Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Labrador By-Election - a good Liberal win but not a sign of Conservative Weakness

Labrador has seen eight general elections and three by-elections since it has existed as a riding unto itself.   In 11 elections only once, 2011, has it not been won by the Liberals.

I had expected to see the Liberals take 60% of the vote give that they had Yvonne Jones as their candidate. She has been a very popular MHA for her part of Labrador and I thought this would mean a significant increase in her vote.

I also thought that Penashue would have seen a significant fall in his vote, he only lost 600 votes over all.  I am not sure what the motivation was for people to want to re-elect Penashue, but he obviously has some sort of decent following.

With 5,814 votes, the Liberals did not really preform all that well when you look at the history of their vote in Labrardor.   Here is the history of the election results

Election Liberal   Conservative    NDP       Others     total  
2013by  5,814 48.2% 3,922 32.5% 2,273 18.9%    50  0.4% 12,059 
2011    4,177 39.1% 4,526 39.8% 2,120 19.8%   139  1.3% 10,744
2008    5,426 70.3%   615  7.8% 1,378 17.9%   302  3.9%  7,787
2006by  5,768 50.5% 4,528 39.7% 1,037  9.1%    82  0.7% 11,467
2005    5,438 51.5% 3,415 32.3% 1,045  9.9%   666  6.5% 10,564
2004    5,524 62.2% 1,400 15.8%   856  9.6% 1,097 12.4%  8,877
2000    7,153 69.0% 1,254 12.1% 1,284 12.4%   677  6.5% 10,368
1997    6,182 50.6%   842  6.9% 4,615 37.8%   573  4.7% 12,212
1996by  4,032 40.5% 3,027 30.4% 1,974 19.8%   730  9.3%  9,963
1993    8,724 77.1% 2,146 19.0%   444  3.9%     0  0.0% 11,314
1988    7,126 53.5% 4,400 33.0% 1,508 11.3%   286  2.2% 13,320

The NDP should be mildly happy, even with Yvonne Jones as their candidate and Justin Trudeau as leader, the Liberals did not get the NDP vote to collapse, in fact the NDP increased their raw vote.  

With the right candidate there is no reason to consider either the NDP nor the Conservatives to be out of the race in this riding in the next general election.

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