The Doldrum Sunday Before Election Day

The Election Day is spent getting out the vote. The day before is spent worrying.

This is the first provincial election campaign that I have not been directed involved with a campaign in some significant way or another.

Sure I have my lawn sign up, this time for my excellent incumbent NDP candidate. But that's about as slack as you can be as a responsible citizen engaged in an election.

As a member of a campaign strategy group, the Sunday before election day is hell. You've been intensely engaged for months before the writ getting, vetting, and training candidates and their crews. You spend hours arguing to determine the platform, the issues, and how best to communicate them.

You're always money conscious as you plan schedules, events, and media buys. Although in this campaign, both the NDP and UCP have both raised so much money, it isn't a problem for them.

Then there's the actual campaign itself. It's a 28 day marathon where you try to pace the leaders schedule, keep up the energy, generate local enthusiasm, deal with media and try not to burn out.

But in spite of all the effort and ojanning, it's not ever perfect, and often totally impossible to execute consistently. Unforseen events always take over, often daily. Campaigns are proof of the military aphorism, that every battle plan works until the actual moment you confront the enemy. And there are so many “enemies” in a campaign, before you even consider the opposing candidates and parties.

The last week of the campaign is a sprint after a series of daily marathons stretching over the past three weeks. The sprint is the whole campaign core team, but especially the party leaders.

And then the Sunday just before election day arrives. There is nothing more the core group can do. All the energy shifts to the local volunteer campaigns to get their vote out the next day.

You sit there with your Sunday morning coffee and try to find something reassuring in the media commentary. But there is nothing new or useful being said. Just reruns of well established campaign narratives.

And then the anxiety and self doubts creep in. Did we do enough? Did we do it well enough? Did we really get our message out? Did we assure the base, reasure our voter leaners enough to believe they are making the right decision, and did to resonate enough to recruit new voters?

This last Sunday of a campaign is actually quite scary for the political gladiators who have been in hand to hand combat throughout the campaign. There is nothing for them to do that late in the game will make a major difference in an outcome.

It takes time, too much time actually, to accept that those questions are not going to be answered. Perhaps somethings will about those questions will become clearer with election day results, but not likely.

The last Sunday Campaign Doldrums used to irritate be to distraction. But not this time. I wasn't involved as a partisan.

But I still found that I have a high level of anxiety about the outcome of this election. But this time I am worried as a citizen for my province, not as a partisan about our winning. That citizenship anxiety is a much more serious worry.