The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day 40: E Day Minus One -- Finish Line in Sight

Episode Date: October 20, 2019

Day 40 of Canada's 2019 Federal Election. | Thank for subscribing and for submitting a rating and review! * TWITTER @petermansbridge | INSTAGRAM @thepetermansbridge ** https://www.thepetermansbridge.com/ *** Producer: Manscorp Media Services

And hello there, it's Peter Mansbridge with The Bridge on this day 40 of the election campaign, or as we might call it on this night, E-Day minus one. Of course, tomorrow is voting day. Tomorrow you get to go out and vote, if you didn't in one of the advance polls. This is the decision. This is your decision, and you make it tomorrow. So, this is a special edition of The Bridge, the night before. And what are we going to talk about? Well, you probably want to know, what do I think is going to happen? Well, I don't make predictions. And nor really should anybody else.

Because we don't know how you're going to vote. You may change your mind. However, we tend to look at polls, don't we? And those polls tend to give us an indication of what might happen by reflecting what they found at the time they did the actual poll. Well, the latest polls still show an extremely close race. There's a little difference in between the various polling companies, but they all seem to show a close race. There's a little difference in between the various polling companies, but they all seem to

show a close race. They all seem to indicate we're heading to a minority government of some sort. Tomorrow we'll find out. Tomorrow night we'll find out. Or maybe Tuesday morning before we find out. If it's really that close and the counting keeps going, there are indications of, you know, recounts in different places. All those things could make a difference in a really close race. Now, I'm going to say something about polls because, I mean, we've talked many times about them throughout the bridge over the past 40 days. But I got an interesting note the other day

from Kathy Wills, who wrote to the bridge. She's clearly not a fan of polls. So she says, you mentioned the actual percentages last election, when they actually, the final count. What were the polls predicting last time compared to the actual votes after all the voting had been done?

Well, that's a good question. It does give you an indication to kind of look at polls with a more critical eye. Well, last election actually was a pretty good one for the pollsters. They were pretty accurate. I've got the results in front of me of six different polling companies, you know, the best known ones, I guess. And they were very close to bang on. In some cases, they were actually exactly bang on to the percentage point

of particular parties. None of them got 100% right, but none of them were 100% wrong either. They were all very close. They were all predicting a liberal win with percentages in the upper 30s. They ended up at 39.5. They all had the conservatives down in the lower 30s. They ended up at 31.9. And so on. The NDP were 19.7 last time around, and all the pollsters were within a margin of error of that number as well.

So it's hard to kind of rag on the pollsters for last time around. They did pretty well. We'll find out whether that record continues. It hasn't always been the case. Sometimes polls have been way out. How will they do tomorrow? Well, we're going to find out. So what's happening now in the campaign?

You've probably had a chance to watch reports, read about what the different leaders said in different places as they rapidly do their final campaigning and the writings that they think can make a difference for them. Well, there's also something going on in the background for them with their closest advisors. You can be sure that each one of the leaders has either been told by tonight or will be told first thing in the morning where they think based on their internal surveys, based on their past experiences, based on what their, you know, people in the field are telling them. They will all be told by their most experienced people what they figure the outcome is going to be.

So it's sort of win or lose time for the leaders. And sometimes you can kind of see it in their body language when they've been told. Sometimes it's the night before, sometimes it's a couple of days before when it's clear the direction in which the campaign's going. This one's close, so I don't imagine that anything's being said a week ago, but it could be this weekend they've been told. It'll certainly be by tomorrow morning. The next thing that has to happen is somebody has

to prep a draft of what the leader can say tomorrow night after all the votes are counted and decisions being made and declared. So that's where you end up with the two speeches. The I won speech and the I lost speech. And those are tough to write. Whoever is responsible for writing them, and the leader, of course, looks at them and makes adjustments,

but they have to be ready. And the leader himself or herself has to make another decision, and that decision is, if I lose, do I resign on the night the votes are counted? We've seen that happen in the past. Sometimes it takes a couple of days. Sometimes it only takes a couple hours to make that decision. But you can be sure all the leaders will, in their own minds, if they are not discussing it with their advisors, are at least thinking that. Thinking it through. What do I do? What signal

do I send? If I lose, how much control do I think I have on my caucus? On my supporters? Will they support me for another go-round? Or could the knives be out right away? So this is a difficult next 24, 48 hours for the leaders. They have to make decisions, both personal and in terms of their party. And so all that will be going on. And those who I've talked to who have been in the position of talking to leaders on election days, it's not easy.

