What is it like running a national election campaign? How does polling impact the decisions made on a campaign? I’m excited to explore these questions with Hamish Marshall, the national campaign manager for the Conservative Party of Canada’s 2019 election campaign.
Hamish is currently a partner at ONE Persuades. Prior to that, he ran the 2019 Conservative Party campaign, was campaign manager for Andrew Scheer’s successful bid to become Conservative Leader and previously worked in Stephen Harper’s PMO.
Hamish and I unpack the experience running the campaign and talk about the roll that polling plays in election campaigning. He’s been at the centre of Canadian politics and shares his perspective on the future of the Conservative movement in Canada and his experience running a campaign that almost defeated Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.
On this episode of inFocus with David Coletto, I'm joined by Dr. Jean-Francois Daoust, a lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Daoust is co-author, with Dr. Andre Blais, of a book titled “The Motivation to Vote” which was published in 2020 by UBC Press. Although we spend a lot of time talking about which party or candidate is up or down in the polls, or which issues voters care most about, elections are fundamentally about the act of voting. Why do people vote? Why do others stay home? And what role do perceptions, attitudes and values play in voter turnout? In the book, Blais and Daoust write, “Voting is a quintessential human decision, based on a combination of emotions and instrumental calculations, full of complexities, ambiguities, and sometimes contradictions.” Lots for us to unpack. In our conversation, we explore voting, talk about his book and go deep exploring why some people vote and others don’t. If you haven’t read the book, I strongly recommend it. ...
On this episode of inFocus with David Coletto, I’m joined by pollster and strategist Don Guy. Don has been working in the world of politics and public affairs research for over 2 decades, having served as campaign director, advisor and pollster for the BC and Ontario Liberal parties. He was the Chief of Staff to former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. Currently, he is the owner and Chief Strategy Officer at Pollara Strategic Insights, a Vice President at American polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and a founding partner at KTG Public Affairs Partners. Don is one of Canada’s most experienced campaign managers and shares insights into the role of research on political campaigns and how it has evolved over time. ...
With Canada’s first dose vaccinate rate now outpacing almost all other countries and Canadians feeling more optimistic that the return to normal will be here very soon, our attention is shifting to what we can do to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in other parts of the world. Today, on the eve of World Refugee Day, we explore what Canada can do to help those in far more vulnerable situations around the world and what Canadians think about it. On this episode of inFocus, I’m joined by Sara Schulz, the Senior Advisor for Government Engagement at World Vision Canada and Lindsay Gladding, World Vision Canada’s Director of Fragile and Humanitarian Programs. Sarah has worked with World Vision for over 12 years as a passionate advocate for the rights of children. Lindsay has more than a decade of experience in diverse humanitarian and emergency settings – has been deployed to Haiti, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Zimbabwe. She also spent 18 months with World Vision Lebanon as the Humanitarian Director establishing World Vision’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis. This week, my firm Abacus Data released some new polling commissioned by World Vision Canada that explores how Canadians are feeling about the global response to COVID-19 and what they want our government to do to make sure the pandemic ends, for everyone, everywhere. ...
