[LINK] “After high hopes of 2008, Green party has faded”

[rfmcdonald]

In the Toronto Star, Chantal Hébert is skeptical of the Canadian Greens’ chances now that everyone’s talking about saving the environment.

It has been a while since the Green Party of Canada posted a poll on federal voting intentions on its website. As of yesterday, the last numbers on offer dated back to Oct. 27. Based on an Ipsos Reid poll, they showed the Greens overtaking the NDP in Quebec and moving in on Jack Layton in other significant parts of the country.

It is easy to see how the party's webmaster could have found those numbers irresistible and even easier to understand why he or she is now finding it hard to update them.

A bit more than a week after the poll was published, four Green candidates were crushed in a series of by-elections. On average, the party earned 3 per cent of the total votes cast in the four ridings. That's less than half of its 2008 election score.

In Montreal's Hochelaga, the NDP outvoted the Greens by a ratio of six to one. In the one riding at play in British Columbia – the province where May is hoping to win a seat in the next election – the NDP score was 49 per cent to the Green Party's 4 per cent. So much for overtaking the NDP!

This was the first electoral test of the federal parties since last fall's general campaign. In the leadoff to the by-elections, a number of other polls had reported double-digit support for the Greens. One explanation for the gap between polling hopes and voting realities is that the party does best with voters ages 18 to 25, the group least inclined to follow up on its intentions by casting a ballot.

A less charitable explanation could be that the Green party, under May, reached a plateau last fall and has since been dropping off the radar.