This fall Vancouverites will vote in a federal election and then a civic election, all the while watching nervously as the hurricane-force spin of the American Presidential election comes to a close. These three different polls are all very different in terms of size and issues and length ( the Canadian Federal vote being by far the shortest ) but also the style in which the contestants have been able to conduct their campaigns.

Forces have been converging on Vancouver's civic elections for months, and in particular the grass-roots organization of Vision Vancouver's nomination process was a transformational event in Vancouver civic politics, and Vision's campaign machine seems unstoppable ( in the absence of any decent polling data ). While the media coverage of the civic vote is bar far the least so far, it has been impressive considering how dull civic politics can be and how little interest Vancouverites have typically taken in the past.

Likewise, Grassroots organization is the hushed mantra of Barak Obama's campaign to our south. Current US polls have Obama being edged out by John McCain, but the smarter observers consider this mis-leading given the huge lead Obama has on state-by-state infrastructure. I find this quote from the excellent fivethirtyeaitgh.com particularly interesting:

" It was much underreported in 2004 just how potently the Bush ground campaign organized. Say what you want about his governance – and we all have – but his competitive fire was lit for the election race. Republicans turned their voters out. ...

This year, all available evidence suggests the Obama campaign is doing something unprecedented with its organizing efforts. ... The story seems to be hiding in plain sight. The effort is more reported than the Bush 2004 effort, but it is still underreported. More significantly, it is under-contextualized. Pollsters have to guess about turnout, and often they revert to more conservative estimates because their past modeling of likely voters suggests that’s correct. " fivethirtyeight.com

I think it is possible that Obama's organization and in particular his brain trust of Davids Axelrod and Plouffe are as much of a game-changer as his particular assets as a candidate, and it is clear that Obama's message and his ability to organize and raise money all go hand-in-hand. There are a number of obvious comparisons that can be made with the Vision Vancouver campaign and Gregor Robertson's ability to organize and turn out nomination votes. It remains to be seen in both elections whether the change candidate with the grass-roots machine can succeed, but already it seems that in both cases they have a great chance to do so.

In comparison, the Canadian Federal election of 2008 is an entirely different beast. There is no change-mantra candidate. There is no single agent for change on the progressive side of the political spectrum, instead there are divisions deep and wide and a set of 3 leaders ( Dion, May and Layton ) non of whom seems particularly inspiring or inspired. Probably the most depressing thing about the situation is that the Tories are polling into the majority territory because Harper seems to display better leadership qualities than his opponents.