For the Organizers out there (en francais)

Most people who drop in to BBS realize I'm not much of a policy wonk. Not that I don't care about policy, but I simply hold the belief that all the policy in the world won't get you elected without an effective organization effort.

One person has been striving hard to raise the organizational skills of the party. Richard Ciano, National councilor and Vice-President of the party has been working tirelessly to cover all aspects of election organization. The Conservative Campaign Academy is his initiative and has been running courses all year long. Take a few minutes and check out the courses available. The Academy is running all fall/winter.

Richard's newsletter, the Conservative Organizer(PDF) has some great articles and tips for EDAs. One article in particular caught my eye as it goes against the conventional wisdom that low voter turnout is good for Conservative campaigns. Richard has charted Canadian campaigns for the last 30 years and the results speak for themselves. High voter turnout is a good thing for the Conservative party in Canada.

If you look at Ontario ridings won by Conservatives, the average turnout was 65%, compared to 61% and 60% for the Liberals and New Democrats respectively.

Richard also forwarded a graphic on US elections that didn't make it into the newsletter. The same trend is true in the US. The 1994 election shows up as an anomaly because third party candidate Ross Perot was a factor. Arguably, without his campaign George Bush Sr would most likely have won the 1994 election.

The purpose of this blog post? Get the word out! The Conservative Party has made great strides since the amalgamation of the two legacy parties, but much work remains to be done.

Our fundraising efforts of late demonstrates that we have the committed base of people to get things done. Now we need to convert that base into an army of volunteers.

Take a few minutes to visit Richard's website and bookmark it. From his contact page:

If you'd like Richard to attend an event in your riding or need assistance with your campaign, please call the Organization Counts hotline at 1-866-449-1113. Richard will be more than happy to help.

There is also a contact form there for email contact. Sign up for Richard's newsletter. It's worth it.