It can be hard. It can be emotional. And there are some times it can just be a relief. And I don't just mean for those who win. It can sometimes be a relief for those who lose. I'm out of here. I can remember talking to Michael Ignatieff last year in Budapest, Hungary.

I was doing an interview with him because he's the president of the university in Budapest which is under a lot of pressure from the Hungarian government. But, you know, I've obviously interviewed him many times over the years, both before he got into politics, when he was in politics, when he was the opposition leader, when he was the liberal leader, and then again last year. And he was like a different guy last year

compared with what he'd been like when he was in politics. And he was so relieved to be out of politics. The difficulties of having to say certain things to follow the script when they weren't necessarily things he 100% believed in. And I think all politicians face that in to some degree. So relief is possible too. Excitement? Nothing like a victory. But difficulty too when you know you're gonna lose and you know you're going to lose,

and you know a lot of people are dependent upon you, people who have jobs as a result of you, within the party structure, who may be looking at the end of their jobs, too. So those are the kind of things that are the dilemma for leaders on election night. And then there are those who you'll be watching tomorrow night. Most people will get their results by watching television.

But of course, there'll be many listening on radio and many following on their computer screens. But for television, I can give you a sense of what goes on in terms of the prep. These last few days before the election broadcast, which all the networks will have tomorrow night, are intense. In television, in television news, election night is the biggest night of the cycle. It's bigger than anything else that journalists get to do on television.

Election night is the night the country defines itself, defines its way forward, defines the policies in which that it believes, defines the leadership in which it wants. So it's a big night for television to tell that story. And careers are, you know, are made, sometimes, you know, I won't say broken, but set back on election nights in terms of the performance of those involved. I was lucky enough to work with a great team for many years covering elections. I'll be involved a little bit as a guest occasional analyst on the CBC's programming on Monday night.

Rosie Barton will be at the helm, and a great team of journalists will be supporting her, both in front of the cameras and behind the cameras. So how do they get ready? You don't just sort of walk into the studio on election night and say, okay, let's go. What happens? Where do we see the results?

You actually rehearse election night. And this is what I mean by rehearsing. First of all, it's usually a big production scheme, so you've got to rehearse the cameras, the positions, the shots, how the whole operation is going to work from the control room to the floor of the studio. That's a big deal. But the editorial direction and flow of the program, you need actual results to rehearse.

So what do you do? Well, I can tell you what we do. I'm assuming others do similar things, but this is what we do, or I use the we kind of in the past sense, but I know that they still do the same thing now. You start usually on the Thursday or the Friday before an election, and you start running an election night program just as if it was the real thing. Condensed time frame, because election nights can run six, eight hours, but you try and cram it into like a two or at the most three-hour time period where the results come in,

starting from Newfoundland. You know, and some wise person on the editorial side has concocted a potential result that will challenge journalists to report on it, analyze it, and to watch it develop. And so the results will come in, first of all, from Atlantic Canada, just as they do on election night, 32 seats from Atlantic Canada,

and then the big push of seats that comes in a couple of hours after that from Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and some of the north. So you get a couple of hundred seats thrown at you all of a sudden. And then B.C., standing alone on the west coast, comes in on its own. 42 seats in BC. It could be the determining factor tomorrow night.

And you actually run through the election program and they might throw, you know, I'm just kind of making this up on the fly for you, but they might throw, one day they may throw a conservative majority at you. The next day, a liberal they may throw a conservative majority at you, the next day a liberal minority, then a conservative minority, then something where the NDP is not only holding the balance of power, but in a key position in terms of what could happen in the days that follow.

So different things like that will happen over the various rehearsals, and they usually take place on the Thursday, the Friday, they take Saturday off for a break, and then Sunday. And then maybe even a real quickie on Monday afternoon, just to get the blood flowing. So it's an intense period of time for those on air and those behind the scenes, the producers and the editorial people who are part of the process of the unfolding of an incredible story.

