A few interesting trends came out of the latest provincial election, no matter who wins in the end.
- The Losers
The first election trend that is inescapable is the loss of votes for Christie’s Conservatives. It’s pretty obvious that, as many business-friendly parties have discovered in the past, a constant stream of “Economy, economy, economy” with nothing new in the way of policies to back it up becomes very tiresome. The voting public understands something that Christie doesn’t; we like businesses to make money so that they pay taxes to fund government services. So, even when she grabs full credit for single-handedly bringing the economy to a decent level, Christie has lost the interest of the voters.
- The Great Divide
Second trend is nothing new, just an increasing phenomenon: the left wing holds the urban areas, the right wing holds the rural. This holds true in United States as well, with the Democrats consolidating their hold on New York and California, and the Republicans getting the Deep South and the West. Except for the notorious Swing States, which are urban areas devolving into rural as their industrial economic base crumbles.
And in British Columbia and our neighbor to the south – especially the US with the notorious College of Electors – this movement has resulted in the sparsely-populated rural ridings holding a disproportionately large balance of power on a per-voter basis. Which is undemocratic, but…
- Electoral Reform
Our society has been changing rapidly. Too rapidly for some. The pleasant part of the equation is that the forefront of change has been in the liberal urban areas, where values like equality, acceptance, and diversity are growing. The flip side is the rural areas, where the people are less flexible. These people see their way of life and their old-fashioned values being eroded, and instead of progressing they become more entrenched in their beliefs through fear.
Since the holier-than-thou progressives are rather quick to utilize their slightly-less-than-majority ruling margin to steamroller the rest of the country in their progressive direction, this leads to an increase in divisiveness and a decrease in cooperation.
So we have an ironic situation where an undemocratic slant to the system protects some less-democratic-leaning citizens from being overwhelmed in an undemocratic way by their more-democratic-leaning compatriots.
Churchill wasn’t the first to remind us that democracy is a lousy form of government, but it’s better than any of the others that have been tried. Fortunately democracy is a work in progress, and if we have the public will, we can improve it. Canada’s form of Westminster Democracy has been a thousand years or so developing, and it’s not too bad. Just a few holdovers from feudalism like a non-elected Senate are holding it back. The Americans tried to create a new form all at once and messed it up rather badly, the violent and authoritarian tendencies of the slave-owning, revolutionary Founding Fathers poking through at random spots like thorns on a flower stem.
So it’s up to us to polish the rough spots. Electoral reform, anyone?
- Societal Drift
Fourth trend is a gradual change in the candidates, especially in heavily ethnic urban areas like Surrey. It used to be that there would be a scattering of visible minority candidates, mostly for the left-wing parties. In this election it wasn’t unusual to have a South Asian candidate running against another South Asian or someone of another visible minority, and one of them aligned with the right wing. This has been explained by some commentators as the progression of the immigrant population from the working poor to the entrepreneurial class. This is a good sign for the province, evidence that our society of immigrants is integrating as it should, rather than ghettoizing as has happened in many other countries.
- Growing Green
Fifth trend is the rise of the Green Party to 16% of the popular vote. Minority government or not, they are getting to the position where they are going to command the farther left vote, forcing the NDP to a more centrist position, which will give them a better chance to win an election. Stealing votes from the soft conservatives (or true liberals) who aren’t wildly enthused about their right wing allies in the Provincial Liberal party is the only way the NDP can beat splitting the vote of the left with the Greens and allowing the right to win again.
So as we wait for the law of averages to decide whether we get a democratic government or not, we have cause for cautious optimism. No matter how you spin it, the Liberal leadership came up empty on this election, and the 8:01 club (Those caucus members primed for their first opportunity to oust their leader if she lost the last election) will be sharpening their daggers. Anything to keep from having to watch Christie’s Biscuit in her pretty blue hard doing nothing but photo ops for another four years.