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Lawn Signs

Author: Dan Hamilton (NDP)

14 Sep

On the weekends, when I am not overwhelmed with school work, I work as a delivery driver. Yesterday, driving around many different parts of Toronto and Cambridge, I couldn’t help but notice that in most ridings, the conservatives were the only party with lawn signs. I understand they had a leg up in predicting the election timing, and were able to start production a little early, but did the Liberals not see this election coming? I’ve barely seen any liberal signs (although maybe this is the first primer on their significant drop in the polls). Even on my personal front, I ordered my NDP sign almost a week ago and have yet to receive it.

Most surprising might have been the NDP signs that advertised the “team of Jack Layton” and not the actual riding candidate. Its an interesting strategy considering the stark shift in this election campaign’s spotlight away from party platforms towards the individual leader’s capabilities. This may be one election where Jack Layton actually seems more capable than his leadership counterparts.

Also, has anyone else had fun playing with the policy slot machine on www.notaleader.ca? It is absolutely hilarious. The conservatives have outdone themselves once again.

Filed under: Dan Hamilton (NDP), Ontario, The 905, Toronto

3 Responses for "Lawn Signs"

AJ Sharma (Liberal) September 14th, 2008 at 3:40 pm 1
This is pretty common, there are spending restrictions in terms of advertisement for elections. But what you generally see before an election is the party in power will put a large amount of money into “Office Supplies” or something to that point. Thus when they call the election they can make it look like they didn’t spend as much money during campaign period.

The entire purpose of the fixed election date was to address this issue. Of course, it’s not like Mr. Harper has to follow the laws he writes, is it?
Adam Sobolak September 14th, 2008 at 5:11 pm 2
Generic Jack Layton/team signs have been characteristic of the last couple of elections, too–at times, it seems, marking time until individual candidate’s signs are ready. (But definitely playing off the leader’s appeal.)
shaun (conservative) September 14th, 2008 at 7:43 pm 3
I have to disagree with AJ.
Incumbents in a riding have an advantage in getting their signs up, this is true. This has nothing to do with knowing when an election is going to be called. Incumbents generally run unopposed for the nomination process. This makes it easier to have election signs ready on the day the election is called. They could also have some left in storage from the previous election.

I am also shocked at the low number of election signs I have seen up for the liberals though. who didn’t know that this election was coming? I understand in ridings where they hadn’t nominated a candidate yet, but I would think that they could have “Team Dion”, or some other generic signs made up for when the election was called. At the very least they could be put up on 401 ramps etc.

With all that being said, I am absolutely shocked at how unprepared the liberals have been for this campaign. After all Dion has been threatening to have an election ever since he was elected leader of the Liberals.

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