Forget Trudeau — It’s the economy, Mr. Harper

Despite the fact that there is no election imminent, speculation about the viability of Stephen Harper’s leadership of the Conservative party is intensifying. As we near the midterm we will consider what light trends in public opinion might shine on this question.

In this piece we’ll set aside discussing the fortunes of Mr. Harper’s two main political competitors, the NDP and the (soon to be) Justin Trudeau-led Liberal party. Obviously, their prospects will affect Mr. Harper’s prospects — and we’ll get into their prospects in later articles — but we argue that Mr. Harper’s more important challenges do not come from his political opponents. Nor do they come from the issues of the day, the apparent profligacy of some of his Senate choices, or even the yet-to-be-determined impacts of allegations of improprieties in the 2011 election.

Some of those factors are undoubtedly reflected in Mr. Harper’s inauspicious approval numbers:

For some time, the country has been divided about Mr Harper. Conservative supporters love Mr. Harper — everyone else, not so much. He has not only endured but flourished politically despite the fact that those who disapprove of him have outnumbered his supporters 2-to-1 for some time. It is noteworthy, however, that 28 per cent is his lowest-ever approval rating.

This lack of love for the prime minister is not unusual. The nadir of 28 points and the trendline which sees it steadily falling from around 40 points in 2010 is a challenge for him, but not a fatal one. His approval is running around the same level as his party and these figures need to be moved upward to ensure success. Many students of federal politics, however, have failed to realise that majority disapproval is not a problem in Harper’s election model. Positive approval — from supporters who are very loyal and committed to their leader — is much more crucial. It is now nosing down into critical areas, but he has shown considerable resilience in the face of such challenges in the past.

The more important threat to Mr. Harper is the state of public outlook on the economy — and its impact on how confident Canadians are that the country and the government are moving in the right direction. This is the challenge which — unaddressed — is most likely to be fatal to Mr. Harper’s future prospects.

Mr. Harper has enjoyed an advantage over his competitors on managing the economy. In fact, his constituency is a blend of those who are attracted to the values with which he is associated and those who feel that their economic self-interests are best served with him as prime minister.

Numerous indicators show that concerns about the economy are the dominant concerns of Canadians and that long-term anxieties about our economic future are mounting. The notion that we were the stalwart economic performer in the G8 has been displaced as our growth and growth forecasts have cooled substantially. There is a broad sense that the middle class (Mr. Harper’s prime political constituency) is in deep trouble. While they may be comforted by the thought that at least we aren’t Greece or Spain, the long grind of growing fears of economic stagnation — or worse, erosion — weigh heavily on an incumbent after a certain amount of time.

Only 14 per cent of Canadians think the next generation will be better off — and even when their focus is on the nearer-term five year horizon, the pattern is one of deepening despair.

Consider the chart below:

While optimism outstripped pessimism by a healthy twenty points when Mr. Harper took office, there has been a steady pattern of decline since — such that only about one in three now feel they will be better off in five years and the pessimists now are only a few points less frequent than optimists. Granted, Mr. Harper’s base continues to be more firmly in the optimist’s camp — but as that segment shrinks, so does his support. And for someone who has staked his mandate on Canada’s economic performance, this slow downward grind is far more damaging than any of the issues-du-jour which dominate media coverage.

There is another new aspect to the public outlook on the economy which needs attention here. Concerns about inequality — particularly the gap between the very rich and everyone else — have become a pinnacle concern. This is also linked to a sense that getting ourselves out of this long-term pattern of stagnation and decline may require rethinking the incentive systems that underpin liberal capitalism.

It is ironic that just as Mr. Harper offers encomiums on the passing of Margaret Thatcher, there appears to be a growing consensus that Thatcherism, Reaganomics, trickle-down economics and the varieties of monetarism which have been vigorously implemented since she first took office didn’t work. The bumper sticker simplicity of lower taxes/less government equals prosperity for all has been laid bare as a cruel hoax. There is a sense that forward movement will require blending fairness and growth in ways that are very different from the ‘night watchman’ state that seemed to underpin both Thatcher and Harper’s views of the role of government.

This sense that maybe the plan for extricating ourselves from this not-so-gentle slide into stagnation and a worse economic future is also reflected in the worst-ever scores we have seen on the direction of the country and the federal government. We have moved from an advantage of over two-to-one in favour of stating Canada is moving in the right direction to our first-ever below-forty score on that question — and now virtually half of those polled say the country is headed in the wrong direction:

The numbers are even grimmer for Mr. Harper on the question of the federal government’s direction. At the close of the nineties, Ottawa had a two-to-one advantage on right versus wrong direction. Today, this ratio is 34-to-55, which is almost a complete inversion.

Mr. Harper is almost certainly not responsible for the economic stagnation of Canada and the West. He also was not responsible for the relative fiscal health and comparatively positive outlook of the Canadian economy coming out of 2008 meltdown. As it becomes clearer that the post-2008 world is not displaying the normal cyclical swing back to economic growth — and that we now are in what Tyler Cowan has called the age of stagnation — Mr. Harper’s assumed mantle as steward of Canada’s economic health may become increasingly uncomfortable.

So, does all of this mean that Stephen Harper should consider a walk in the mid-April snow — stepping aside? The evidence, while daunting, does not lead clearly to that conclusion. Although the Liberals now have a (statistically insignificant) lead, and notwithstanding the profound challenge of a stagnant economy, Mr. Harper still enjoys some considerable strengths.

First, the Conservatives hold a strong lead among the most likely voters. They have the most committed voters and the strongest get-out-the-vote ground game. The Liberals and NDP are still fairly equally matched and the resurgent Green Party also favours the unified Conservatives. Mr. Harper has shown resilience before and he still enjoys these hidden advantages. Also, the public has yet to hear a plausible plan from either the Liberals or the NDP as to how to reverse the sense of economic doom.

Yet if this pattern of growing economic pessimism is not reversed, Harper may find himself hard-pressed to secure a fourth mandate nearly ten years after he first took office.

Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Frank Graves