Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them by Susan Delacourt Page B
Authors: Susan Delacourt
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years, he’d given up teaching to dive into market research full time, operating his business first out of his own home, then in a small office at Bathurst and Lawrence in Toronto.
Martin Goldfarb and Keith Davey had met while working on Paul Hellyer’s 1968 Liberal leadership campaign, which they lost to Pierre Trudeau, and had come to be friends and political allies. When Davey was put in charge of a royal commission into the state of Canada’s media in 1969, he hired Goldfarb to do the research surveys.
Davey wanted to make Goldfarb the official Liberal party pollster, but he had to overcome some hurdles first with Trudeau. The prime minister hadn’t appreciated Goldfarb’s tomato comparison. He was also ticked off by an article that Goldfarb had written in Maclean’s magazine, outlining how Trudeau could be beaten at the polls and how he was contributing to a “moral breakdown” in Canadian society. This was after the infamous “fuddle-duddle” furor, in which the prime minister had been caught uttering a four-letter word in the House of Commons. The first meeting between Goldfarb and Trudeau, arranged by Davey, didn’t go well at all. Trudeau had the Maclean’s magazine in front of him. He asked Goldfarb if he stuck by his words. The pollster did: “You can’t say f— off in public.” Goldfarb also had some blunt views about how Trudeau was handling Quebec, believing he had put the wrong people in charge. After a short, frosty conversation about whether Trudeau needed any more of this kind of advice, the pollster was asked to leave.
Somehow, though, Goldfarb overcame this initial hostility from Trudeau and went on to enjoy a long and influential career as the official Liberal party pollster. Between 1970 and 1980, Goldfarb’s firm raked in $1.3 million in government contracts, on top of its work for private-sector clients. In 1984, Goldfarb would be called “Canada’s most influential private citizen” on the front cover of Saturday Night magazine. So cozy was the relationship between the Liberals and their pollster, in fact, that “government by Goldfarb” became an accusatory cry on the Conservative opposition benches in the 1970s and 1980s. “Government by Goldfarb” became a form of political shorthand in Canada for a while, for any government accused of taking its marching orders from pollsters.
Goldfarb believed that people revealed themselves with their choices, whether they were consumer choices or political choices. Anthropologists study material culture for clues about civilizations; so should political researchers. “A brand is a promise you make consistently over time. What’s the promise? That’s the essence of a politician,” Goldfarb stated. Throughout his time as the Liberals’ pollster, Goldfarb would apply what he was learning in his marketing research to the marketing of politics. Like all pollsters, he would make his money in the private sector—a lot of money, in fact—but earn his reputation in the political realm. The knowledge he was building, information gleaned from people’s attitudes toward the political and commercial markets, would form the emerging profile of a Canadian consumer-citizen, from the 1970s all the way through to the twenty-first century.
Much of Goldfarb’s work was also being used at the time by Terry O’Malley and the gang at Vickers and Benson, thus solidifying the politics-advertising-polling triumvirate that fuelled much of the Liberals’ political successes. It was Goldfarb’s data that helped Vickers and Benson come up with the pitch for butter as a sensuous product for the Dairy Bureau. Goldfarb also did the research for the ad agency’s accounts with corporate giants Ford and the Bank of Montreal.
One of Goldfarb’s larger successes in the corporate sector came with his client Wonderbra. The Canadian manufacturer was creating undergarments that boasted of camouflage and restriction—“foundation” clothing, as it was
Martin Goldfarb and Keith Davey had met while working on Paul Hellyer’s 1968 Liberal leadership campaign, which they lost to Pierre Trudeau, and had come to be friends and political allies. When Davey was put in charge of a royal commission into the state of Canada’s media in 1969, he hired Goldfarb to do the research surveys.
Davey wanted to make Goldfarb the official Liberal party pollster, but he had to overcome some hurdles first with Trudeau. The prime minister hadn’t appreciated Goldfarb’s tomato comparison. He was also ticked off by an article that Goldfarb had written in Maclean’s magazine, outlining how Trudeau could be beaten at the polls and how he was contributing to a “moral breakdown” in Canadian society. This was after the infamous “fuddle-duddle” furor, in which the prime minister had been caught uttering a four-letter word in the House of Commons. The first meeting between Goldfarb and Trudeau, arranged by Davey, didn’t go well at all. Trudeau had the Maclean’s magazine in front of him. He asked Goldfarb if he stuck by his words. The pollster did: “You can’t say f— off in public.” Goldfarb also had some blunt views about how Trudeau was handling Quebec, believing he had put the wrong people in charge. After a short, frosty conversation about whether Trudeau needed any more of this kind of advice, the pollster was asked to leave.
Somehow, though, Goldfarb overcame this initial hostility from Trudeau and went on to enjoy a long and influential career as the official Liberal party pollster. Between 1970 and 1980, Goldfarb’s firm raked in $1.3 million in government contracts, on top of its work for private-sector clients. In 1984, Goldfarb would be called “Canada’s most influential private citizen” on the front cover of Saturday Night magazine. So cozy was the relationship between the Liberals and their pollster, in fact, that “government by Goldfarb” became an accusatory cry on the Conservative opposition benches in the 1970s and 1980s. “Government by Goldfarb” became a form of political shorthand in Canada for a while, for any government accused of taking its marching orders from pollsters.
Goldfarb believed that people revealed themselves with their choices, whether they were consumer choices or political choices. Anthropologists study material culture for clues about civilizations; so should political researchers. “A brand is a promise you make consistently over time. What’s the promise? That’s the essence of a politician,” Goldfarb stated. Throughout his time as the Liberals’ pollster, Goldfarb would apply what he was learning in his marketing research to the marketing of politics. Like all pollsters, he would make his money in the private sector—a lot of money, in fact—but earn his reputation in the political realm. The knowledge he was building, information gleaned from people’s attitudes toward the political and commercial markets, would form the emerging profile of a Canadian consumer-citizen, from the 1970s all the way through to the twenty-first century.
Much of Goldfarb’s work was also being used at the time by Terry O’Malley and the gang at Vickers and Benson, thus solidifying the politics-advertising-polling triumvirate that fuelled much of the Liberals’ political successes. It was Goldfarb’s data that helped Vickers and Benson come up with the pitch for butter as a sensuous product for the Dairy Bureau. Goldfarb also did the research for the ad agency’s accounts with corporate giants Ford and the Bank of Montreal.
One of Goldfarb’s larger successes in the corporate sector came with his client Wonderbra. The Canadian manufacturer was creating undergarments that boasted of camouflage and restriction—“foundation” clothing, as it was
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