No matter which way it breaks, it's always an amazing story. This is the people talking, and this is the opportunity for the journalists to try to not only report on what the people have done, but try to interpret what it all means. So that's a sense of what happens in the television background, and I assume the same thing happens in radio. A lot going on. All with the hopes and desire of giving you not only an informative evening, but at times an entertaining one as well. As I used to say to my colleagues before an election night, listen, this is serious business and the people are depending on us to do a good job and

a responsible job. But we're also going to do a good job and a responsible job. But we're also going to be on the air for a long time. You are allowed to have fun. And there will be moments where you can have fun. You can be light and airy as well as serious. And that's the way I'm sure it will continue through tomorrow night on whatever network you choose to watch. All right. For eDay-1, I think I have one or two letters from the mailbag

that I should get. Let me just... Is there one other one that I wanted to pick up on? I told you the one about polls. Oh, Kelly Middlestad from Truro, Nova Scotia, had actually written to me and given me the idea, really, of telling you the kind of behind-the-scenes stuff on television because Kelly wanted to have a sense of how you prep for this

and how tense and intense the preparations are. And as I just explained, they are, but it's also knowing that you're a part of history, of telling history. And it's a great opportunity. And everybody who joins this business wants to be involved in some fashion on an election night broadcast because there's nothing better, there's nothing more important, and it's exciting. So there you go.

But I have one or two other letters I want to do, so of course we'll be back with the mailbag right after this. All right. Jordan Kayak. And I hope I've got that right, Jordan. Jordan wrote from Kelowit in Nunavut. And his question, well, like a number of other people, want to keep the podcast going. I'll update you on that in a minute. But at the end of it, he said, you know, before or when you started the podcast, he said there was going to be

kind of a contest, not like a kind of contest, on trying to determine what the cover art was for the bridge. You've seen the symbol on Twitter or wherever you get your podcast, wherever you get the bridge. And I can tell you, nobody nailed it dead on. People were close. Jordan, you were close. You said that cover art is you covering the 1974 election.

Close. But it was the 79 election, not the 74 election. And that is me in the middle of a scrum. I think I'm holding a microphone there, trying to, we were scrumming. I think it was Joe Clark. You watch how these campaigns are run.

The reporters tend to change places at least once during the campaign. So it might have been the week I was covering Pierre Trudeau, but I'm pretty sure it was the week I was covering, or the time that I was covering Joe Clark. So that's the answer, Jordan, for you on the cover art. Hope things are well up in Kelowit. So that's the answer, Jordan, for you on the cover art. Hope things are well up in Iqaluit. The other letters or emails, as opposed to reading any,

I'll just quickly update you. There's a lot on the idea of continuing the podcast and suggestions of what I should do if I'm going to continue it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to continue it. I haven't determined yet whether I'll just do it on my own or look for a sponsor to cover some of the costs of doing this. But I have determined that if I do it, it's going to remain as kind of laid back as it is now.

I'm not going to go super high-tech professional with lots of bells and whistles because I just like this style of a laid back podcast. In terms of topics, most of you are kind of like the idea of just doing whatever happens to be on my mind on a weekly basis or more often if the news warns it. Some of you want a more structured, serious podcast that deals with just major issues and deals with them in some detail with guests, etc. I think occasionally I will do that.

It will also, once again, depend on the agenda. So that's the direction in which we're going. First of all, we'll see what the fallout is from your decision tomorrow and whether or not I do something on Tuesday just to sort of tie a bow on the bridge's election coverage. I'll probably do something. And then we'll take it from there after I make some kind of final decisions. Whatever I choose to do, I'll make sure that I let you know.

It's been really great talking to you on a regular basis throughout this campaign. When I first started it and made the commitment that it was going to be nightly, kind of Monday to Friday throughout the campaign, people said, you're crazy. You're not going to want to do that. But you know what?

Time's flown by, and I've really enjoyed it. And it hasn't been a hardship at all to doing it every night. So there we go. It's voting day tomorrow. If you haven't voted yet, please think about it some more tonight and head out there and vote. It is a basic pillar of democracy, this opportunity to vote. As I've said to you before, some of us have covered elections in other places in the world, especially in places where they were

getting the first opportunity to vote. And what do you witness? You witness people lined up at the polling booth, some of them literally crying because they are so excited to have that opportunity to vote, have that opportunity to make a decision in a democratic fashion on the future of their country. They just can't wait to get in there. Well, why don't we have a part of that spirit tomorrow as well?

Whatever your decision is, you get to make it. Right? You get the government you deserve based on the voting that takes place tomorrow. And you can't complain if at the end of the day you didn't exercise that right. So go for it. All right. This is Peter Mansbridge

with The Bridge. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you.