If Stephen Harper’s proposed new riding boundaries are applied in British Columbia, the Conservatives will strongly benefit, the Vancouver Sun reports.
If Stephen Harper’s proposed new riding boundaries are applied in British Columbia, the Conservatives will strongly benefit, the Vancouver Sun reports.
If the 2011 election results were applied to proposed new election boundaries, the Conservatives, who took 21 of 36 B.C. seats in the 2011 election, (with 46 per cent of the popular vote), would take 29 of 42 seats under the new boundaries. The NDP would lose two of their 12 seats, while the Liberals and the Green party would maintain their current seat count.
Analysts, however, caution the federal Tories not to expect electoral hegemony in B.C based on these new boundaries. Support for the Conservatives has been sliding, largely due to the government’s support of the unpopular Northern Gateway pipeline, and weakened support for fisheries and the Coast Guard. Analysts also add that the Tory success from the 2011 election was largely due to a Liberal-NDP vote split that may not occur in 2015, the next federal election.
The Conservatives plan to draw up 30 new ridings due to changes in population density. Ontario will get 15 of those seats, B.C. and Alberta will each take six, and Quebec three. Pollmaps.ca shows that the Conservatives would benefit in every province but Quebec and win 25 of the 30 new seats, if the 2011 popular voting results were applied to the 2015 election.