Article content

There has never been an election campaign like the one on which we are now embarked. There’s a weird fin-de-siècle glow in the air, a sense of things coming unstuck, old certainties uprooted. Policies, parties, institutions, everything is in flux, to a degree I cannot recall any precedent for.

The 1988 election was an important one, but it was in most respects a conventional campaign, fought by conventional means, with the Liberals and the Conservatives duking it out as they always had. The 1984 and 1993 elections, dramatic as they were in result, were likewise conventional in every other respect; neither proved to be quite the realignments expected. Within a few years of their supposed extinctions, both the Liberals and the Conservatives were back in contention. I suppose one of the things we will find out this fall is whether 2011 was the realignment it was declared to be.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Andrew Coyne: A federal election unlike any we've seen before Back to video

Why do I say this campaign is unique? Consider three factors. One is the sheer length of the campaign, the first to be held under the fixed election date law, or rather the first to adhere to it. Leave aside the formal writ period, itself potentially of unusual length (there are rumours of a mid-August call, meaning a campaign of more than 60 days — the first of such length since the 1970s). The real campaign, it is widely acknowledged, is already under way, and has been since at least the start of the year.