[ISL] On the import of yesterday's general election in Prince Edward Island

[rfmcdonald]

My Facebook feed was full last night of Islanders, resident and otherwise, tracking the general election on Prince Edward Island. With 85.9% turnout, the outcome can be taken to be a reasonable reflection of the human environment of Prince Edward Island. That environment, as noted by the Canadian Press, is changing. It may one day very soon be true that politics on the island will not be genealogical, a matter of inherited and periodically reinforced ties of family and fealty, but rather ideological, involving actual competition.

This is exciting!

A strong election showing Monday by third parties that once struggled for slivers of Prince Edward Island’s vote is a warning to Tories and Liberals that generations-old political loyalties are fading, say political commentators.

History professor Ian Dowbiggin of the University of Prince Edward Island says the gains made by the NDP and the Green party, which each won about 11 per cent of the popular vote, represents a historic shift that won’t be easily erased.

“When you get over 20 per cent of the total number of votes, it’s got to reflect a changing of political allegiance, especially among young people,” he says.

“The people who were voting yesterday for the Greens and the NDP weren’t simply old hippies with pony tails voting their heart.”

The Liberals won their third straight majority under rookie premier Wade MacLauchlan, dropping from 20 seats to 18, while the Tories took eight seats and the Green party claimed its first seat in the legislature.

Dowbiggin says the Liberal win shows the electorate is comfortable with the former university president, the province’s first openly gay premier.

He also says the Greens and NDP still face huge obstacles in fundraising, candidate recruitment and a first-past-the-post system that works against parties that don’t have a strong chance of forming government.

But the old days of predictable swings of the majority of the 27 ridings on the Island from one major party to the other after two to three terms in power are being challenged.

The NDP’s share of the vote shot from 3.2 per cent in 2011, when they seldom attracted more than 200 voters in most ridings, to almost winning a Charlottetown seat and quadrupling their overall support.

Green leader Peter Bevan-Brown swept to victory in the riding of Kellys Cross-Cumberland, with his own total of 2,077 votes equalling two thirds of what the entire party was able to muster in the last election.