2006 Green Election Results
We had the most successful election ever in the Green Party's history. We made significant gains in winning 665,940 votes - an increase of 14.4%.
- We won almost 100,000 more votes for the Green Party in this election than in 2004.
- Almost three times as many candidates won more than 10% of the vote - the magic threshold to receive reimbursement for 50% of campaign expenses. In 2004 only three candidates broke 10% - in 2006 it was eight!
- In Quebec we won almost 147,000 votes - roughly the same number of votes that the NDP won in 2004.
- Our Albertan candidates won about as many votes as the party won in all of Canada in 2000.
- Sean Maw in Wild Rose, Alberta placed second - ahead of the Liberal and NDP candidates; and Shane Jolley in Bruce Grey Owen Sound and Danielle Roberts in Calgary West both finished third.
- More than 50,000 Canadians have signed the petition to ensure the Green Party is included in the televised leaders debates. The TV broadcasters were proud that 10,000 Canadians emailed questions to ask the leaders of the old-line parties - but five times as many Canadians wanted to see us included in the debates.
- During the 2004 election only one polling company prompted for the Green Party â“ today the most frequently cited polling companies in this election - Strategic Counsel used by the Globe and Mail, SES used by CPAC, EKOS used by the Toronto Star and Ipsos-Reid all now prompting for the Green Party.
- With a fair electoral system we'd have at least 12 seats in parliament today (see Fair Vote Canada site at www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/).
- We have had a profound impact on Canadian politics already. On Saturday January 7, 2006 Prime Minster Martin announced a $1 billion water clean up. If you look at the exact same announcement two years ago it was a $25 million announcement. The announcement during the election was 40 times greater. Now I am deeply concerned about water quality in Canada - but even I don't think that water quality has deteriorated 40 fold in just two years - it may be marginally worse but not 40 times worse. Could there be anything else that would motivated Martin to commit to water clean up? Well 18 months ago the Green Party presented 308 candidates and won almost 600,000 votes and we just ran another 308 candidates and won 665,000 votes â“ so 616 candidates later and 1.25 million votes later the PM found new commitment to water quality. We are incredibly powerful and our dramatic rise is forcing every other party to adopt our issues.
The biggest disappointment, of course, was not being included in the televised leaders debate. Had we been included we would have we would have doubled our vote and elected Greens, in my opinion. Remember that:
- In 1993 the Bloc had never elected anyone under its' banner, was included and won 54 seats becoming the opposition.
- The Reform party won 275,767 votes in 1988, and then in 1993 won 52 seats. The difference? Mr. Manning was included in the televised leaders debate.
- Gordon Wilson, the leader of the Liberal Party in BC, had no seats but was included in the televised leaders debates in the 1991 provincial election and won 17 seats becoming leader of the opposition.
- The BC Green Party's vote jumped from 2% in 1996 to 12.4% in 2001. What accounts for the 640% increase? Adriane Carr's inclusion in the leaders' debate.
Going forward getting included in the leaders debates in the next election will continue to be one of our top priorities.
I am so proud to be a member of the Green Party. We ran the most effective campaign ever in the party's history:
- The Green Party ran candidates in all 308 ridings - just 18 months after the last election - so we have run 616 candidates in under two years!
- Only the Green Party and the NDP ran a full slate of candidates in 2006 - both the Conservatives and Liberals disavowed one candidate.
- A number of campaigns spent $25,000 or more - more than the Green Party of Canada historically used to spend for its' entire central party operations a year!
- BC broadcaster Rafe Mair, the most popular talk show radio host in Vancouver, endorsed the Green Party on the Tyee.
- The Ottawa Citizen endorsed our Ottawa Centre candidate David Chernushenko for the second election in a row (David won 10.2%).
- The Kingston Whig Standard endorsed our candidate Eric Walton over the former Liberal Speaker of the House, Peter Miliken.
- The National Post published an article "Nunavut's Green Hope" talking about our candidate Feliks Kappi in Nunavut because climate change is affecting the Artic at twice the rate of any other region
- Barbara Yaffe of The Vancouver Sun wrote that electing Greens would put the bees in the bonnet of Ottawa.
