Double Blind

On November 27, there will be a by-election in the London North Centre riding and Repentigny.

Repentigny is a lock for the Bloc Quebecois, but London North Centre is a little more interesting. The Liberals and NDP have typically been splitting their vote somewhat, but the Liberals have always been able to take 40% of the vote which gives them a comfortable victory. The Conservatives have been able to garner about 25-30% support and I don’t see this changing in the by-election.

The only thing different this time is that the new leader of the federal green party, Elizabeth May, is running. The Green party will be spending every allowable cent they can in order to boost her profile, so it will be an interesting clinical experiment to see whether it will work or not.

My blind guess (without looking at a single poll or opinion of the by-election) is that she will get about 7-8% of the vote. Even assuming every single voter that votes Green would have otherwise showed up and voted Liberal, this won’t be enough to prevent the Liberal candidate from taking it.

The decision for Elizabeth May to run in the riding is tactically OK, but is a huge strategic mistake. It is almost similar to when Adriane Carr ran for a by-election in the BC electoral district of Surrey-Panorama Ridge back in 2004. May has everything to lose and little to gain – her greatest asset was that there was a bunch of sensationalist media hype about her and the Green party when she was made party leader. This would have carried on to the next federal election and she would have gotten a lot more mindshare from the media and public. When she loses this by-election with a single digit result, it will almost be like announcing to the public that she’s mortal and that the Green party nationally is much less popular than what people would otherwise believe. It will almost certainly guarantee that the Green party will not have a spot in the next national debate.

The only “victory condition” for the Green party is if they place third in the election or better – this will most certainly mean placing better than the NDP. This will require slightly over 20% and this isn’t going to happen. I will consider the decision a “push” if the Greens get 15-19%, while anything less is a loss.

Prediction: Comfortable (greater than 5%) Liberal victory.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.