Liberal Party leadership candidates Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould and Frank Baylis, seen in a composite image, following the Liberal leadership race's French-language debate, in Montreal, on Feb. 24.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
With a week to go before the Liberal Party chooses a new leader, the four contenders are entering a crucial phase of the contest: ensuring that thousands of people who signed up to cast a ballot in the race actually do.
But with the party using a ranked ballot and a point system to tally votes, it also brings complexity to the get-out-the-vote effort.
The Liberal Party says 400,000 people registered to vote, but not all of those people will. Before they get a ballot, they must first verify their eligibility using a Canada Post app or in person at a Canada Post office before receiving a ballot, and several Liberals told The Globe and Mail they were having issues with that process.
Campaigns have had access to the list of potential voters since mid-February, and have been making rounds of calls and sending e-mails to try and identify their supporters.
Once they do that, said Michele Cadario, who directed former prime minister Paul Martin’s 2003 leadership campaign, they will be “bombarding” them to make sure they are verified and voted.
Where a potential voter lives matters. The party uses a system that assigns every riding 100 points. How many points each of the candidates receives depends on their share of the vote in that particular riding.
Hamish Marshall, who ran Andrew Scheer’s 2017 Conservative leadership campaign, said because all electoral districts are weighted equally regardless of population, it can make more sense for some campaigns to focus on ones with fewer people. He also oversaw data in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s 2022 campaign.
During that campaign, Mr. Marshall says a Toronto volunteer took it upon herself to call every Conservative in Nunavut because it is sparsely populated.
“She didn’t really have any connection to Nunavut, but she just became the person for Nunavut,” he said. “Every day, she’d just get up and call more people from Nunavut … to make sure that they got out to vote for Pierre.”
The point system also comes into play with the Liberal Party’s ranked ballot.
Voters choose their candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the points on the first round of counting, the candidate with the lowest number of points drops off and their supporters’ second-place ballots are then counted. This continues until someone receives more than 50 per cent of the points.
What that means for candidates is that they can’t ignore other people’s supporters, because candidates could pick up more support on a second or subsequent count.
Candidate Karina Gould, an MP and the former Liberal House leader, was asked this week what her message was to Liberal voters who might be choosing someone else for their number one, but are considering ranking her second.
“I’m somebody who can bring a different demographic along,” she said at a news conference.
“I’m the candidate that listens to the grassroots, that’s connected in community, and that is focused on people,” she added.
The previous Liberal leadership contest was in 2013, won by Justin Trudeau on the first ballot. He took top place in nearly every riding in the country, even with six candidates on the ticket.
The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh was also elected as leader in a contest with a ranked ballot, and won on the first round – something his team was expecting.
Jared Walker, who directed communications for that campaign, said they knew how many people they had signed up and how many of the memberships were theirs.
“We had a really good picture when we ran of what we expected our first ballot to look like,” he said. “And so with the combination of that and the ranked balloting, we were pretty sure that we would be able to secure it on the first ballot.”
Mr. Poilievre’s election as leader in 2022 ended in similar fashion, with him handily defeating three other candidates in the first round.
Mr. Scheer’s victory in 2017, however, was in an election with 14 people on the ballot and it took 13 rounds of counting.
While some past leadership races have seen overt jockeying from candidates for their rivals’ supporters – those strategies were a key play in the 2017 and 2020 Conservative races – there’s no obvious sign of such negotiations for the Liberal campaign.
“I understand sometimes people get together and say, ‘let’s do this, let’s do that,’ ” said leadership candidate Frank Baylis, a former MP, after the recent debates. “That’s not been the game that I’m playing.”
A spokesperson for former finance minister Chrystia Freeland’s campaign said that from their perspective, how the ranking should go is up to the voters.
“Chrystia firmly believes we must empower the grassroots and renew the Liberal Party – as shown by her plan to do just that,” Katherine Cuplinskas said in a statement.
Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney’s campaign said they’ve made more than 100,000 calls since the launch of their bid, and are also using a digital ad push to encourage supporters to vote. The campaign did not answer a question about how the ranked ballot is factoring into those efforts.
Mr. Carney is considered the front runner, with a lead in fundraising and endorsements.
Many of the MPs that Mr. Carney has recruited are being dispatched for get-out-the-vote efforts, calling newly registered Liberals in their ridings, work that also helps them build new pools of potential volunteers and donors for the coming election.
When Ms. Cadario ran Mr. Martin’s campaign, there was only one other candidate – Sheila Copps – and it was obvious that they were going to win, she said, but that can also be a challenge for get-out-the-vote efforts.
“If everybody has the same attitude of not voting and thinking that it’s a foregone conclusion, then you know, something could, could really slip up,” she said..
The Liberals will choose a new leader on March 9.