- Newspapers across the country ran editorials arguing for our inclusion in the debates (see some of them at http://greenparty.ca/inthenews.html)
- Our web site www.greenparty.ca took millions upon millions of hits a week as Canadians were hungry to learn more about the Green Party.
Fun Facts
- Sharon Labchuk ran in Malpeque PEI, and her daughter, Camille Labchuk ran in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe in New Brunswick.
- Thanks to the fantastic media team, we generated more media coverage in this campaign than any other in our history!
- Once again the stats available after the election will show that the Green Party is the most efficient political party in Canada. In 2004 we won a vote for every 86 cents that the central party spent. By contrast the NDP had to spend $5.66 to win each vote, the Conservatives $4.30; the Liberals $3.34 and the Bloc $2.86.
Leaders' Debate
The four leaders' debate were a huge disappointment: first because we were excluded, but more importantly critical issues were not discussed because our voice was excluded. I am proud of the unique positions we took in this election and was the only party talking about:
- Enshrining in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the right of every Canadian to have access to clean air, clean water and uncontaminated soil;
- Dramatic rise in childhood asthma from less than one in every 50 just 30 years ago to more than one in five;
- Predicted doubling of cancer cases in Canada over the next 30 years
- Admitting to the use of Agent Orange on Canadian troops and military personnel and calling for immediate compensation for those suffering from dioxin based illnesses
- Banning the commercial seal hunt
- Health not just health care
- Green Tax shift
Democracy, however, will not be silenced, and we are profoundly grateful to more than 50,000 of Canadians who registered their protests with broadcasters over the unfairness of this decision. These protests make real a difference: the CBC Ombudsman in a normal year receives only 2,000 complaints. The French CBC ombudsman receives only 1,600 complaints a year. Our exclusion from these four debates received over 50,000 complaints - 14 times the normal annual volume in just 56 days.
And we are not going to stop - we will keep running the petition. Keep talking about it. We will break 100,000; then 250,000, then 500,000 then a million. We will not stop till we are included in the next debate!
Democracy Reform
We desperately need to reform our electoral system. Imagine five parties running in every riding and each getting 20% of the vote, but one party getting one more vote in all 308 ridings - that would give them 100% of the seats in Ottawa, with the same percentage of the popular vote as the other parties. Would you call that democratic? Meanwhile, the other four parties with 80% of the vote would not have a single seat. Would you call that democratic? Consider:
- We won over 666,000 votes and received no seats. The Liberal Party won 475,000 votes in Atlantic Canada and received 22 seats.
- We won almost half of the Bloc's 1.55 million votes. The Bloc won 51 seats and we got none. If we had seats proportional to the Bloc's, we'd have 22 MPs.
- If the government had adopted a mixed members system as recommended by the Law Commission of Canada (LCC) (www.lcc.gc.ca/en/themes/gr/er/er_report/er_report_toc.asp), we would have 12 MPs today. The LCC proposes that two-thirds of candidates be elected using our current system with larger ridings and one-third from regional lists.
- We are the only party in this election to have advocated a system of proportional representation that would double the number of women in parliament.
Strategic or negative voting was something advocated by the Liberal and NDP in this election. Let's look at the concept: First identify the party you most loathe and then work to figure out who has the best chance of beating them. You may not like this party at all - you may loathe them too - but you loathe them less. You then hold your nose and vote. But when you vote for bad government to avoid the worst government, the bad news is that you're left with the bad government.
Voters want positive change, and until we change the system we can't expect any better. For an excellent critique of the current electoral system go to Fair Vote Canada's web site www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/
Benchmarking Our Success
Two parties saw their vote fall (Liberals & Bloc); and three saw their vote increase (Conservative, NDP & Green Party):
Party 2004 Vote 2006 Vote Difference Change
Liberal 4,982,220 4,477,217 -505,003 -10.1%
Conservative 4,019,499 5,370,903 +1,351,404 +33.6%
NDP 2,127,403 2,590,808 463,405 +21.8%
Bloc 1,680,109 1,552,043 -128,066 -7.6%
Green Party 582,247 665,940 +83,693 +14.4%
- We won almost 100,000 more votes for the Green Party in this election than in 2004.
