#Elxn42...Will Re-Drawing Of Riding Boundaries Matter For VanIsle Strategic Voters?

ConStoppingIn
LotuslandVille


If UVIC poli-sci guy Norman Ruff is right it will, indeed.

The VTC's Cindy Harnett has Mr. Ruff's take:

A hotly contested Conservative nomination race to represent Cowichan-Malahat-Langford on Vancouver Island is just a precursor to the battle ahead, says Norman Ruff.

“It’s going to be one of the closest fought on the Island,” said Ruff, a University of Victoria professor emeritus in political science.

The ridings on Vancouver Island have been redrawn for the Oct. 19 election, and Ruff expects most of the seven races will be tight ones between the Conservatives and the NDP as a result...


Mr. Ruff then goes into detail regarding the re-carving of the Esquimalt/Nanaimo/Cowichan/Langford/Malahat/Juan de Fuca ridings:

...The new Cowichan-Malahat-Langford riding, for example, includes parts of the old Nanaimo-Cowichan and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca ridings.

In 2011, the NDP defeated the Conservatives by 6,775 votes in Nanaimo-Cowichan and 406 in Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. If you use the 2011 votes with the 2015 boundaries, the NDP’s margin of victory is just 253 in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, Ruff said. In the new Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke riding, the party’s share of the vote drops to 37.6 per cent from the 39.4 per cent seen in Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca...

Upshot....

Well, if Mr. Ruff is right, a non-Con vote wasted on the Liberals or Greens in ridings like this is a vote for Mr. Harper.

But here's the thing...

We have no hard riding-specific numbers yet, so it is really hard to know what's really up anywhere

And heckfire, in the case of the new Cow/Mal/Lang riding the Cons won't even nominate their candidate until August 29th apparently.


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And, as Paul Willcocks pointed out in the comments to a recent post, strategic voting did matter in the old Esquimalt riding last time.
Bill Tieleman, in the Tyee, is kinda/sorta making a similar point based in large part on the '2nd place' Dipper factor in FedCon-won ridings last time out...Again, the proof will be in the pudding of real riding-specific polls in the coming weeks...


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