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Non voters: This is, to my mind, the real untapped opportunity for a breakthrough in Canadian politics. In Calgary Centre and beyond, the most common affiliation among eligible voters is “nonvoter.” My campaign resonated most powerfully among Calgarians who saw real value in backing a candidate and a party unconnected to the entrenched political divisions in parliament today. In Calgary Centre, 10,201 voters out of an electorate of 94,000 chose the new member of Parliament. If any campaign had been able to fully engage the majority who didn’t vote at all, it could have won in a landslide.
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There is little research to show that non-voters break in a different proportion to voters. The benefit to individual campaigns from increased turnout comes when one campaign is able to increase its turnout, and the others not so much. In a hard by-election like this one I would bet the only candidate of the big four that didn't do a full court press was the NDP.
One has to believe that if one campaign figures out a new widget for motivating less engaged voters, others will find the solution as well.
Reaching out to the less engaged is not a solution in and of itself. Doing it when others are not works.
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