[LINK] "NDP studies new electoral boundaries with eye on GTA"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Joanna Smith highlights a troublesome fact for the NDP. As much ground as the party has gained over the past decade, culminating in last year's electoral breakthrough, the party is still weak in suburban areas, both the City of Toronto's own internal peripheries and the wider Greater Toronto Area. Critically, census data indicates that the most rapid population growth, hence the most new seats, is occurring in these suburban areas. The NDP will have to find some way of breaking an emergent Conservative stranglehold over the suburbs if it's to be a candidate for party of government.

New Democrats are planning to expand their appeal across the Greater Toronto Area while keeping an eye on proposed changes to the electoral boundaries that could affect their chances in the downtown core.

[. . .]

Eight Toronto ridings went orange during the federal election last year.

The idea was to focus efforts in the ridings along the Bloor-Danforth subway line, but the party knows the key to expanding for the next election — and any serious shot at forming government — is found in the regions surrounding the city.

It appears the proposed changes to the federal electoral boundaries may not be much help on that front, according to a study by the demographic analysis firm Pollmaps.ca that examines what would happen if the votes from the 2011 election were distributed along the proposed new boundary lines.

The poll-by-poll analysis suggests that if voting trends remain stable, the Conservatives would pick up 13 new seats in Ontario — mainly in suburban areas — and the NDP would get just two more seats in the Scarborough area and Hamilton.