Davenport and Markham--Unionville

The NDP candidate for the provincial NDP in Davenport is going to be Peter Ferreira. He is Portugese and Davenport has a lot of Portugese people but I don’t know whether they would automatically switch their votes just because the NDP candidate is Portugese. The fact that he is Portugese is one of the assets he has if he wants to beat Tony Ruprecht. But his beating the well-established and well entrenched Tony Ruprecht will be difficult. The other problem Ferreira faces is that he seems to be the same Peter Ferreira who spent time as a Catholic school trustee in Mississauga, which is several kilometers from Davenport. He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat on Mississauga City Council last November. On the election website for city council he says he has long lived in Mississauga. Therefore he seems to be something of a parachute candidate for Davenport and doesn’t seem too have many roots in the community in which he is running. It is for that reason that I would still give Ruprecht the edge.


On the electionprediction.com page for Markham—Unionville, somebody has gone and predicted a PC win for physiotherapist Ki Kit Li because it is a traditional Conservative seat as well as because of “strong credentials” for the Tory candidate. Here is the full quote, by someone called “Full Name”: “Considering that the by election of 2007 had one of the lowest number of registered voters voting, that this is traditionally a PC riding, and that there is a PC candidate that has strong credentials and has been an active member of the community, I would say that John Tory and his team will probably gain back this seat for the PC Party” To go from “strong credentials” and “active member of the community” to “probably gain back this seat for the PC Party” is a bit of a stretch. The Tories winning Markham—Unionville is always physically possible but “probably”??????? Full Name gave too far a certainty. There are several things to refute this post. I want to post them on the site but I can’t get the submission page to work. Firstly Full Name is not taking into account the federal results in Markham—Unionville. In the 2006 Federal Election, Markham—Unionville was in the top 5 of strongest Liberal results across the whole country. Markham—Unionville came out in 5th place out of 308 with 61.9% of the vote, one of only 6 ridings to vote more than 60% Liberal in the whole country. Secondly, Full Name fails to take into account Michael Chan’s roots in the community. Thirdly, about the by-election and its turnout, by-elections often have low turnout and Markham was no exception. One reason the turnout was low was no doubt the cold (though not snowing) weather. That being said, I do not see low turnout as a bad sign for the Liberals. In by-elections, those who turn out to vote are a lot more likely to be those who are not satisfied with the government and wish to vote against the governing party. We saw this occur significantly in York South-Weston, as well as to a lesser extent in Parkdale-High Park. Markham does not appear to be an exception to this rule. I’d say that this factor played out in Markham. Yet despite this factor the Liberals still easily beat the Tories. Also notable is that I was involved in the by-election campaign for the Liberals and did a lot of sign counting. The Liberals easily won the sign war (only counting signs on lawns) by a 2 to one margin. Some of the committed Liberals may not have voted on election day because it was cold out. Based on what I saw of canvass results as well, there appeared to be a largely Liberal result. So there is no questioning that that support for the Liberals was there and it was not some aberration due to turnout. Based on what I saw in the election campaign, it was a little surprising to see a result of 34.9% for the Tories. One may have expected a maximum result of about 30% but on election day it was a little higher than this. My theory is that the 34.9% result was because of the factor I mentioned earlier – those wishing to vote against the government have a higher tendency to vote in a by-election. So my guess is that a higher turnout would thus likely have seen a stronger Liberal result. The next factor Full Name leaves out is that if the by-election results are applied only to the new Markham—Unionville part of the riding, the results would almost certainly be higher for the Liberals and lower for the Tories because the new riding loses some of the strongest areas for the Tories to the new Oak Ridges—Markham riding. Thus in Markham—Unionville we may have seen something like Liberal 53%, Conservative 31%. By my theory an increased turnout would likely have expanded the Liberal margin further. So really the Liberals have some distance to fall before they lose Markham—Unionville. It would take a real Tory sweep and a humiliating disaster for the Liberals before they would lose Markham—Unionville. The Tories would probably have to take 45% or so of the vote province-wide for Markham—Unionville to fall to the Tories. So for Full Name to predict a probable win for the Tories at this point is, in my view, a little far from reality.


On one more point, I am tired of waiting for the provincial election. I wish I could already be helping out Michael Chan and rooting for Dalton McGuinty and I am tired of the suspense of having to wait for the provincial election to officially start.