Very First Candidate Nominated for Next Election is a Green
After failing to run a complete slate as promised in the 2008 General Election, the Green Party appears to be getting a head start this time out ... at least in one eastern Ontario riding:
So, ridings where the incumbent barely hung on last time could very well be swing ridings next time. But while ridings where the incumbent was narrowly defeated last time could possibly be swing ridings next time, more likely they probably won't be (especially when they were previously won under a different competitive configuration).
Rather, I would classify Northumberland – Quinte West, ON as the kind of riding it took the Conservatives two tries to consolidate their pre-merger vote in, and where the Liberals were only able to win when the NDP vote was depressed to below-historic levels. Prior to 1988 the seat was the preserve of long-time Progressive Conservative M.P. ("gorgeous") George Hees. Liberal M.P. Christine Stewart narrowly won in 1988 by just 28 votes after Hees stepped down, kept it in 1993 when the NDP vote completely collapsed, and again in 1997 with fewer votes than the combined PC + Reform candidates. After she retired in 2000, Liberal Paul Macklin replaced her but again with fewer votes than the CA+PC combination.
---------------------------------
Meantime, this makes Mr. Grizzle the first candidate to be officially nominated by his party for the 41st General Election, certainly that I'm aware of (there are no nominations reported as yet to Elections Canada, either). So, congratulations to him and to the Green Party for this accomplishment.
This brings up a couple of points about how the Pundits' Guide will start to change for the upcoming election cycle:
- Northumberland – Quinte West, ON - Retired business-owner and Brighton resident Stan Grizzle was acclaimed last night as the Green Party's candidate, after former candidate Ralph Torrie stepped aside to pursue new career prospects. Torrie achieved 8.2% of the vote in 2008, placing 4th, as two-term Conservative M.P. Rick Norlock was handily reelected over former Liberal M.P. Paul Macklin.
So, ridings where the incumbent barely hung on last time could very well be swing ridings next time. But while ridings where the incumbent was narrowly defeated last time could possibly be swing ridings next time, more likely they probably won't be (especially when they were previously won under a different competitive configuration).
Rather, I would classify Northumberland – Quinte West, ON as the kind of riding it took the Conservatives two tries to consolidate their pre-merger vote in, and where the Liberals were only able to win when the NDP vote was depressed to below-historic levels. Prior to 1988 the seat was the preserve of long-time Progressive Conservative M.P. ("gorgeous") George Hees. Liberal M.P. Christine Stewart narrowly won in 1988 by just 28 votes after Hees stepped down, kept it in 1993 when the NDP vote completely collapsed, and again in 1997 with fewer votes than the combined PC + Reform candidates. After she retired in 2000, Liberal Paul Macklin replaced her but again with fewer votes than the CA+PC combination.
---------------------------------
Meantime, this makes Mr. Grizzle the first candidate to be officially nominated by his party for the 41st General Election, certainly that I'm aware of (there are no nominations reported as yet to Elections Canada, either). So, congratulations to him and to the Green Party for this accomplishment.
This brings up a couple of points about how the Pundits' Guide will start to change for the upcoming election cycle:
- First of all, last time I didn't keep track of details about the nominations process, such as when the candidate was selected, the selection process (contested nomination, acclamation, appointment, other), and whether and why the candidate resigned or stepped down and was replaced. However, given the news last summer about candidate resignations, and difficulties several parties had filling their slates, it became clear that this was a significant dataset to collect, and would permit the calculation of some potentially significant and predictive metrics. So, I'll be building that into my database schema going forward.
- Next, I'll have to create a new Electoral Event for the 41st General Election. We don't have a year on it yet, but I'll call it 2009? GE for now. The Nominations Progress Chart and Table for that election will get added to the Index page, and the special Nominations queries for the current election will get added to the "Search the Database" page. Should a by-election get called in the meantime, we'll go into by-election mode instead, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Northumberland – Quinte West, ON, 2008 General Election
Ridings of the National Capital Region (NCR), ON & QC, 2008 General Election
Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Greens, Swing Ridings
posted by The Pundits' Guide at
9:02 AM
6 Comments:
on the swing riding bit / ctv bellweather ridings , my ontario riding and another just south of it were included on that list last election , although both were not even close . the liberals and pollsters both mistakenly though they'd be close again even though there former high profile mp had left . as you say it had been won under much different circumstances ( 93-04 ) and so became a much different race in 08 , plus the incumbentcy benefit shifted to the conservatives and worked against the liberals .
Yeah, and I don't mean to be an old harpie about it, because they did try something new.
I realize now that some of this comes from Tom Flanagan's book, "Harper's Team", which I just finished reading the other week, because he does talk about how they targetted ridings previously won by narrow margins (but goes on to add that they also included seats with retiring incumbents as well).
But it's also propagated by a lot of ahistorical MSM instant-analysis that only looks back one or two elections. I'm just trying to give people the tools here to look back a bit further is all.
And I do hope all the media organizations keep trying to improve their election coverage.
Thanks for commenting.
p.s., Rats, I just realized that Flanagan's book is coming out in a 2nd edition in May! And I just bought the darn thing in hardcover last month :-( Oh well, Murphy's Law strikes again!
I like your maps. Looking forward to seeing them when ready.
Thanks, DTM-Bro (Alan, I believe),
As soon as I can get my paying work out of the way, I can get back to contemplating the fun stuff!
I would prefer you not use my real name. Thank you :-)
Yes, a lot of that close/swing media punditry is bumf, the most superficial kind of drawing from previous election results which disregards the deeper patterns out there.
In fact, the Northumberland-Quinte West situation could have been foretold by what happened in Haldimand-Norfolk in '04 and '06. Like N-QW, H-N was a traditional Ontario-heartland Tory stronghold devoid of major urban centres that "accidentally" went Liberal in 1988, thanks to the combination of free trade, splinter conservative parties like CHP and CoR, and a bit of a provincial David Peterson "honeymoon effect".
With the collapse of the PCs, that accident came to appear as a permanent condition during the Chretien-Martin years, all the more so as Bob Speller ascended to cabinet--indeed in 2004, more people would have bet upon N-QW going Tory than H-N, given we were dealing with a veteran in cabinet vs a freshman backbencher, and that Diane Finley didn't have Doug Galt's experience in provincial parliament. But instead, it was Speller who lost while Macklin barely survived--all in all, more of an electoral accident than anything.
Then in 2006 came the Speller-Finley rematch which, like Macklin-Norlock in 2008, was commonly tokenly regarded as a swing-riding horse-race--but given how the ball was in the Harper court, it turned out to be anything but. And imagine how that race might have turned out *without* Speller. (Though Finley faced a tougher ride in '08, but that was due to a unique riding-specific personal backlash circumstance that involved a strong independent candidate--and a surprisingly strong non-Speller Liberal candidate as well.)
Though it isn't like some lessons from past Liberal-or-otherwise strength couldn't be applied to future campaigns, either--perhaps a sleeper reason for Macklin being given a one-election reprieve is that it's a "redder" Toryism around these parts, i.e. that during the fractured-right years, the PC element was stronger here relative to Reform/Alliance than in H-N, and such voters might be more disposed to a Martin/Ignatieff Liberalism under the proper circumstances (especially considering Norlock's Reform/Alliance past).
Re the Red Tory element, it's also worth considering that the NDP under Russ Christianson saw surprising strength for these parts, ascending as high as 18% in '06--but dropping back to 14.5% in '08 as a swath of NDP vote in "non-priority" ridings went Green, instead.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home