:

Stephen Harper is now following you on Twitter!

For the record: Jack Layton now has 718 Twitter "followers" (up from 439 last week); Stephen Harper has 633 (452 last week) and Stephane Dion 241 (in his first week as a tweeter). Compare that to 79,980 followers for Barack Obama.

AND: If you think that this is all just the meaningless fluff of a silly era, consider this post from the Twitter blog showing the volume peaks in tweets during Sarah Palin's address to the Republican National Convention, and a follow-up post comparing the volume of tweets mentioning the U.S. political candidates by name during their acceptance speeches. These analyses don't reveal how people feel about the candidates, but they sure illustrate what (or who) is drawing attention.

Conservatives most turned on

For the record, here's a quick survey of the social network and Web 2.0 offerings on the four major national parties' websites - all linked accordingly for your convenience.

The Conservatives, with the broadest array of social networking and web tools, are clearly reaching out to electronically-linked voters, followed closely by the NDP. The Liberal party's efforts on Facebook and YouTube look almost quaint by comparison.

More observations follow after the chart:

Site or tool	Conservative	Liberal	NDP	Green
Facebook (# of supporters)	13,014	12,511	14,620	2,555
Flickr	Yes		Yes
Friendfeed	Yes
MySpace (# of friends)	Yes (24)
RSS feeds	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Twitter (# of followers)	Yes (452)		Yes (439)*
YouTube (# of videos)	Yes (16)	Yes (29)	Yes (34)

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* Bonus marks for NDP: They have a separate Twitter feed (56 followers) en francais.
Note: Numbers quoted above are as of Sept. 10, 2008 @ 9 p.m.

FACEBOOK FAVOUR: As you can see in the chart, NDP Jack Layton is the most popular Canadian politician in terms of Facebook supporters at 14,620 - that puts him just behind Ted Kennedy and just ahead of Al Franken in Facebook's list of politicians.

Stephen Harper is next, sandwiched between former Republican presidential candidates Rudy Giulianai and Fred Thompson; Liberal Leader Stephane Dion is not far behind (between Thompson and the late Lebanese politician Gebran Tueni) and Greens leader Elizabeth May checks in well back of the others (between Iowa Gov. Chet Culver and the late Chilean leader Salvador Allende).

FRIENDFEED: One other note. . . if you simply can't afford to miss a single party announcement but don't have the time to become a friend/follower/support . . . the Conservatives' Friendfeed page pulls together all of their social networking and online sharing feeds in one place.

THIS JUST IN.... An update to this post can be found here.

It's a two-way highway

Despite carefully stage-managed public appearances and news conferences in real locations like warehouses and suburban kitchens, it didn't take long for the online campaign to grab the spotlight.

The parties are scrambling to tap every social-networked, viral video advantage they can, no doubt with visions of harnessing the kind of online following that helped propel Barack Obama to victory in the Democratic primaries earlier this year. Online tools not even on the public's radar during the last election - Facebook and Twitter to name but two - look conspicuous by their absence from party websites this time around. It's one thing to hit the trail without a campaign plane or a full slate of nominated candidates - but minus a Flash-enabled website? How could you possibly be ready to govern a dominion of 33 million people?

On Day 3 of the election campaign, the online campaign became the story in three key fronts:

1. Attack! Attack! Retreat! Retreat!
Is it any surprise the first misstep of the campaign came courtesy of an over-zealous worker on a Conservative party website? No party has been as aggressive in using the online space as the Conservatives. Even while holding the reins of power (albeit in a minority government), the party regularly produced gleefully satirical Web ads lampooning Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's mannerisms and policies, in a style reminicent of Frank magazine. Remember such hits (and misses) as the rapping duo of Dion and Ignatieff, or that funny little grease spot?

Those were just the warm-up to notaleader.ca, an impressively produced, amusing and - as it turned out - puffin-poop-laced Conservative site that ultimately forced the campaigning Prime Minister to interrupt his first policy announcement press conference to apologize to his rival. The puffin droppings (pictured above) were removed, but the site itself remains up and at 'em.

So, will "puffin-gate" spell the end to these online attack ads? Not likely, when they are so cheap and easy to produce - and when you can simply pull them down and blame one of the Web geeks when they backfire.

2. Image makeover
Separate, branded websites devoted to a party leader, distinct from the party, aren't new - the leaders in Ontario's election last fall were featured in chatty, informal videos on sites that played up their first names. But the launch of the Liberals' This Is Dion site made news today for offering hitherto unknown insights on the Opposition Leader's love of fishing and outdoor activities. This look at the private Dion is presented through videos and photo galleries in an online environment designed to resemble a lovingly appointed desktop in a rustic cottage. The homey feel is the antithesis of the Conservative attack site - but which one will appeal more to the online reader is hard to tell.

3. The Great Debate
The other media controversy of the day was left over from the day before - the exclusion of Green Party Leader Elizabeth May from the televised leaders' debates. Here is where the media shift brought about by the Internet may be most clear - in excluding May from that ultra-Establishment forum, the parties and networks unleashed an online debate not only among commentators on news websites but on the party's own social network sites that are supposed to make them seem so in touch. NDP Leader Jack Layton's Facebook page, unlike the one maintained for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has a "Wall" where the public can post messages - and by midday Tuesday the exercise in online democracy was in full swing, with dozens of messages critical of the NDP's decision to keep May out. Facebook sites for the Liberal and Conservative party - nominally "unofficial" but endorsed by key MPs from their respective parties - were similarly deluged with comments, both for and against the decision.

Is it a hopeful sign that arguably the most effective demonstration of the Internet's role in the campaign at this early stage was the one that allowed voters to talk back to the politicians?