Rebuilding the Big Red Machine

Rebuilding the Big Red Machine

via CalgaryGrit by calgarygrit on 10/24/08

The Liberal Party has a problem. And the first step (or twelfth?) in solving any problem is to admit you have a problem. And the biggest problem right now is that too many Liberals won't admit there's a problem. So here are a few inconvenient truths:

-The Conservatives raised 12 million dollars more than the Liberals last year. Sure, it may not always be well spent, but it pretty much guarantees that, come May, whoever emerges from the Liberal leadership bloodbath is going to face a relentless barrage of negative ads.

-The Conservatives have well over four times as many donors as the Liberal Party. Think about that for a second. More than anything, this shows how the Liberal Party has been unable to connect with Canadians.

-And the lowly NDP? Oh yeah, they have more donors than the Liberals too.

-If you give the Liberals every riding they finished second, within 10% of winning, that gives them a whooping 109 seats. Even if you give them every riding they finished second, within 20% of winning, that still only leaves you with 137 ridings where they are mildly competitive.

-Want a different definition of competitive? Let's say 25% of the vote. Well, then the Tories lead the Liberals 218 to 144. If you consider anything less than 15% a "dead riding", then there are 80 dead Liberal ridings and 27 dead Tory ridings.

-Over a third of all Liberal-held seats are in Toronto. They hold 7 seats in Western Canada and did not crack 20% of the vote in any of the four Western Provinces. Of those 137 mildly competitive ridings I mentioned, 17 are in Western Canada, leaving them as a non-factor in 77 seats west of Ontario. That's a lot of seats to write off, especially when you consider it isn't going much better in rural Quebec, or rural Ontario.

-The Liberals are losing ground with one of their traditional voter blocks – new Canadians.

So what's the solution? Well, these guys have some good ideas – I've stolen the best ones they put forward for this post and I encourage everyone to steal any of my own I toss up. I also need to offer a giant hat tip to tGPOitHotW, as he was smart enough to suggest a lot of these things long before

So, in my humble opinion, here's what the party needs to fix, and a few ways we can go about fixing it:


Growing the Membership
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Rebuilding the Ridings
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Engaging the Membership
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Finding the Coalition
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Raising the Dough
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