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Liberal Party leadership format a “dumb” idea?

Leadership conventions — whether they're in Canada or the United States — usually come with a bump in the polls.

Unfortunately, for the Liberals, their leadership format might not be conducive to that.

The Liberals have split their leadership contest into two different events in two different cities. On Saturday April 6th, the party is holding a National Showcase where each of the 6 remaining candidates will get 25 minutes to make their final pitches to the 127,000 registered Liberal supporters and members. Then, after a week of voting, the party will announce the winner on Sunday April 14th in our nation's capital.

The split is likely one of the reasons the party is having trouble selling tickets to Saturday's event. According to the Huffington Post, ticket sales for Saturday's showcase have been so poor, the party is literally giving general admission tickets away.

A spokesperson for the Liberal Party told Yahoo! Canada News that there will be 1,500 people at the event.

We expect 1500 [people]," Sarah Bain told Yahoo! Canada News.

"And note there are 5 price points. General admission is only 1 of the 5 categories."

Regardless, it's clear that the party's format isn't winning much support.

"Breaking this thing up over two different weekends, in two different cities, was always a dumb, dumb idea," Liberal insider and Sun News columnist Warren Kinsella wrote on his website.

The lack of ticket sales shouldn't come as a surprise to organizers.

Would someone from, let's say Alberta, really fly to Ontario to watch 6 candidate speeches and then wait around for them to announce the winner a week later in Ottawa?

Moreover, are Liberal supporters going to be glued to their television sets or computers for two weekends in a row?

Can the two week event hold the attention of a fickle media class?

While the jury is still out on the 'supporter class' experiment — the system whereby non-members who pledge support for the party can vote — the idea of having a one week break between events is a mistake.

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According to a recent column in the New York Times, traditional conventions in the United States typically create a bounce for the candidate who gets nominated.

"Across presidential elections from 1964 to 2008, this has typically meant a 5-6 point increase, according to both political science research and the tabulations of pollsters like Gallup," the article notes.

The same holds true for Canada — in some cases — according to to 1985 speech by David McFadden, former president of PCs in Ontario:

The third and final reason for the essential importance of the leadership convention is its impact on public opinion. Leadership conventions historically appear to have had either a neutral or a positive impact upon public opinion. I have found no evidence that public support dropped for a party as a consequence of the holding of a convention. Gallup and other polls showed that the conventions which elected Bob Stanfield and Joe Clark as leaders of the Progressive Conservative Party and Pierre Trudeau and John Turner as leaders of the Liberal Party all lead to an immediate and significant jump in popular support for their respective parties.

On the other hand, the convention which elected Brian Mulroney to the leadership of the party had no significant impact on the party's popular support based on the polls taken shortly after the convention.

That was in 1985 — without all the 24 hour media coverage we have now.

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McFadden added that a convention is a "launching pad" leadership convention.

By not having a traditional convention, the Liberals — a third party — may be missing out on their launching pad.

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