Quick Round Up of the Fed Election Locally

Victoria

I had expected to see Denise Savoie win again and she did convincingly. We saw 2700 less people vote this time in Victoria. The Liberals dropped some 7000 votes from 2006 which seems to have split four ways 1/6 each to the Greens and Conservatives, 1/3 to the NDP and 1/3 stayed home.

This should be a safe NDP riding in the next election if Denise Savoie runs again, if she retires and someone else runs I would see this being in play between the Conservatives and NDP.

Saanich - Gulf Islands

The great green hope came up short. Gary Lunn managed to get his highest vote in any election in absolute numbers and his best percentage since 1993.

As I suspected, there was not enough voters out there willing to strategically vote to elect Briony Penn. She did better than I expected and obviously picked up a lot of Green and NDP support. The error her campaign made in their math from the start is assuming the Liberals are the number two choice for the New Democrats. Many New Democrats stayed home. People also did not factor in the right wing voters that were missing in action in 2004 and 2006.

I had honestly thought Andrew Lewis would have done better this time, but he stalled out in the face fo the great green vote. I think this is a shame because I believe only the Green party has any potential of winning this seat away from the right side of the spectrum. There are a lot of conservatives out there that are willing to consider a Green as second choice but not a Liberal or New Democrat.

Esquimalt Juan de Fuca

What a heart break for me, Troy is a friend and he came up 68 votes sort. This is the third election in a row where Keith Martin has been elected with just around 20 000 votes. He was the second lowest percentage vote for a Liberal that won. Only five other people were elected in Canada with a lower percentage than he achieved.

What astonished me the most was the bad result for the NDP in the riding. I had honestly thought the NDP would do better in the race. What happened to the voters? Did a bunch of New Democrats vote Liberal because a bunch of Liberals were voting Conservative?

What all this means is that in the next election you are going to see a lot less of the party leaders in this area during the election. The party people will now assume only Esquimalt Juan de Fuca could be in play and then only if Keith Martin runs again.