As people try to figure out what went wrong for Liberal environmentalist Briony Penn in her bid to defeat Conservative cabinet minister Gary Lunn in Saanich-Gulf Islands, some will look to the Green Party.
With most polls reporting, Penn was about 4,000 votes short of Lunn, taking about four percent less of the vote. The Green candidate, Andrew Lewis, had well over 6,000 votes—plenty to put Penn over the top if they'd gone to her.
“We got squeezed by strategic voting in this riding and it failed,” said Lewis. There were many efforts to get environmental and progressive voters to vote for Penn, but they did not pay off, he said. “People who voted strategically for the Liberal wasted their votes.”
As it happens, even the NDP candidate who withdrew three weeks ago, Julian West, had almost 3,500 votes. If Penn couldn't attract more votes from someone who wasn't even running a campaign, there's little reason to believe she should be able to take votes from Lewis.
Strategic voting is a product of a dysfunctional electoral system, Lewis said. “We've got to move past this and push for electoral reform,” he said. “You can't complain about the results if you're not involved in changing the system.”
Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee's Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. You can reach him here.
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