Women in the next legislature

Looking at the women running, there are 90 out of the 255 candidates for the three main parties that are women, most of them will not be elected.

My estimate is that there will be 20 women elected on May 12th, 10 Liberals and 10 New Democrats. This means we will see a small increase in the number of female MLAs in Victoria. In 2005 17 were elected. This would be a small increase in the percentage from 21.5% to 23.5%.

When looking at the two biggest parties, they are running 64 women and 106 men. About 31.3% of the major party female candidates will win versus 61.3% of the male candidates.

The NDP is running a large number of women and could end up with a caucus that is close to gender balanced on election day. This is an improvement from the 2005 election when the NDP elected seven women that represented 21% of the caucus.

The Liberals will retain roughly the same number of female MLAs, but as a percentage of the caucus they will be lower, going from 21% of the caucus to about 15 to 19%.

If, as some of numbers I have been crunching, the NDP really does badly in the election with the Liberals winning 65 seats, as few as six male Liberal candidates out of 61 may end up losing on election day.

The most likely people to get elected that are not either a Liberal or New Democrat are both women, Green leader Jane Sterk and independent candidate Vicki Huntington.