Liberals Preannouncing Second Quarter. Again.
We're not even at the end of the second quarter of 2009, and the Liberals' are already pre-announcing their results. Again.
Last Monday, party president Alf Apps told a Winnipeg audience that Liberals were expecting to raise over $5 million in contributions for the first two quarters. Today, Liberal national director Rocco Rossi again told CP that the party has in fact raised over $5 million in the first two quarters, but issued an urgent last minute email appeal this morning which "urged prospective donors to make a contribution within the next 48 hours, maintaining the second quarter results 'will have an enormous effect on how Canadians view our organization'."
The quarter ends tomorrow at midnight. The parties' quarterly financial returns are not due at Elections Canada until sometime after that, and would not normally be made available on the Elections Canada website until just before the end of July.
Welcome to the age of the political "pre-announcement". Just like publicly traded companies, Canadian political parties are becoming aware that aspects of their performance not only can be measured, but are, whether by sites like mine, the mainstream media, or their competitor parties.
And the Liberals aren't the only ones pre-announcing financial results these days.
The NDP's Brad Lavigne told the Hill Times earlier this month that his party's decision to withdraw from fundraising in the four provinces having provincial elections and leadership races this year would affect both their first and second quarter results, but that they would return to fundraising full force on June 10.
Then last week he told Sun Media that the NDP had experienced a boost to its coffers over the intervening period, and in particular had "raked in tens of thousands of dollars in recent days".
Just because I like to measure these things, and even like to beat the mainstream media once in a blue moon by staying up way too late, it does not mean I think the obsession with short-term numbers is a very healthy trend. Measureable metrics are one neutral way to measure certain aspects of the parties' performance against each other, but they don't get at every important aspect of what a party has to do to accomplish its objectives.
The perception of a constant public demand to meet short-term goals, often pursued at the expense of long-term progress, is arguably a big part of what created so many problems on Wall Street. I can't imagine such a preoccupation will be terribly healthy for party politics in Canada, whether over quarterly contribution totals, nominated candidate counts, horse-race polling numbers, or anything else, if it winds up trumping other less-measurable but equally vital objectives.
So, keep your eyes on the the prize, and don't sweat the small stuff. Because the other lesson to learn from Wall Street is that when companies were pre-announcing too often, it could start to make you wonder if there wasn't something else buried in their results they hoped you wouldn't notice. And you don't want to be raising those questions, either.
UPDATE: Kady weighs in with some thoughts from the media's perspective.
Last Monday, party president Alf Apps told a Winnipeg audience that Liberals were expecting to raise over $5 million in contributions for the first two quarters. Today, Liberal national director Rocco Rossi again told CP that the party has in fact raised over $5 million in the first two quarters, but issued an urgent last minute email appeal this morning which "urged prospective donors to make a contribution within the next 48 hours, maintaining the second quarter results 'will have an enormous effect on how Canadians view our organization'."
The quarter ends tomorrow at midnight. The parties' quarterly financial returns are not due at Elections Canada until sometime after that, and would not normally be made available on the Elections Canada website until just before the end of July.
Welcome to the age of the political "pre-announcement". Just like publicly traded companies, Canadian political parties are becoming aware that aspects of their performance not only can be measured, but are, whether by sites like mine, the mainstream media, or their competitor parties.
And the Liberals aren't the only ones pre-announcing financial results these days.
The NDP's Brad Lavigne told the Hill Times earlier this month that his party's decision to withdraw from fundraising in the four provinces having provincial elections and leadership races this year would affect both their first and second quarter results, but that they would return to fundraising full force on June 10.
Then last week he told Sun Media that the NDP had experienced a boost to its coffers over the intervening period, and in particular had "raked in tens of thousands of dollars in recent days".
Just because I like to measure these things, and even like to beat the mainstream media once in a blue moon by staying up way too late, it does not mean I think the obsession with short-term numbers is a very healthy trend. Measureable metrics are one neutral way to measure certain aspects of the parties' performance against each other, but they don't get at every important aspect of what a party has to do to accomplish its objectives.
The perception of a constant public demand to meet short-term goals, often pursued at the expense of long-term progress, is arguably a big part of what created so many problems on Wall Street. I can't imagine such a preoccupation will be terribly healthy for party politics in Canada, whether over quarterly contribution totals, nominated candidate counts, horse-race polling numbers, or anything else, if it winds up trumping other less-measurable but equally vital objectives.
So, keep your eyes on the the prize, and don't sweat the small stuff. Because the other lesson to learn from Wall Street is that when companies were pre-announcing too often, it could start to make you wonder if there wasn't something else buried in their results they hoped you wouldn't notice. And you don't want to be raising those questions, either.
UPDATE: Kady weighs in with some thoughts from the media's perspective.
Labels: Liberals, NDP, Party Finance
posted by The Pundits' Guide at
5:13 PM
4 Comments:
...the other lesson to learn from Wall Street is that when companies were pre-announcing too often, it could start to make you wonder if there wasn't something else buried in their results they hoped you wouldn't notice.
Right, these pre-announced results just happen to be coming within a few days that the Liberals year-end financial statement has to be public.
Which will have some very large number showing for debt, that might make people wonder about the claims the LPC is out of debt.
Well, you could probably be counted on to look into that whether they pre-announced or not, I'm guessing, Ken.
Thanks for reading, and for taking the time to comment.
Money is only part of the story. Overall support, active membership, and party organisation are all at least as important factors.
That said, money becomes absolutely key when a party is so deep in the red, it compromises not only its ability to fight elections, but also has a big negative impact on morale. For a local example, the Ontario NDP's 90%/10% split on all fundraising by riding associations. It may be necessary, but it goes down like a lead balloon locally.
Not only is organization and membership equally important, its highly entwined with fundraising.
The Liberals are the current case in point. They've brought in a whack of apparently 'new' cash- but the results we have seen show that a huge proportion of it being large donations. That isn't a sustainable source of revenue: by their own admission the Liberals have to develop their capacity in breadth and smaller donations. The Q1 results discussed in an earlier blogpost here show no indication of that yet.
Similarly- the LPC has significantly boosted its membership. Like the larger donation scooping of the last 6 months, is that based largely in getting 'old Liberals' back into the fold?
Wherever those memberships have come from, signing up members is just a step. The LPC plans to tap this into a restructured organization, but as yet they do not have control over that, let alone have made changes.
In parties there is often a common thread between healthy fundraising, and organizational and membership health in general.
The LPC has a lot of plates spinning in the air- while making announcements of great success that are far from done deals.
Claims tend to be many steps ahead of current reality.
Along those lines: today there is yet another in this long line of pre-announcing spin stories.
For a week we've had wonderful good news stories. And today they make explicit the final piece... the "oh, by the way"...
[The fundraising announcements are] better news than the bleak set of figures the Liberals are due to file to Elections Canada today.
Rossi said the 2008 report will show "relatively low fundraising, an election and therefore a lot of debt loaded on."
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