- Almost three times as many candidates won more than 10% of the vote - the magic threshold to receive reimbursement for 50% of campaign expenses. In 2004 only three candidates broke 10% - in 2006 it was eight!
- In Quebec we won almost 147,000 votes - roughly the same number of votes that the NDP won in 2004.
- Our Albertan candidates won about as many votes as the party won in all of Canada in 2000.
- Sean Maw in Wild Rose, Alberta placed second - ahead of the Liberal and NDP candidates; and Shane Jolley in Bruce Grey Owen Sound and Danielle Roberts in Calgary West both finished third.
- More than 50,000 Canadians have signed the petition to ensure the Green Party is included in the televised leaders debates. The TV broadcasters were proud that 10,000 Canadians emailed questions to ask the leaders of the old-line parties - but five times as many Canadians wanted to see us included in the debates.
- During the 2004 election only one polling company prompted for the Green Party â“ today the most frequently cited polling companies in this election - Strategic Counsel used by the Globe and Mail, SES used by CPAC, EKOS used by the Toronto Star and Ipsos-Reid all now prompting for the Green Party.
- With a fair electoral system we'd have at least 12 seats in parliament today (see Fair Vote Canada site at www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/).
- We have had a profound impact on Canadian politics already. On Saturday January 7, 2006 Prime Minster Martin announced a $1 billion water clean up. If you look at the exact same announcement two years ago it was a $25 million announcement. The announcement during the election was 40 times greater. Now I am deeply concerned about water quality in Canada - but even I don't think that water quality has deteriorated 40 fold in just two years - it may be marginally worse but not 40 times worse. Could there be anything else that would motivated Martin to commit to water clean up? Well 18 months ago the Green Party presented 308 candidates and won almost 600,000 votes and we just ran another 308 candidates and won 665,000 votes â“ so 616 candidates later and 1.25 million votes later the PM found new commitment to water quality. We are incredibly powerful and our dramatic rise is forcing every other party to adopt our issues.
The biggest disappointment, of course, was not being included in the televised leaders debate. Had we been included we would have we would have doubled our vote and elected Greens, in my opinion. Remember that:
- In 1993 the Bloc had never elected anyone under its' banner, was included and won 54 seats becoming the opposition.
- The Reform party won 275,767 votes in 1988, and then in 1993 won 52 seats. The difference? Mr. Manning was included in the televised leaders debate.
- Gordon Wilson, the leader of the Liberal Party in BC, had no seats but was included in the televised leaders debates in the 1991 provincial election and won 17 seats becoming leader of the opposition.
- The BC Green Party's vote jumped from 2% in 1996 to 12.4% in 2001. What accounts for the 640% increase? Adriane Carr's inclusion in the leaders' debate.
Going forward getting included in the leaders debates in the next election will continue to be one of our top priorities.
I am so proud to be a member of the Green Party. We ran the most effective campaign ever in the party's history:
- The Green Party ran candidates in all 308 ridings - just 18 months after the last election - so we have run 616 candidates in under two years!
- Only the Green Party and the NDP ran a full slate of candidates in 2006 - both the Conservatives and Liberals disavowed one candidate.
- A number of campaigns spent $25,000 or more - more than the Green Party of Canada historically used to spend for its' entire central party operations a year!
- BC broadcaster Rafe Mair, the most popular talk show radio host in Vancouver, endorsed the Green Party on the Tyee.
- The Ottawa Citizen endorsed our Ottawa Centre candidate David Chernushenko for the second election in a row (David won 10.2%).
- The Kingston Whig Standard endorsed our candidate Eric Walton over the former Liberal Speaker of the House, Peter Miliken.
- The National Post published an article "Nunavut's Green Hope" talking about our candidate Feliks Kappi in Nunavut because climate change is affecting the Artic at twice the rate of any other region
- Barbara Yaffe of The Vancouver Sun wrote that electing Greens would put the bees in the bonnet of Ottawa.
