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Charting When NDP Votes Rise

Layton's team may be lucky New Dems aren't running BC or Ontario.

Will McMartin 1 Oct 2008TheTyee.ca

Veteran political analyst Will McMartin is a Tyee contributing editor.

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[Editor's note: This is the latest of a new feature on The Tyee through election day: Charting the Votes. In charts and prose, veteran political analyst Will McMartin breaks down the important factors in key B.C. races.]

In the federal election campaign now underway, the good news for federal New Democrats in B.C. and Ontario is that the two provincial wings are confined to the opposition benches. Moreover, as is suggested by the above chart, the party appears to be on a slight upward trajectory in both provinces.

Why does it matter who is running the provinces where the NDP is hoping to pick up big gains? Going into a fight -- or an election -- with one hand tied behind your back usually has negative consequences. And that's just the situation in which the federal New Democratic Party found itself in the early 1970s and the 1990s in British Columbia, and in the early 1990s in Ontario.

Federal New Democrats in those two provinces were handicapped by the fact that their provincial cousins had formed governments. The chart above illustrates that when provincial NDPers hold power in B.C. or Ontario, federal New Democratic Party MPs and candidates have been severely punished for their brethren's unpopularity.

The chart shows that the NDP garnered about one-third -- 32.7 per cent and 35 per cent -- of the popular vote in British Columbia in the 1968 and 1972 federal general elections.

In the latter year, however, the provincial New Democratic Party led by Dave Barrett won election to government. Over time, the Barrett administration became increasingly unpopular.

In 1974, disenchanted British Columbia voters were given an opportunity to vent their frustrations on the federal NDP. After taking one-in-three votes in the previous two contests, the federal wing collapsed to just 23 per cent of the vote, and their B.C. seat total fell from 11 to just two.

The Barrett government was turfed from office the following year, and the NDP's federal wing slowly recovered lost ground in the Pacific province. In the four federal general elections between 1979 and 1988, the New Democratic Party in B.C. garnered 31.9 per cent, 35.3 per cent, 35.1 per cent and 37 per cent of the vote -- the latter figure representing an historic high.

The party's seat total also soared, as the NDP elected eight, 12, eight and 19 B.C. MPs in those same four federal contests.

A BC decline in the 1990s

Misfortune reappeared, however, with the election in 1991 of a NDP government led by Mike Harcourt, and the re-election in 1996 of its successor under Glen Clark.

In the three federal general elections held in 1993, 1997 and 2000, the NDP's share of the vote in B.C. plummeted to anemic, all-time lows -- 15.5 per cent, 18.2 per cent and 11.3 per cent. The party's B.C. caucus also shrunk dramatically, to just two, then three, and finally to two again.

The chart above shows that the federal New Democratic Party began to regain their strength with the defeat of the provincial NDP government in 2001. The party climbed to 26.6 per cent of the vote in 2004, and then 28.5 per cent in 2006. The New Democrats elected five MPs in B.C. four years ago, and then 10 in the last contest.

The chart also shows that federal NDP strength in Ontario was fairly consistent over the two-decade period from 1968 to 1988, with support from slightly more than one-in-five voters.

That changed dramatically after the election in 1990 of a provincial NDP government led by Bob Rae. Cursed with a severe economic recession and unpopular policies, the Rae government lasted just a single term in office, and was defeated by Mike Harris's Tories in 1995.

In the 1993 federal general election, the NDP collapsed to just 6 per cent of the popular vote, or less than a third of their two-decade average. And after electing 10 Ontario MPs in 1988, the New Democrats failed to hold a single seat.

The recovery proved to be long and painful. In the 1997 federal general election -- two years after the Rae government's defeat -- the NDP in Ontario took just 10.7 per cent of the vote, and again failed to elect even a single MP. The results in 2000 were about the same, 8.3 per cent of the vote, but this time the New Democrats actually elected one lone member of Parliament.

Yet the last two federal general elections have seen a marked improvement for the Ontario NDP, as they captured 18.1 per cent and 19.4 per cent of the vote in 2004 and 2006 respectively. Even better for them, the NDP won seven seats, and then 12, over the same two contests.  [Tyee]

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