CANADIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS APPROPRIATE ANARCHIST SLOGAN #EATTHERICH

It’s also a platform where hashtags like #eattherich and #abolishbillionaires proliferate, and those posters and viewers would seem to be receptive to the NDP’s policies.


The federal NDP are heading into the next election betting their strategy to target the “ultra-rich” will resonate with younger voters. But whether Millennial and Gen Z’s online posts to “abolish billionaires” will translate into votes remains to be seen.

© Provided by National Post Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh:

A part of that game plan to target youth rests on social media and leader Jagmeet Singh himself, whose embrace of TikTok grabbed attention in the last election campaign, and who has been using the video platform and its memes since to promote his party’s ideas.


Singh said in an interview the NDP is working on “building a big team” around social media. “People want to be reached out to and spoken to where they are, and young people are on social media, and they are frustrated with the injustice going on,” he said.

Singh said he took it as a “personal initiative” to double down on social media as a way to reach voters. The effort extends to other platforms popular with younger Canadians. In November, he streamed a game of “Among Us” with U.S. congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitch.





How much of the social media content is posted by Singh and how much is by his team depends on the platform. Singh said he is behind most of his TikTok videos, since “it’s a platform I really understand.”

It’s also a platform where hashtags like #eattherich and #abolishbillionaires proliferate, and those posters and viewers would seem to be receptive to the NDP’s policies.

At its policy convention two weeks ago, the party voted in favour of a marginal tax rate of 80 per cent for personal incomes over $1 million, a one per cent tax on “fortunes over $20 million,” and a tax on “pandemic and disaster excess profit.”

Singh’s line of attack on the Liberals has been to paint the party as being in bed with billionaires, in contrast to the NDP, which would make the “ultra-rich” pay “their fair share.”

To what extent hashtags translate into political support isn’t exactly quantifiable, but that kind of messaging is more likely to resonate with younger voters, pollsters say.

“I wish we had specific data saying X per cent of young Canadians say ‘eat the rich,’ ” said Angus Reid Institute president Shachi Kurl.

There is a trend where younger people are “definitely” — though not exclusively — “of the view that either increasing taxes on high-income earners, like $250K-plus, or on corporations or on businesses, is the way to pay for things,” she said.

“These types of eat-the-rich statements have always been popular with youth,” noted Christian Bourque, executive vice-president at Leger.

But what is new is that younger Canadians are more concerned about fairness, he said. “I believe that the way people frame this issue of the ultra-rich needs to be about some form of fairness,” he said, giving the example of the government’s recent Air Canada bailout that caps compensation for executives.

Singh said the notion of making the ultra-wealthy pay resonates among all voters, but youth are more open to it because they’re facing a more difficult reality than their parents did.



“They are the first generation ever that has less opportunities than the previous generation,” he said. They saw their parents be able to buy homes and have jobs that supported families and now “young people don’t have that same opportunity,” given how much housing costs have increased in proportion to income, he said.

“There is very clearly an extra burden on young people, that they’re feeling that the system is really rigged. They’re feeling even more frustrated, so young people are certainly even more open to this message, because they’re feeling the impact in their lives right now, that this rigged system means that they can’t find a good job that will help them earn a good living, start a family, find a place to live.”

Singh noted Millenials and younger voters make up a large portion of the electorate and said they could “make history” in the next election.

“I see the frustration that they’re feeling. I see how engaged they are politically, how engaged they are on social media platforms, and how engaged they have been” in organizing big protests in real life, he said.




The COVID-19 pandemic has also played a role, Kurl said. She noted it has “stressed younger Canadians in a way that it hasn’t necessarily stressed older Canadians.”

One of the reasons the NDP plans to double its campaign spending in the next election is Singh’s polling numbers. Mainstreet Research president Quito Maggi said Singh’s performance in the last election, in which he came across as authentic and likeable, is the reason the party didn’t get nearly wiped out.

Of course, things could shift. The Liberal government outlined more than $100 billion in new spending in this week’s federal budget, which extends pandemic supports and includes a promise to implement $10-a-day child care.

A post-budget Leger poll also found voter intention for the Liberals and Conservatives remained the same, while the NDP’s inched up from 18 to 19 per cent. But Maggi noted, “the budget would appear to address most of those economic anxieties that could increase support for those NDP policies.”

The next election will also come at a time when younger voters may be less enamoured with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “Young people haven’t completely abandoned Justin Trudeau but, he’s not the bright young thing that he was six years ago,” Kurl said. “Jagmeet Singh does have appeal among young voters.”

Bourque said there are opportunities for the NDP to target that demographic, given that the “Conservatives are in trouble with younger voters in Canada,” and Trudeau no longer has that “newness” and “freshness” element he did in 2015.

But while there is an opening for the NDP, that spot could also get taken up by the Green Party, he warned.