Comments on Erich the Green: Greens grassroot roots can be very tangled

I find it takes enough time to write the print col...

2010-07-16T20:40:53.341-07:00

I find it takes enough time to write the print columns, then hyperlink them for the blog and fix any minor errors, omissions, or updates. Too much on the go to re-write myself on a regular basis, plus I believe the discipline of the word limit keeps my blogs at a readable size. (I've seen comparable on-line-only blogs which regularly run to 2000 words that could easily have been 1/2 or 1/4 that).

As to growth, the 2004 leadership race came after the per-vote subsidy and didn't cause a significant membership boost, despite being contested by 3 candidates. Our main 2004 membership boost was the election boost.

The 2006 membership boost came (from what I can tell) mostly from Elizabeth May's recruitment efforts. And that was in a race with no incumbent.

Compare to a race now - there is an incumbent, and among all the challengers I've heard of so far (at least 5), all are already in the party and none have (in my estimation) the new membership draw May had. So I'm rather skeptical that a membership race now would suddenly draw new members. The 2009 GPO leadership race (no incumbent, 3 insider candidates of whom 2 dropped out) failed to boost membership at all.

So far I'm not convinced that the only major membership boost we ever had was due to any factor other than May joining and campaigning for leader. Attributing that to the leadership race rather than to May's own popularity and organization is an unproven assumption. I think it's rather risky to bet a lot on the assumption that a leadership race will lead to a significant membership boost.

Totally understand the limits of a word count for ...

2010-07-16T08:32:38.090-07:00

Totally understand the limits of a word count for an article. Why not use that as an opportunity to encourage more traffic to your blog. Let readers get the word count limit from the paper but more detail from your blog (assuming you haven't limited yourself here too!). Anyway, onto the comments...

There are two very distinct eras in Green Party history... before the 2004 vote subsidy and afterwards. It's really hard to compare the numbers from each of those eras as the vote subsidy played a major role in mainstreaming the Green Party in Canada. The more relevent discussion is comparing 2004 with 2010.

When talking growth, percentages are deceiving. In 1984, we had 60 candidates and almost 27,000 votes. In 2004, we had 308 candidates and 582,000 votes. That's 513% increase in candidates and 2156% increase in votes. Yet, in absolute voting terms, it took 20 years to generate 555,000 votes and only another 4 years to add 359,000 more votes.

As a side note, I did clarify that the growth I was referring to was membership growth. While I'm sure the percentage growth from 1984 to 2004 was astronomical as well, we more than doubled from 2004 to 2006 (which seems to have been our watermark). Having seen the numbers back in 2006, I know we pretty much doubled from the leadership race alone.

Really wish Barrie wasn't such a long commute, would be an interesting event to attend on Sunday. Well done on putting it on!

1. I'm highly constrained by the word count, s...

2010-07-15T21:05:46.968-07:00

1. I'm highly constrained by the word count, so there are lots of little details that I have to include under generalizations. Mainly I'm contrasting the first 20 years of the GPC with the past 8 years, since 2004, when we started running a full slate and getting per-vote funding.
2. I don't agree that the leadership race itself generated all the exponential growth. Our highest growth rate was actually between 2000 and 2004, going from <1% to >4%; from 2004 to 2008 we didn't even double our vote share.
3. I don't have staff numbers, so you may be right on that. But I'm not speaking only of central office staff, but total staff on the payroll. Again, I'm comparing first two decades with post-full-slate years.

A few things to note depending on what your term o...

2010-07-15T19:26:25.985-07:00

A few things to note depending on what your term of reference is to "recent years":
1. We've had a paid FT leader since 2005
2. Our exponential growth came at the hands of a leadership race. Not from anything before or since. General elections in 2006 or 2008 didn't generate the sheer volume of memberships compared to the 2006 leadership race.
3. We had hired staff in the national office back in 2005 equal to (if not more) than we have today.