As summer comes to a close, the Fall election season in Canada begins
today, with a provincial by-election in Nova Scotia. Voters in the
north-end Halifax riding of Halifax Needham are heading to the polls
to elect a new member of the provincial legislature, to replace
longtime NDP MLA Maureen MacDonald who resigned last Spring due to
health issues. She had represented the riding since the 1998
election, when the NDP tied the Liberals for most seats, but had to
settle for the opposition. She was re-elected in every subsequent
election, even in 2013, when the party was decimated at the polls
after an unpopular term in government.
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| Neighbourhood map |
Halifax Needham covers most of what is known as the “North End”
of the Halifax Peninsula, as well as part of the West End. In the
south, the riding begins at Citadel Hill on the north edge of the
city's downtown, and from there, covers all of the northeast part of
the peninsula. Its western border is Connaught Avenue and Bayers Road
in the northwest and Robie Street in the southwest. The riding
contains the site of Africville, an historically Black neighbourhood
whose inhabitants were cruelly evicted by the city in the 1960s. The
riding also includes CFB Halifax and the Halifax Shipyard and was the
site of the famous Halifax Explosion in 1917. The riding is named
for Fort Needham, a park which contains memorial bells recovered from
a church destroyed in the explosion.
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| Average income in Halifax Needham (2010) |
History
The north end of Halifax is historically the more working class part
of the city, and is home to a large student population. This has made
the riding one of the strongest NDP ridings in the province, and is
likely why the party won the seat in 2013, one of only two seats the
New Democrats won in the Halifax Metro area.
Despite the riding's working class history, the NDP only became
competitive in the 1980s. Prior to MacDonald's win in 1998, the
riding swung between the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives.
After losing in the 1984 and 1988 elections, MacDonald finally
defeated Liberal MLA Gerry O'Malley in the 1998 election, by a large
margin. She handily won the next 5 elections, cementing the riding as
one of the safest NDP seats in the province. However, the 2013
election was much closer, with MacDonald defeating her Liberal
opponent by under 300 votes.
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| List of MLAs since 1933 |
Political geography
When it comes to the riding's political geography, income is a pretty
good indicator of how the area will vote. The northern part of the
riding (Convoy Place) was the strongest neighbourhood for the
Liberals in the 2013 provincial election, and is also the wealthiest
neighbourhood in the riding. The southern part of the riding (North
End) is least affluent neighbourhood in the riding and was the
strongest NDP neighbourhood in 2013. This division was apparent in
the 2015 federal election as well; the southern neighbourhoods of the
riding voted NDP while the northern neighbourhoods voted Liberal.
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| Results by neighbourhood in 2009 and 2013 |
Something new that I have done for this by-election analysis (and
something I hope to continue) is to calculate the partisan voting
index (based on the Cook Partisan Voting Index
used in the US) for each neighbourhood in the riding. This
calculation compares how each neighbourhood voted to the province as
a whole, using the average vote share in the last two elections. For
Halifax Needham, I compared the Liberals and the NDP as those two
parties were the strongest in both of the last two elections in the
riding. The index calculation shows that every neighbourhood in the
riding is more NDP-friendly than the province as a whole, compared to
the Liberals. According to the index, the North End is the NDP's best
neighbourhood (with an index score of +19), while the West End (which
was in a different riding in the 2009 election) is the Liberal's best
neighbourhood (NDP +7).
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| NEW! Partisan Voting Index by neighbourhood |
Outlook
Since winning the 2013 provincial election, the governing Liberals
have enjoyed a considerable amount of popularity in public opinion
polls, while both the NDP and the Tories are well behind. Most polls
over the course of the year have had the Liberals hovering at around
60% of the vote, about 40 points ahead of the other two parties. The
massive Liberal lead in the polls is fuelling speculation that
Premier Stephen McNeil might call an early provincial election, even
as early as this Fall, though such a move has often been disastrous
in Canadian politics.
The lone electoral test the Liberals have had since the last general
election was a series of by-elections held last summer,
which paradoxically saw the Grits pick up two seats previously held
by the NDP, while the NDP won a seat which was held by the Liberals.
The two seats the NDP lost were in the industrial heartland of Cape
Breton, while the NDP's win came in more suburban Dartmouth,
signalling a potential demographic shift in support for the party.
The NDP had been leaderless at the time (Maureen MacDonald served as
interim leader), but have since elected a new leader in Gary Burrill,
known as being a strong leftist. The move is a departure from the
centrist policies of former leader and Premier Darrell Dexter, which
many have criticized as having hurt the party while in government.
The only two parties that have a chance to win today's by-election is
the Liberals and the NDP. The Tories have not been competitive here
since they last won the seat in 1984, though they have subsequently
finished in second in both 1999 and 2006. Federally, the Tories have
not placed second in Halifax since 1997.
The Liberal candidate in the riding is Rod Wilson, a family doctor
and executive director of the North End Community Health Centre.
Hoping to keep the riding orange is Lisa Roberts, a former CBC
journalist originally from Newfoundland. The PC candidate is
businessman Andy Arsenault, while the Greens (who nearly
de-registered as a party this summer) are running computer scientist
Thomas Trappenberg, who was also the federal candidate in Halifax.
If the polls are to be believed, the Liberals should be able to win
this seat, which they had only lost by a few hundred votes in 2013,
as they are polling much better than in 2013, when they narrowly lost
this seat. However, if the recent Dartmouth South by-election is any
indication, the NDP could still hold on to this Metro seat, as it
suggested that the NDP may still be strong in the region. In the
federal election, the Liberals narrowly defeated the NDP in Halifax
Needham (by about 300 votes) despite getting 62% of the vote
province-wide, not too far off where the provincial Liberals are at
in the polls right now. So my prediction is a narrow Liberal win (the Liberals could be helped by the fact that it's a summer by-election, and that means the high student population in the riding might not show up), but
an NDP victory would not be a surprise. What would be a surprise to
me would be either party winning by more than 1000 votes.
A loss for the NDP in one of its safest seats would be a minor
disaster for the party, which has seen its caucus shrink from seven
seats down to five since the last election. With a provincial general
election around the corner, it will make it harder for the party to
win more seats if it is only defending five of them. It is far more
important for the NDP to win this seat than the Liberals, though it
would still be a pretty big boost for the Grits if they win it. Polls
close at 8pm Atlantic Time (7pm Eastern).