Emerson riding - we're all in the same boat

In today’s Vancouver Sun an interesting article which looks at the voting patterns within the riding. I’m not fully on side with some of the analysis proferred by political scientist Fred Cutler, but there’s no doubt that a group dynamic in the riding – and in the surrounding Vancouver area – has formed.

March 18 (Chad Skelton, Vancouver Sun) Emerson riding leans hard to port

“For social movements like this, it matters how much you think other people are in the same boat,” he said. “If you feel you’re isolated and other voters aren’t going to go down to that demonstration, you’re not going to go either.” In Vancouver-Kingsway, Cutler said, voters have a sense they’re all on the same side.

Personally, I think he’s reaching in his conclusions, if for no other reason than we could hardly paint the federal Liberals as “left wing”, as Cutler seems to do later in the article by lumping the NDP and Liberal vote into one big bucket.

However, Cutler cautioned against assuming that the swing from NDP to Liberal can be entirely explained by strategic voting. After all, the NDP increased its share of the popular vote in B.C. overall in 2006. And, as history shows, voting Liberal to keep out the Conservatives doesn’t make much sense in Vancouver-Kingsway.

Cutler’s right – one can not assume that the difference between the 2004 and 2006 vote is explained by strategic voting out of the NDP base of support. But it did happen, and if my straw poll held on street corners over the past month is any indication, its a significant percentage of the vote. That it doesn’t make any sense doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.

The most common reasons I’ve heard people switch their support from the NDP‘s Waddell to Emerson in the last Election:

• Determination to keep a Conservative out of office (even though there was little chance of that occuring)
• Dissatisfaction with other candidates or satisfaction with the Liberal platform, party or candidate
• Expectation of a Liberal government loss, and a desire to see Emerson form part of a strong opposition.

Number of times I’ve ran into someone that voted for Emerson the Liberal who would now vote for Emerson as a Conservative? Zero. I’m sure such people are out there but they are few and far between.

Its a mistake to paint the uproar of Vancouverites as partisan in nature. No doubt that drove people’s first gut response on day one, but now more than a month into this protest, its become quite clear that people’s perspective has evolved far beyond a visceral reaction tied to party affiliation.

There’s always been a sense that the vast majority of voters in this riding feel they’ve been treated unfairly – literally robbed of their vote.

Yes, we are all in this together but its a sense of the loss of our power as citizens, not concerns over partisan battles, which has brought us all together.