Monday, February 23, 2009

Women candidates in the upcoming election

In 2005 the NDP had a problem with women managing to win nominations to run as a candidates in the election. When the dust settled on election day, the Liberals had 10 women in their caucus and the NDP only 7. The Liberals had a further four more candidates that were close versus the NDP only having one.

To deal with this seeming systemic problem within the NDP, the party reserved seats in which women would be the candidates in 2009. So how are things looking 11 weeks before the election?

In the 34 ridings the NDP "currently holds", there are 32 candidates nominated, nine of them are women.

In the 42 Liberal ridings this is six out of 36 nominated. Clearly the NDP is doing better than the Liberals in having women candidates in their 'safe' seats, though the Liberals still have six nominations left and the NDP only has two, so it is possible that the Liberals may come closer to the NDP.

When one looks at the ridings where a parties nominated candidate has a reasonable expectation of getting elected, things look a bit different. The Liberals have 11 women candidates with a reasonable expectation that they might win and the NDP has 11 as well. The Liberals have four women that are running that are not realistically going to get elected. The NDP has nine women in the same situation.

There are only two people running the May 12th election that have any chance of getting elected and are not a New Democrat or Liberal and those are independent Vicki Huntingdon in Delta South and Green leader Jane Sterk in Esquimalt Royal Roads.

On May 13th I expect us to wake up with 20 women elected as MLAs - 9 New Democrats and 11 Liberals.

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