The 129,895 Green votes in yesterday’s election were less than a third of the number the party attracted in 2007.
In the 2007 election, the party got 8 per cent in the province overall, or 354,897 votes, an all-time high. But the votes were spread all over the province, and parliamentary arithmetic means that they elected no members at all. The closest the Greens came was in Guelph, where the party’s candidate came a respectable third, with 19 per cent of the vote.
Greens in Ontario did even better the next year, when 409,936 Ontario voters chose the federal party. The Guelph candidate got 21 per cent, and third place again. But Green voters had deserted the party by the 2011 federal election, when the party’s vote was halved.
It is possible the Green votes from 2007 shifted to the NDP for this election – at 11:15 last night, the Greens had lost a 5 per cent share of the total popular vote, while the NDP picked up 6.3 per cent.
“Parties go up and parties go down, and sometimes it’s just the circumstances of a particular moment,” reflects party leader Mike Schreiner. “I think the long-term trend for the Green Party has been a steady rise.”
Get breaking National news
Schreiner cites three factors for the Green collapse: support for the NDP rising after former party leader Jack Layton’s death; disaffected Conservatives voting Green in 2007 because of John Tory’s education policies, who have now returned to the fold; and Liberal energy policies attracting environmentalist voters.
“They’re going to keep spinning their wheels,” predicts University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman. “They’re not going to disappear. They’re always going to suffer from the idea that it’s seen a wasted vote, which is a problem the NDP has and now is a problem the federal Liberals have. They needed greater media coverage. They needed to be put in the debate. It’s not anything you can control.”
- Canadian government mulls response to X’s AI-generated sexual abuse material
- Eurasia Group says no country more at risk than Canada in relations with the U.S.
- Pimicikamak First Nation in Manitoba prepares for military arrival after days in crisis
- Military team deployed to help Manitoba First Nation hit by power outage
Schreiner is philosphical: “We’re not in a position to buy name recognition, and we don’t have a province-wide profile to boost local candidates within the riding, so our approach has to be very grassroots and very community-focused, and that takes time.”
Green votes in Ontario provincial elections, 1985-2011
Source: Elections Ontario.
Green votes in Ontario in federal elections, 1997-2011
Source: Elections Canada
Comments