By-elections have been called

Posted October 1, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: By-Election

Premier Gordon Campbell today pulled the trigger on the provincial by-elections. The date will be October 29, 2008. The date was a little earlier than I expected, mainly that the campaign period of the by-election will intersect with both the federal and municipal election campaigns.

Vancouver-Fairview and Vancouver-Burrard were relatively close contests in 2005 - Burrard was settled by a handful of votes when BC Liberal Lorne Mayencourt (currently running in Vancouver Centre federally for the Conservative Party) squeaked out against NDP Tim Stevenson. In Fairview, NDP Gregor Robertson (currently running for Mayor of Vancouver) beat BC Liberal Virginia Greene.

Now, the main candidates for the by-election in both Burrard and Fairview are settled - in Burrard, BC Liberal Arthur Griffiths vs. NDP Spencer Herbert. In Fairview, BC Liberal Maureen MacDiarmid will face off against NDP Jenn McGinn.

Please note I will put candidates’ materials, if they have any, on this site on request. They will be linked to the respective riding pages on the top of this site. Also be warned I will project a winner closer to the election date (after the Federal election).

Various candidates from other parties have announced they will field candidates, but nothing is known yet whether they will formally apply for the nomination. They have up until October 6, 4:30pm October 16, 1:00pm to file in their papers.

There are a few complications with the date that I can imagine - one is that the people in these ridings will be voting 3 times within a month - federally, provincially and municipally. So this by-election date is great for political action junkies. Unfortunately for all parties, their support base is likely to be tapped due to the federal election. Yours truly is quite consumed with the federal election and will not be able to analyze it in full depth until after October 14.

The easy prediction is voter turnout will be a lot worse than the 2004’s Surrey-Panorama Ridge by-election 52%. The difficult prediction will be to predict who will win it - can the BC Liberals manage to break tradition and actually have the government party win a seat in a by-election? This has not happened in a long, long time.