Blue Jays vs. Election Day: Who will win?

If Toronto Blue Jays keep winning, we could be looking at one whopping doubleheader: Election Day vs. American League Championship

Thestar.com
Oct. 9, 2015
By Robin Levinson King

If the Toronto Blue Jays continue to deliver on the field, then we could be looking at one whopping doubleheader: Election Day vs. the American League Championship.

Game 3 of the championship is scheduled for Oct. 19, the same day that millions of Canadians will be heading to the polls. If you’re really an optimist, you can take advantage of advance polls, which begin Friday and run through Monday at select polling stations.

Critics have long bemoaned low voter turnout in Canada, and some may be worried that when facing off against the popular Jays, candidates will lose. Politicians have historically been skittish about competing with national sports teams for viewers. In 2011, the French language federal debate was moved because the Montreal Canadiens were in the playoffs.

But Nelson Wiseman, a professor at the University of Toronto, thinks it will have minimal impact.

“Political junkies are still watching the election,” he said. “A lot of the people that watch the Jays don’t care about the elections, whether they’re held during the playoffs or not.”

“More people go to sporting events than go to political rallies,” he said.

If the Jays do have an impact, Wiseman says it will be to put people in a better mood, which may favour the incumbents in their ridings.

It’s not the first time the Jays have run up against an election - the last time the Jays were in a World Series, Canada was in the finals days of its 1993 federal election campaign.

It even became an election issue - then-Prime Minister and Conservative Leader Kim Campbell had “Go, Jays, go!” on the windshield of her campaign bus, while then-Liberal Leader (and future Prime Minister) Jean Chrétien made his staunch allegiance to the Montreal Expos known.

“I'm still dreaming of a series between the Expos and the Blue Jays,” Chrétien told reporters on the campaign trail.

But did Jays-mania distract from the election? It appears it did, or at least, politicians were worried that it might.

Election workers for both the Tories and Liberals expressed concern about scheduling party rallies and speeches at the same time as World Series games.

“It is a potential problem,” a Campbell aide told the Star. “You find yourself wondering how big an audience you're going to have. Even during the playoffs there was always the potential for embarrassment.”

An Oct. 18, 1993 Toronto Star headline read “If it isn't about the World Series, it's news to me.”

The story was basically a roundup of recent news aimed at educating Jays fans about what was going on with the election campaign and the world outside of the SkyDome.

But when it comes to voter turnout, it seems a bit of a stretch to blame low attendance at the polls with the Jays. The election was held on Oct. 25, just two days after the Jays clinched the series for the second year in a row. Held only a year after the 1992 election, about 70.9 per cent of electors showed up to the polls - about a one point lower than the year before.

That’s about expected, Wiseman says. The biggest factor in voter turnout is the time between elections, he says. When an election follows closely on the heels of another one, voter fatigue can keep some people at home.