Month: October 2020

Opinion Polls reflect the opinions of a tiny sliver of the population. What’s been happening in Canada now for decades is that these Opinion Polls are reported as though they were news. When people read articles that report these numbers as facts, people who want change are led to believe their vote doesn’t matter because the candidate they want to elect can’t get elected. So they don’t vote, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. This is one means of vote suppression, and it explains why many people have tuned out of politics and don’t even vote.

Toronto Centre has been a Liberal “safe seat” for decades. (TL:dnr Safe seats are another form of vote suppression arising from the First Past The Post voting system Prime Minister Trudeau promised to replace with his oft repeated electoral reform promise in 2015. But when the vast majority of citizen input and expert testimony resulted in a recommendation for #ProportionalRepresentation, Mr Trudeau pulled the plug on his own process, because #FPTP favours his party).

When people who know from experience (as 27 years of Liberal domination have taught Toronto Centre voters) that the candidate they want to represent them has almost no chance of winning see Opinion Polls that suggest they have no chance of winning, they need to make a leap of faith to believe there is any hope of their vote winning them representation.

And so Annamie Paul asked Toronto Centre voters to be daring. And she inspired people who don’t usually vote to vote for her.

By-Elections are generally ignored by the Main Stream media so many people don’t even realize there is an election on. So voter turnout is much lower than usual in a by-election. But the Green campaign to elect Annamie Paul made enough noise to inspire around 5% more voters than the York Centre by-election that was going on at the same time.

The consensus was that it would have taken a miracle to elect Annamie in Bill Morneau’s riding. And yet she very nearly managed it.

Next time she will.