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A good campaign slogan is like a good fortune cookie line: concise, clever, enlightening and memorable. Winning ones exploit our notions and prejudices about politics, parties and candidates. Exceptional ones sound wise, even prophetic.

“Slogans make the messiness and the disorder of the campaign into something that is coherent and memorable,” says Jonathan Rose, a Queen’s University political scientist specializing in political communications.

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Bite-sized are best. They’re more easily recalled and repeated. Getting voters to swallow the underlying campaign message is more psychology than linguistics.

“Campaigns are about persuasion and persuasion requires responding to existing sentiment and exploiting others’ weaknesses,” says Rose. “A slogan has to resonate with preconceived ideas or tap into the opponent’s weakness and your perceived strengths.”

Stephen Harper rode into office in 2006 on “Stand Up For Canada” – as in save our nation from the scandal-ridden Liberals, unaccountable “old-style” politics and criminals. The rival Liberals were so unorganized under leader Paul Martin, they had no campaign slogan, which said it all.