Voters planning to cast a strategic vote in Vancouver Centre apparently no longer need worry about voting for Liberal Hedy Fry just to stop the Conservative candidate from winning. It seems a Liberal-insider associated with Hedy Fry’s team told Green candidate Adriane Carr about the results of a recent internal poll conducted in Vancouver Centre by the Liberal Party. Normally, information of this kind is kept a closely guarded secret.
According to Carr, while the poll found Hedy Fry to be in the lead, surprisingly, it found the Green Party candidate in a close second, catapulting her up from fourth from the very tight second, third and fourth grouping of the 2008 election. Conservative Party candidate Jennifer Clarke, a no show at the West End Community’s all-candidate’s meeting on Sunday, April 17th, had fallen back into third place from the Conservative Party’s second place placing in 2008. NDP candidate, Karen Shillington, trailed a distant fourth, down from the NDP’s third place finish in 2008.*
There is a strong likelihood the leaked polling information is correct. Unlike previous elections, in this one, both the NDP and the Conservative Party are running relatively weak unknown candidates in the downtown riding. Clarke replaced the Conservative party’s former rising-star candidate Rachel Greenfeld, who resigned in February after she declined to commit to running a second time if she was defeated by Hedy Fry.** In comparison, Adriane Carr, deputy leader of Canada’s Green Party, is much better known in the riding and liked by many for her personable qualities.
What’s more curious however is the fact that Adriane Carr was shown such information at all. Is all well in “Club Hedy”? Speculations aside, what matters more is that the internal poll suggests that, after 18 long years, Hedy Fry’s appeal may be waning. If so, the implications could prove interesting for voters, especially when it comes to the pro-strategic voting messaging the Liberal Party loves to promote. Why? Because if Adriane Carr is in second place, which seems likely, the rationale for voting for nobody other than a Liberal in Vancouver Centre just to stop Stephen Harper no longer applies.
Now, in an unexpected turning of the tables, those who don’t much care for Hedy Fry – or the Liberal Party or its leader Michael Ignatieff – can vote strategically for the Green Party, with no worry a Conservative might get in. What’s even more ironic is that small “c” Conservative-leaning voters, annoyed with Rachel Greenfeld’s pressured departure, might vote strategically for the Green candidate this time around, if that’s what it takes to knock Hedy out of the game to open things up in the next election.
Either way, if Adriane Carr is elected, the residents of Vancouver Centre will make political history simply for the fact of electing what could be Canada’s first Green Party MP.
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*For more about the race in Vancouver Centre, see the Georgia Straight article: www.straight.com/article-383562/
** For more about Rachel Greenfield’s resignation as the riding’s Conservative candidate see: www.cbc.ca/news/