- Newspapers across the country ran editorials arguing for our inclusion in the debates (see some of them at http://greenparty.ca/inthenews.html)
- Our web site www.greenparty.ca took millions upon millions of hits a week as Canadians were hungry to learn more about the Green Party.
Fun Facts
- Sharon Labchuk ran in Malpeque PEI, and her daughter, Camille Labchuk ran in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe in New Brunswick.
- Thanks to the fantastic media team, we generated more media coverage in this campaign than any other in our history!
- Once again the stats available after the election will show that the Green Party is the most efficient political party in Canada. In 2004 we won a vote for every 86 cents that the central party spent. By contrast the NDP had to spend $5.66 to win each vote, the Conservatives $4.30; the Liberals $3.34 and the Bloc $2.86.
Leaders' Debate
The four leaders' debate were a huge disappointment: first because we were excluded, but more importantly critical issues were not discussed because our voice was excluded. I am proud of the unique positions we took in this election and was the only party talking about:
- Enshrining in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the right of every Canadian to have access to clean air, clean water and uncontaminated soil;
- Dramatic rise in childhood asthma from less than one in every 50 just 30 years ago to more than one in five;
- Predicted doubling of cancer cases in Canada over the next 30 years
- Admitting to the use of Agent Orange on Canadian troops and military personnel and calling for immediate compensation for those suffering from dioxin based illnesses
- Banning the commercial seal hunt
- Health not just health care
- Green Tax shift
Democracy, however, will not be silenced, and we are profoundly grateful to more than 50,000 of Canadians who registered their protests with broadcasters over the unfairness of this decision. These protests make real a difference: the CBC Ombudsman in a normal year receives only 2,000 complaints. The French CBC ombudsman receives only 1,600 complaints a year. Our exclusion from these four debates received over 50,000 complaints - 14 times the normal annual volume in just 56 days.
And we are not going to stop - we will keep running the petition. Keep talking about it. We will break 100,000; then 250,000, then 500,000 then a million. We will not stop till we are included in the next debate!
Democracy Reform
We desperately need to reform our electoral system. Imagine five parties running in every riding and each getting 20% of the vote, but one party getting one more vote in all 308 ridings - that would give them 100% of the seats in Ottawa, with the same percentage of the popular vote as the other parties. Would you call that democratic? Meanwhile, the other four parties with 80% of the vote would not have a single seat. Would you call that democratic? Consider:
- We won over 666,000 votes and received no seats. The Liberal Party won 475,000 votes in Atlantic Canada and received 22 seats.
- We won almost half of the Bloc's 1.55 million votes. The Bloc won 51 seats and we got none. If we had seats proportional to the Bloc's, we'd have 22 MPs.
- If the government had adopted a mixed members system as recommended by the Law Commission of Canada (LCC) (www.lcc.gc.ca/en/themes/gr/er/er_report/er_report_toc.asp), we would have 12 MPs today. The LCC proposes that two-thirds of candidates be elected using our current system with larger ridings and one-third from regional lists.
- We are the only party in this election to have advocated a system of proportional representation that would double the number of women in parliament.
Strategic or negative voting was something advocated by the Liberal and NDP in this election. Let's look at the concept: First identify the party you most loathe and then work to figure out who has the best chance of beating them. You may not like this party at all - you may loathe them too - but you loathe them less. You then hold your nose and vote. But when you vote for bad government to avoid the worst government, the bad news is that you're left with the bad government.
Voters want positive change, and until we change the system we can't expect any better. For an excellent critique of the current electoral system go to Fair Vote Canada's web site www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/
Benchmarking Our Success
Two parties saw their vote fall (Liberals & Bloc); and three saw their vote increase (Conservative, NDP & Green Party):
Party 2004 Vote 2006 Vote Difference Change
Liberal 4,982,220 4,477,217 -505,003 -10.1%
Conservative 4,019,499 5,370,903 +1,351,404 +33.6%
NDP 2,127,403 2,590,808 463,405 +21.8%
Bloc 1,680,109 1,552,043 -128,066 -7.6%
Green Party 582,247 665,940 +83,693 +14.4%
posted by Rob Budde at
2:23 PM
|
0 comments
