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David Mclaughlin 35 Brian and Esther Pallister arrive triumphant at PC headquarters in Winnipeg on election night. Pallister’s slogan, “Better Plan. Better Manitoba” helped close the deal for his landslide victory. David Lipnowski Photography Inside the PC Manitoba Sweep: How Pallister Did It David McLaughlin Contributing Writer David McLaughlin served as cam- anitoba Progressive Conser- vatives came out of the 2011 paign manager for the Progressive Conservatives in the M election frustrated, demoral- Manitoba election, and brings a close insider’s insight ized, and leaderless. It was their fourth into Brian Pallister’s sweep of the province on April 19. straight election loss. The NDP had just won their largest victory ever: 37 seats to Pallister and the PCs won 40 seats out of 57 in the Leg- 19 Conservatives, with one Liberal. islature, and the highest popular vote—53 per cent—in Job one for the PCs was finding a new Manitoba’s history. It helped that that after three terms leader. Brian Pallister, a former MLA, of Greg Selinger and the NDP, Manitoba voters were MP and successful businessman, won by acclamation in 2012. His stepping up ready for something new, and the PCs stayed relent- when no one else did proved central to lessly on the message of trust and taxes. the victory plan that followed. Pallister took two leadership decisions in his first year that sowed the seeds of vic- tory. First, he refused to take any public money for the party from the NDP “vote tax” to finance PC Party operations. This July/August 2016 36 meant the party had to up its game on fundraising to make up the dif- Moving voters away from the NDP was one thing; ference and arm itself to compete moving them to support the PCs was quite another. against the publicly-funded NDP and Here, the decision was taken to outflank both the NDP and its extensive union network. It did. Liberals on policy and platform. Second, Pallister kept the legislature sitting during the summer of 2013 to challenge the NDP’s PST hike from ernment” for the NDP and “Better how to not out-promise the NDP and seven to eight per cent. This bro- Plan. Better Manitoba” for the PCs. Liberals when the province’s financial ken promise by NDP Premier Greg situation was perilous, but the coun- Selinger, explicitly ruled out by him The first told voters that not only had try was embracing Justin Trudeau’s in the 2011 election, was a turning Selinger broken his PST promise but deficits. Pallister disciplined his team point in NDP fortunes. Their polling that the government he led was divid- throughout by refusing to promise slide began then. Less appreciated is ed and dysfunctional. “Broken Trust. more than he felt the province could the extent to which this was a turn- Broken Government” fit this frame to ing point for the PC caucus. It began afford. Shiny, new platform baubles a ‘T’. Completing the picture was the were not on offer to the electorate. acting like a team and thinking like tagline “Selinger’s NDP”. The Conser- winners, attributes in short supply to vatives tied his unpopularity to his ajority provincial govern- that point. party, making the election a referen- ments are won and lost in dum on his party and leadership. Once the election was called, the M Winnipeg and with gen- PC campaign undertook aggressive Moving voters away from the NDP erally small swings in popular votes. air war and ground-game strategies. was one thing; moving them to sup- This meant the PC ground game had They would out-message opponents port the PCs was quite another. Here, to be much more focused and effec- with early and relentless ad buys and the decision was taken to outflank tive than in previous campaigns. out-hustle them with an equally early both the NDP and Liberals on policy The Manitoba legislature has 57 seats. and relentless target-seat campaign. and platform. The concept of “better” took root. Better was change but not A 2.5-point difference in popular vote The Conservative electoral calculus radical change. Better was a relative in 2011 gave the NDP 18 more seats was four-fold: first, retain every tra- comparator, not just to the broken than its opponents. But in 2016, the ditional PC voter possible; second, NDP government and its high taxing NDP was defending more seats than attract soft NDP, Liberal, and inde- and spending, but also to the relative- ever with fewer resources while the pendent voters who could not vote ly unknown Liberals and their new PCs had the prospect of breaking NDP; third, hive-off change voters leader, Rana Bokhari. through in more seats than ever with who might be attracted to the Liber- more resources. als; and fourth, remind “Gary Doer New Democrats” of their current dis- To force this choice upon the NDP, taste for Selinger and perhaps they’ll Majority provincial the Conservatives did three things stay home. governments are early: we ran ads pre-writ to keep PC won and lost in Winnipeg support up and the NDP’s down; we There were a lot of moving pieces nominated candidates early; and we here. But there was little choice. and with generally small got local campaign teams working The Manitoba electorate was fluid swings in popular votes. This to identify PC voters for the party in 2015-16. The federal Liberals had meant the PC ground game database and the Get Out The Vote made major gains the previous Octo- (GOTV) effort. ber, sweeping Winnipeg and winning had to be much more seven out of 14 federal seats. Provin- focused and effective than in Five pre-writ TV ads were produced; cial NDP support was down and Lib- previous campaigns. three negative and one positive. The eral support was up. negative ads launched the “Broken Trust. Broken Government” theme. or the air war, two factors were They tied Selinger’s unpopularity most influential: the high nega- Pallister would offer a “better plan for to the NDP brand with the words F tives associated with Selinger a better Manitoba”, combining spe- “Selinger’s NDP”. More importantly, and, it being Manitoba, the desire for cific commitments with a hopeful, they were effective because they used “safe change”. The PC strategy aimed optimistic vision. “Better” showed up the NDP’s own words from news clips. right at these, finding its manifesta- everywhere. This was not the PCs saying negative tion in the reinforcing campaign slo- things; it was the NDP itself, which gans of “Broken Trust. Broken Gov- A key challenge in the PC plan was gave the message real resonance. Policy 37 The two positive ads featured Pallister 2016 Manitoba Campaign by the Numbers speaking in a relaxed, friendly fash- ion about himself and his priorities. He told Manitobans he had been a SEATS VOTES teacher, as had his mother, confront- ing the NDP attacks that he would radically slash government services. PCs 40 (+21) 53.01% (+9.3%) These ads were the template for the actual campaign itself. The PCs went on to feature Pallister in four more NDP 14 (-21) 25.73% (-20.43%) positive ads including a risky one that explicitly repeated the NDP charge that he was “running with scissors”. Pallister said: “Here’s what Liberals 3 (+2) 14.46% (+6.94%) I think we should take scissors to: old stories that aren’t true and old ideas that hold us back.” Knowing seats in Winnipeg would be them by making no consequential avidly contested, the Conservatives mistakes, and winning the main lead- Pallister won this nominated candidates as early as ers’ debate by a margin of 44 per cent possible in the others and deployed to 24 per cent in one poll. election by staking additional people to the North-West out the centre-right of the Angle. Every seat picked up there was Pallister’s leadership numbers helped political spectrum, running one less required in Winnipeg. In the seal the deal. Adding his name in bal- end, the PCs won every targeted seat. lot choices always increased Conser- as a progressive and a vative numbers. He more than dou- conservative in his platform, bled Selinger’s favourabilities. The PC he campaign’s ground game campaign ran him hard in its TV ads and effectively branding his focused on winning the ex- and literature. Despite relentless per- opponents as both failed tensive advance polls. The T sonal attacks for over two years, Brian and not ready. PCs got between one-quarter and Pallister was a top vote asset. one-third of their vote out in target- ed areas, giving them a crucial edge It may have seemed like a sure thing on E-Day. to the outside. But after 20 years since In all, the PCs ran 11 different ads the PCs last won an election, few To- pre-writ and during the campaign, ries in Manitoba wished to tempt defying conventional wisdom of Pallister’s leadership fate. This campaign left nothing to concentrating ad messages in just a numbers helped seal chance. few bites. Did the ads work? A post- the deal. Adding his name election survey conducted by the PCs Contributing Writer David McLaughlin found that 80 per cent of those who in ballot choices always was campaign director for the successful viewed ads had a favourable impres- increased Conservative PC election in Manitoba. He was sion of them. numbers. He more than previously chair of the National Round doubled Selinger’s Table on the Environment and the The PC social media engagement was Economy, chief of staff to Finance ramped up from virtually nothing.
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