Vote parking or not?

Posted by cwaddell under Election 2008, Election 2008 Campaign strategy

 

Christopher Waddell

A combination of Paul Adams’ comments about Green Party strength among young voters and today’s Ipsos-Reid poll in the National Post showing the Greens at 11 per cent creates the possibility for some interesting dynamics in the coming weeks.

The Green Party won 4.3 percent of the vote in 2004 and 4.5 per cent in 2006 so that is probably its base level of support for this campaign as well. Perhaps the Greens at 10-11 per cent or even higher just reflects people parking their votes there for the moment, as they can’t decide among or don’t like the other parties and leaders.

But the longer in the campaign the Greens stay there or move higher, the more problematic it becomes to make seat projections. Those projections are based on the relationship between past election results and current opinion poll standings. No one knows who these new Greens used to support so it is very difficult to factor that into calculations.

Even more interesting, if the Green Party gets 10 per cent of the vote or more nationally on October 14, the Greens will have had a major impact on the election results even if they don’t win a seat. They will turn many ridings into four party races, making some people MPs who never thought they had a chance to win. That’s because the winner could have no more than 30-35 per cent of the votes cast in the riding.

If that happens in enough ridings, look for a revival of talk about electoral reform and proportional representation that died after the crushing the issue took in last year’s Ontario referendum.

 

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the school and a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and election night executive producer for CBC TV News.