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OPINION
Thursday, November 29, 2012 Trail Times
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Lessons learned from the federal byelections
W
hat can we learn from Monday’s three federal byelections? All parties will be parsing the results, but let’s begin with the obvious. Only one seat elected an MP by a majority and that was a razor-slim one – 50.7 per cent for the new Conservative candidate in Durham. In the other two, about 37 per cent sufficed to hold the seats for their respective parties – the NDP in Victoria and the Conservatives in Calgary Centre. This is not surprising, with four or more candidates contesting the election under our first-pastthe-post electoral system. One obvious problem for non-Conservatives is the strong competition by three parties for the same pool of centre-left voters who, in the aggregate, are in the majority in most parts of the country, but when distributed three ways, become a minority position. We will return to this issue below, but proportional representation would be a partial cure. A danger signal which should concern all parties was the low voter turnout – a shocking 29.4 per cent in Calgary Centre and not much better in Durham at 35.8 per cent. We need a national dialogue about how to re-engage people in politics – questions of
who gets what, from whom and how, must matter to everyone. Let’s ask the standard questions about the byelections as a horse race. Who won, placed and showed and how did their respective positions change? The total number of votes cast for each of the four main parties in all three districts were: Conservatives: 33115 New Democrats: 24529 Greens: 21844 and Liberals 20013. Good news for the Conservatives, bad news for the Liberals, although these three districts may not be representative of the national picture. The Conservatives must be happy to have retained their two seats. But they may be disconcerted to have run fourth in Victoria, with 9.3 per cent less than in 2011. Further, a decrease of 20 per cent in their vote in Calgary Centre, right next to the Prime Minister’s district, can’t be good news either. But a win is a win, after all, no matter how slim the margin. And the party’s sophisticated organization and propaganda machine will no doubt respond to the lower Conservative vote by going into aggressive attack mode against everyone who gained at their expense. The Liberals, at least in
PHIL
ELDER
Troy Media
Calgary Centre, pitched the need to rebuild the Liberal party into a national presence. In that contest, their vote surged from 17.53 to 32.7 per cent. This must be encouraging, although their support flat-lined in Victoria (13.2 per cent in third place) and Durham (17.3 per cent also in third). These percentages are not encouraging, although their leadership race will result in a big bump. Until the winner of the leadership is declared, they will be in ratings limbo. If I were Tom Mulcair, I’d go back to the chalk board. It’s no surprise that his excellent NDP candidate in Calgary Centre, Dan Meades, couldn’t win, but he barely nudged the applause meter at 3.8 per cent (down from 14.86 last year). This was probably due to strategic voting for either the Liberal or Green candidate. And the Greens, no doubt because
of the halo effect from their leader Elizabeth May’s (Parliamentarian of the Year) victory next door in 2011, almost knocked off the outstanding NDP candidate, Murray Rankin, in Victoria at 34.3 to the latter’s 37.2 per cent (his predecessor had won with 50.73 per cent). Elizabeth May and the Greens will be mightily encouraged by their showing in the two western seats, although they were blanked on the scoreboard. Media handicappers made the NDP’s Rankin a heavy favourite at the starting gate and a near-win for the Greens there and a leap from 9.93 to 25.6 per cent for Chris Turner in Calgary Centre, the heart of Canada’s oilpatch, immensely increases the party’s national credibility. They did, however, falter in Durham, with a mere 4.1 per cent. (Disclosure – partly for strategic reasons, I worked on Turner’s campaign as a foot soldier, although I’m a federal NDPer of some 38 years’ standing.) So what can we learn from these figures? First, the Conservatives’ national support may be softening. This gives the other parties hope for the next general election. Second, as long as the Greens, Liberals and NDP persist in fighting over the same pool of votes, the
Conservative hegemony may last much longer than Canadian voters generally want. Everyone acknowledges this, but entrenched party loyalists have trouble imagining a solution which could be accepted by others. And a coalition seems to have become a dirty word, partly because of effective but inaccurate abuse by the Conservatives. Another possibility, raised by the impressive Nathan Cullen during the recent NDP leadership campaign, is for the three centre-left parties to negotiate some sort of inter-party cooperation in election campaigns and more coordination of parliamentary tactics and votes in the house. Joint nominating conventions to choose a unity candidate have been suggested. By now, surely we have enough examples of how a failure to unite the nonConservative vote leads to electoral defeat. Everybody knows the popular definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. If they are to succeed, nonConservatives have to move forward and work together with mutual respect. Phil Elder is a former federal Liberal Assistant (1967-70), NDP provincial candidate in 1982.