Does crowd size matter in an election campaign? Mark Carney had better hope not

The Bus Driver sees all

As the election kicked-off, I lined-up with a couple of thousand other folks to see Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speak at a hotel ballroom in North York. It was more chilly than I’d planned for, and the event was being streamed online, but there’s no better way to get a sense of a campaign than to add some first-hand impressions to all that you’re otherwise reading and watching from a distance.

Over the 90 minutes that we shuffled along, some were disconcertingly introspective (what’s with the polls?!?), while others chatted about the state of the nation and the red tape involved in opening a new business. It was a fusion of 20-something drywallers, hair stylists, grey-haired Moore Park denizens as well as folks who’d probably driven their pickup truck down from a home north of Hwy. 7. The line of >2,500 was 80/20 male/female, a few Moms with their young daughters, every generation was out in force, with plenty of visible minorities (Ed. note: since 2021, the “visible minority” is no longer in the minority in Toronto) as well as we WASPs. There were at least 15 Michael Kors handbags for every LV, and the parking lot didn’t hide the fact that the ride of choice was cars >10 years of age.

I was impressed with Mr. Poilievre’s ability to draw not just a large crowd, but one that would wait in line for more than 90 minutes — you’ve got to really want to hear the Conservative Leader and his highly-effective wife Anaida speak to stand around that long in the cold air. Since night #1, it’s been hard to ignore the fact that this same scene has been repeated across Canada at each and every campaign stop. Liberal Leader Mark Carney is certainly ahead in the polls, but his crowds don’t reflect a winning campaign. I know Mr. Carney well enough to know that he has interesting things to say when standing at a lectern (see representative prior post “Carney strikes a populist tone” Sept 16-10), so it’s not as though Liberal supporters, or even the curious, have reason to actively avoid his events. It’s possible that campaign tours no longer have an impact, but this would be the first time — at least since the invention of television.

This dynamic presented a great excuse to call some old friends and former colleagues (plus family) to see what they made of it all! The very same people who’ve been on campaign tours with John Diefenbaker (that source is now 90), Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Jean Charest, Stephen Harper, Mike Harris….

Thanks in particular to Freddy Watson for agreeing to be quoted. Sadly, this piece was a reminder of just how much I miss Father Sean O’Sullivan CM, Donald Matthews, Dalton Camp OC, Senator Norman Atkins, Senator HCapt(N) (Ret’d) Dr. Hugh Segal OC OOnt CD, “Gorgeous George” Stratton, John MacNaughton OC, among others.

As this Star column is off-cycle, I’m posting the entire piece. If you want to encourage more balanced journalism in our country, feel free to buy a print copy and let the Editor know why. Google is not the answer to what ails the Canadian mainstream media — that falls to all of us. You can also subscribe to the Star online via my special discount code: www.thestar.com/informed.

In an election campaign, the only thing worse than peaking early is getting trapped in your own echo chamber.

There comes a point in every election when the team at campaign headquarters wants to check the overnight polling numbers. Whether your candidate is up by seven points or down by nine, you inevitably reach the stage when you’re desperate to either confirm some encouraging numbers or unearth a positive anecdote in hopes of giving your organization a sense that there’s still a chance.

At such times, there’s only one place to turn: the bus driver.

Anyone who’s ever been on a campaign bus knows what I’m talking about. After a couple of weeks on the hustings, the most senior campaign players come to rely on the wisdom of the bus driver.

For the Tories, that used to be Freddy Watson. Now retired, he has decades of experience at both the federal and provincial levels, as well as lots of wins (Mulroney, Harris, Harper) and losses (Campbell, Charest) under his belt. But no matter the candidate, there was always a moment of clarity when Watson would pull up to a local Conservative campaign office.

Headquarters would ask him: How many volunteers were there to meet the leader’s bus? Were they smiling? How hard was it to fill the room for tonight’s rally, and just how big a room was it, exactly?

Pollsters have data, but the bus driver develops an intuitive sense of momentum. He’s the first one to see the faces of the individual candidates and their volunteers, and he can sense either panic or cautious optimism.

The bus driver’s wisdom was on full display on election night in 1988, when Watson won the “seat pool,” beating out 140 savvy members of the media corps and campaign team, including such legends as Craig Oliver and Senator Norman Atkins.

What makes the 2025 campaign weird is that neither Watson nor I can recall a time when the guy with the largest crowds wasn’t also winning. Liberal Leader Mark Carney may be leading in most polls, but when he puts on an event in Victoria or Scarborough, he’s getting between 500 and 1,000 folks.

That’s not bad, even if it’s nothing like the 3,000 Winnipeggers who attended a 2015 rally for Justin Trudeau as he was picking up serious steam during that famous rout.

Nor is it close to the 2,000 folks who turned out to get a glimpse of Trudeau’s father in 1968 on a street in Cooksville, Ont., as “Trudeaumania” was sweeping the nation. My dad put two-and-a-half-year-old me on his shoulders so we could check that one out.

Then-prime minister Joe Clark’s 1980 campaign ended with a thud, but I recall that his team took pride when 2,000 supporters showed up in Etobicoke. Brian Mulroney knew things were turning around during the 1988 campaign when 3,000 Tories joined him one night in the same neighbourhood.

All of which brings us to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Except for Pierre Trudeau, who filled Maple Leaf Gardens in a 1979 show of strength, Poilievre has consistently drawn far larger crowds than any Canadian party leader in memory.

What should we make of that? Particularly when the CBC tells us that “people don’t like Poilievre”?

Thousands of fans are showing up to hear him in places such as Edmonton, Hamilton, Kingston, London, North York, Oshawa and Surrey. Whether Poilievre is attracting 3,000 or 10,000 people at a given stop, that’s multiples of whatever Carney is drawing in traditional Liberal strongholds.

Perhaps it means nothing more than that Poilievre’s voters are “motivated,” while Carney’s polling lead indicates a broader base of support from folks who don’t have time for speeches. But that doesn’t compute with Angus Reid data suggesting that the Conservatives are also trailing the Liberals in overall voter “intensity.”

Watson says he “could usually tell by day 14 if we were going to win or lose. I don’t know what to make of these large Poilievre crowds.” Those unusually large crowds may be meaningless, but if Carney wins, it will mark the first time since the Diefenbaker era that there has been no relationship between the campaign trail and the ballot box.

If pollsters are missing a bunch of voters, as they did during the 2016 United States presidential election, isn’t this what it would look like?

MRM

(this is an Opinion Piece)