The good news: May can win
According to the Oracle Research survey commissioned by www.greenpartystrategy.ca, Green party leader Elizabeth May is in second place in Saanich-Gulf Islands (SGI) with 28.3 per cent and is locked in a tight three way race with the Conservatives at 30.4 per cent and the Liberals at 26.4 per cent. All three candidates are within the poll’s margin of error of 4.9 per cent.
If these results were to hold until the election, it’s likely that the candidate with the best organization on the ground will emerge victorious, an area where incumbent Gary Lunn has already proven in past elections that he has the edge.
In fact, Will Horter, co-ordinator of the Conservation Voters of B.C. believes May's success will depend on running a professional, disciplined campaign with a focus on identifying likely Green voters and getting them to the polling stations on election day. “It's all down to the numbers,” he said. “If her list isn't to 15 or 17,000 people by now, they have no hope.”
According to GPC sources, the SGI team has identified, as of August 2010, 3,500 supporters up from 1,600 in January.
Among the 17 questions posed in the Oracle poll, Greenpartystrategy.ca asked two of those traditional swimsuit competition questions that we discussed in part one of the series: what party would you support and what party’s candidate would you support.
Greenpartystrategy.ca has weighted these specific results in the poll to reflect the voter proportion between the two geographic regions within the riding.
In the straight up generic party question, the Green party was in third place at 19.1 per cent, just ahead of the NDP (18.6 per cent). The Liberal party was in front with 37.0 per cent and the Conservatives were second at 25.3 per cent.
But when asked which candidate they were likely to support, May’s support rose to 28.3 per cent, just behind Conservative incumbent Gary Lunn. The Liberal party’s candidate Rene Hetherington dropped to third at 26.4 per cent.
Only Lunn and May pulled their respective parties up when candidates were identified in the question. NDP support fell by 3.7 per cent and Liberal support fell by 10.6%.
For an historical perspective on the 19.1% generic party result, Green party candidate Andrew Lewis won 16.71 per cent of the vote in SGI in 2004, the last time the party made a serious push in SGI.
A few noteworthy numbers also emerged from the results for party strategists to consider.
May is by far the most popular candidate on the Gulf Islands, an area where the Green party candidate has historically polled strongly. In the 2004, election Andrew Lewis topped Lunn in 21 of the 28 Gulf Islands’ polls (including the advance poll).
However, the bad news for May is that she’s also the least popular candidate on the Saanich Peninsula where over eighty per cent of the riding’s voters reside.
May could win every eligible vote on the Gulf Islands but fail to have a sufficient plurality going on to the Peninsula to carry the riding.
A definitive gender gap also emerged in the poll with May in first place among female voters at 35.3 per cent and Hetherington not far behind at 30 per cent. However, Lunn is leading among male voters with 39 per cent, while May is a distant second at 24.8 per cent.
While sixty-six per cent of respondents believe it would be good to have a Green party MP in Ottawa, the percentage dropped to fifty-seven per cent who felt it should be Elizabeth May. Neither question included a specific reference to SGI, but both results point to room for growth for the May candidacy.
In a similar question posed shortly before the 2004 election, Oracle Research reported that 50.1 per cent of the riding’s residents believed it would be good to have a Green MP in Ottawa.
And finally a double-edged result: only 29 per cent of respondents were familiar with Elizabeth May when asked to rank their familiarity on a scale of one to five, but of those, sixty-one percent had a favourable opinion. More on the flip side of this in part two of the series.
Next up: The bad news
The greenpartystrategy.ca poll was conducted by Oracle Research who has conducted surveys for the Green party since 2004.
A total of 400 voting age residents of Saanich-Gulf Islands were interviewed in the survey. Interviews were conducted between the days of August 5th and August 10th 2010. Greenpartystrategy.ca will be releasing the full report at the end of this series.
Dermod Travis is former Director of Communications for the Green Party of Canada and organized the Green Party's 2006 National Convention
Comments
Probable By-Election November 1st,2010
Dermod,
Would it too much to ask for members of the GPC to give Kate Storey, who represents Dauphin-Swan River,Manitoba some consideration? She will probably be going into a By-Election around November 1st,2010.( Inky Mark-Cons.-retiring.)
Thank You,
Gina
Georgina Rheaume
Kildonan-St.Paul
Manitoba.
P.S. A nice transfer of money from central office directly into that EDA would be appropriate.Since she is too much of a Lady to ask herself- I will...
A McAllister Poll Released Today
Camille Labchuk is reporting on a McAllister poll which shows a two-horse race in SGI between May and Lunn, with Hetherington well back of the pack. See her blog: http://www.camillelabchuk.ca/2010/09/03/new-poll-proves-elizabeth-may-ca... the blog contains a link to the Victoria Times Colonist story about the poll.
Lunn is at 34%; May at 32%; Hetherington well back at 17%.
Two polls now released on the same day for SGI after months of nothing. Very interesting indeed. Both show that May is very much in this race.
"Sudbury" Steve May
the only important poll is a ballot
With out a real election this is purely propaganda.
I understand how spoon feeding the voting sheeple these things is just a tool in your arsenal but making anything out of it is pure wishful thinking.
I say with out all the candidates themselves announced the parties alone are irrelevant.
The dynamics of the election are far from set and based on this type of thinking I can say with absolute certainty some will most definitely be very surprised as the writ drops.
And the players emerge.
Take a poll a week into the campaign for a real clue.
The chicken or the egg?
On August 31, 2010, GPS announced on that it was going to release some poll results. They were posted above on or before September 3. The post is not dated but its first comment was posted on the morning of that date.
The GPC poll that "Sudbury" Steve May referred to above was also released on September 3. The GPC news release says that it, too, was released on the morning of September 3.
Is there any connection between the timing of the release of the two polls or is it just a coincidence that they were both released at about the same time?
Markus Buchart
Winnipeg, Manitoba
(Not a Green Party member)
Chicken or egg response
While generally I’m always a little suspicious of coincidences in politics, in this case I happen to believe it’s likely just that.
Dermod
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