Would-be MPs are out knocking on doors after the prime minister officially called Canada’s 42nd federal election on Sunday.
The West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country riding, which includes Bowen Island, has lost Powell River in boundary redrawings since the last election. Conservative incumbent John Weston is facing a high-profile Liberal challenger in former West Vancouver mayor Pamela Goldsmith Jones. Former Whistler mayor Ken Melamed is the Green candidate and the NDP has chosen Gibsons business owner Larry Koopman.
The Tories won the riding in 2011 with 45 per cent of the vote. The NDP and Liberals finished with 24 and 23 per cent, respectively. The Green Party finished with just above seven per cent.
Poll aggregating website ThreeHundredEight.com goes as far as making predictions, riding by riding.
Three Hundred Eight founder Éric Grenier’s calculations on Wednesday indicate a 73 per cent chance of the riding switching to the Liberals on October 19.
Even though Grenier is highly respected among political scientists, those numbers should be taken with a large grain of salt, said Richard Johnston, UBC political scientist.
Most polling firms don’t use a large enough sample from individual ridings to have confidence in their predictions, Johnston said, so they instead apply regional or provincial data into a formula. That formula doesn’t take into account on-the-ground knowledge that locals would have including how strong the individual candidates are and how effectively they’re campaigning.
“I would be pretty distrustful of any poll claims about riding-level stuff but I think the patterns are pretty broad and pretty clear and that is the NDP votes have lifted,” he said.
The current vote split and prospect of a minority government is likely to revive talk of a formal coalition between NDP and Liberals, Moscrop said.
“The Liberals foolishly ruled them out. They may well have to walk that back in October,” he said
While there are some local issues that will influence votes, at the end of the day, he says, “these ridings are going to vote on the same issues that the rest of Canadians vote on, which is the economy. That’s what people are thinking about first and foremost when they’re casting their ballot.”
That may prove trickier for the Conservatives than it has been in the past as the country’s economy is in a technical recession with a deficit budget projected and the Canadian dollar floundering with oil prices, Moscrop said.
Still, more than 70 days until the polls close, a lot can happen, Moscrop said.
The North Shore is now carved up into three ridings, including the new Burnaby North-Seymour, which spans the Burrard Inlet and covers everything east of the Seymour River, plus a swath of land that curves along Lynn Creek south of Highway 1.
The North Shore’s new riding has drawn a number of high-profile candidates including retired judge Carol Baird Ellan who will run for the NDP, former District of North Vancouver council member Mike Little for the Conservatives, the Green Party’s s Lynn Quarmby an SFU prof who gained national attention during the protests against Kinder Morgan on Burnaby Mountain and Liberal Terry Beech, also an SFU prof.
North Vancouver voters will see incumbent Conservative Andrew Saxton seeking re-election. The Liberals have nominated green tech CEO Jonathan Wilkinson to run while the NDP has chosen Tsleil-Waututh member and pipeline activist Carleen Thomas. The Green Party debuted star candidate former CBC meteorologist Claire Martin in April.
