Here’s why Elizabeth May’s Green Party is drawing so much voter attention

Here’s why Elizabeth May’s Green Party is drawing so much voter attention

By Shachi Kurl, Executive Director

Among the whoppers politicians tell is that they don’t pay attention to polls. That’s baloney. With fewer than six months until an expected federal vote, they’re poring over every dataset they can find.

The numbers continue to portend bad things for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. Many left-of-centre voters who pulled together under the red banner in a stop-Harper movement have jumped ship. Some have gone to the Conservative Party. But despite a continued and commanding lead in the most recent measures of vote intention for Andrew Scheer (his party is nudging 40 per cent popular support; Scheer himself is now seen as best prime minister), another party leader is likely to wear an even wider smile these days.

Elizabeth May appears to be having a moment. She has long been more personally popular than her federal party-leading peers. Now, like dandelions in a field untreated by pesticides, Green support is starting to spread.

The party has bloomed since a disappointing 2015 election that saw its percentage of popular vote drop to a mere three per cent, with only May returned to the House of Commons. But since then, the Greens have flourished in some provincial races – holding three seats in British Columbia’s legislature, and forming the Official Opposition on Prince Edward Island.

For the rest of this piece, please view it on the Ottawa Citizen’s site, where it was initially published.


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