Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them - Hardcover

Delacourt, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 192681293X ISBN 13: 9781926812939

Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre, 2013

Synopsis

A witty, insightful, and provocative look at the inside world of political marketing and its impact on democracy

Inside the political backrooms of Ottawa, the Mad Men of Canadian politics are planning their next consumer-friendly pitch. Where once politics was seen as a public service, increasingly it’s seen as a business, and citizens are considered customers. But its unadvertised products are voter apathy and gutless public policy.

Ottawa insider Susan Delacourt takes readers onto the world of Canada’s top political marketers, explaining how parties slice and dice their platforms according to what polls say voters’ priorities are in each constituency, and how parties control the media.Provocative, incisive and entertaining, Checked Out is The Age of Persuasion meets The Armageddon Factor.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Delacourt is a senior political writer with the Toronto Star, formerly of the Globe and Mail, who has been covering Canada’s capital since the 1980s. She has written three books United We Fall, Shaughnessy and Juggernaut and is a regular commentator on CTV and CBC.

Review

"Delacourt's Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them is likely to become the new manual for power-seekers. And while its focus is on Canada, it shows how we, Australia, Britain and the United States have borrowed from one another to create the present political situation...lively and very readable...Some power-seeking readers will study it as a how-to-manual for more political pandering. But other power seekers, we can hope, will read it as a guide to getting our country back." (Tyee.ca 2013-10-07)

"I’m pretty excited about this year's literary harvest, but there are three particular books that have captured my interest in Canadian history: And I hope that Susan Delacourt's analysis of our political system, Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them (Douglas & McIntyre, Spetember), will explain to me and future historians the way our politicians have become captive to the polling and advertising industries." (Charlotte Grey Ottawa Citizen 2013-09-02)

"the engaging Shopping for Votes provides a compendium of the latest vote-courting techniques used by political operatives from all parties...The strongest section, which draws on Delacourt's talents as a reporter, focuses on recent efforts by the Conservatives and NDP to target voters interested in their policies. The early chapters, by contrast, provide useful historical context for the role of advertising in politics..." (Dan Rowe Quill & Quire 2013-09-30)

"If Stephen Harper needs some light relief after reading the latest disappointing polling numbers, he could do worse than leaf through a new book by Ottawa journalist Susan Delacourt: Shopping for Votes -- How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them." (John Ivison National Post 2013-09-05)

"...Delacourt (who was a longtime colleague and competitor in the parliamentary press gallery) has written a lively history of the advertising Mad Men and marketing gurus who increasingly have shaped our politics in the last sixty years..." (Paul Adams ipolitics.ca 2013-09-25)

"...let me strongly recommend you make room on your bookshelf (or on your Kindle) for Toronto Star journalist Susan Delacourt's latest opus: Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them...Delacourt's journalistic writing style keeps the narrative flowing and the pages turning...This book shines a light on the wacky, weird, and often-misunderstood world of political marketing..." (Gerry Nicholls The Hill Times 2013-09-30)

"By now, it's a truism that politics is dirty business. Delacourt, a political reporter for the Toronto Star, deconstructs how elected reps bait voters. They brand their parties, cloister Canadians into categories like 'old-fashioned puritans' and apathetic 'self-indulgent' and even use Tim Hortons to lure voters to the polling station. Is nothing sacred?" (Readers Digest 2013-10-10)

"...Susan Delacourt's Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them, one of the very best books about Canadian politics to appear in many years...Ms. Delacourt has pulled the themes together in an excellently researched book that widens our understanding and deepens our depression about contemporary politics -- which offers, after all, a rough mirror of who we are." (Geoffrey Simpson Globe & Mail 2013-10-05)

"Susan Delacourt's new book, Shopping For Votes: How Politicians Choose Us And We Choose Them is creating quite a stir. Delacourt's central thesis is that Canadians no longer act as citizens -- with rights and responsibilities -- but as consumers, who are motivated by self interest, not the national interest." (ProgressiveBloggers.ca 2013-10-06)

"The story in Susan Delacourt's Shopping for Votes is a familiar one, told well..." (Andrew Coyne Montreal Gazette 2013-10-08)

About this edition

• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 192681293X
• ISBN 13: 9781926812939
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320