ClippedVille
In a word...
...Kids.
From Robin Levinson King's TorStar report on the latest hard number breakdown on last year's Fed General from Elections Canada:
...Droves of young voters showed up to the polls last October, leading to the biggest gains in youth voter turnout since the new millennium.
Voter turnout increased across all age groups, growing 7.6 percentage points overall between 2011 and 2015 elections, according to data released by Elections Canada on Wednesday. The biggest gains were amongst youth between the ages of 18-24, which grew from 38.8per cent in 2011 to 56.2 in 2015...
{snip}
...The next age group also made significant gains. Voter turnout for young adults between 25-34 increased by 12.1 per cent, from 45.1 per cent of eligible voters in 2011 to 56.2 per cent in 2015...
So.
Without a shiny new face at the top of the ticket, how do the Dippers in BC get those kids to actually vote around here next May?
I have my own ideas, but I'll let you the reader weigh in first if you so choose.
.
3 comments:
SH
Horgan is smart to let his young bright lights travel BC...I am impressed with "shiny" Rob Fleming, Ed critic. Heard him speak about enviro issues a while back. He was extremely impressive on that file.
Rob was on Daybreak South with Chris Walker this morning, his straight talk is refreshing. He has been to Osoyoos to talk with community members at least twice that I know of. This was a good strategy, it gave the community leadership, hope and perhaps, the courage to fight back, which is just what they did.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/osoyoos-lawsuit-school-closing-1.3567267
Hair and teeth, and possibly boobs, discretely. Good real estate agent type.
I'm convinced strategic voting encouraged a lot of young people to vote for the first time because SV was totally beyond the reach of the parties and it offered a real opportunity to feel like your vote got something accomplished. I guess you could say it was easy and a young voter could feel chuffed about contributing to Harper's ouster.
One supporting observation is that some solid NDP ridings fell to the Liberals which surely didn't need to happen to get rid of Harper. What happened, I figure, is young and inexperienced voters probably misconceived the notion of "popular vote" which doesn't actually exist (each of us votes in the riding we live in, not at-large)---and who could blame them with pro-reppers constantly referring to it to bolster their flimsy supporting argument? So what happened was novice voters mistakenly used the "popular vote" idea, or more precisely, mistakenly used national polling numbers to calculate the SV choice for getting rid of Harper instead of correctly using their riding numbers, thus awarding JT by the bandwagon effect instead of the SV effect. I'll bet there are a lot of chuffed young voters out there who couldn't care less cuz they "got Harper out". I think the NDP would have retained some of those solid seats otherwise but I do not think it would have made a difference in the overall outcome. JT got on a roll and, starting way back, built a better slingshot, beat expectations and began sweeping all before him. The Liberals definitely benefitted from SV, but they also enjoyed the bandwagon effect, the nostalgia (PET) effect and the Quebec effect (let's face it, those NDP seats were just on loan---but they did a remarkable job by keeping 16 of the 54, making them a tried and true option for all subsequent elections---which is why I don't count the NDP out and why I'm disappointed they want to look like Greens who have no other way of gaining influence except by the crapshoot of pro-rep).
Of course the parties will refute everything I've just said---which partly proves my point: they never liked SV, put it down and pooh-poohed it to no end because they couldn't manipulate it to any of their advantages---which is exactly what made it so popular among young voters.
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