If the federal election were to happen tomorrow, the new riding of Burnaby North-Seymour would go to the New Democrats, according to a poll commissioned by a prominent anti-pipeline organization.
The Dogwood Initiative, now based in Burnaby, raised funds to commission Insights West to poll roughly 300 residents in four federal B.C. ridings between May 8 and 11.
The results for all four – including Courtenay-Alberni, Cowichan-Malahat-Langford and Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke – showed the NDP in first place.
“We’re looking for races that look volatile,” said Kai Nagata, spokesperson for the Dogwood Initiative.
The organization chose the four ridings because they all had tight races in the last election and many Dogwood supporters, Nagata explained.
According to Nagata, the pipeline was a major issue for voters, something he’s hoping prospective politicians acknowledge.
“If they can’t buck that party line and they’re just going to stick with their talking points, we’re going to show they are going to lose,” Nagata said.
Insights West asked residents who they would vote for if the federal election were held tomorrow. In Burnaby North-Seymour, the results showed the NDP with 35 per cent of the vote and the Greens in second with 19 per cent, while the Tories held 15 per cent.
The poll also asked participants for their Number 1 election issue (results for that question will be released in the coming days) and queried their thoughts on tanker traffic on the West Coast. The poll also showed that most residents in all four ridings felt B.C. would not benefit from more oil tankers and that Canada was not doing enough to deal with climate change. Most residents also felt that government surveillance had gone too far and that the country needs a new federal voting system.
The margin of error for the Insights West poll is plus or minus 5.6 percentage points for each riding. The larger the margin of error, the less reliable the poll’s results are.
Burnaby-Douglas NDP MP Kennedy Stewart was not surprised by the results.
"Dogwood polled particular ridings, but I’ve seen other polling, both internal and public, that basically confirms what they are saying. I haven’t seen anything for Burnaby, but for the Island, that seems very consistent,” Stewart told the NOW.
Riding history:
Burnaby North-Seymour was created after the last election, when a federal commission redrew the riding boundaries, splitting Burnaby-Douglas in two, and combining the top half with a sizeable chunk of the North Shore. At the time, NDP members opposed the new riding, and pundits speculated it would go to the Tories, as the North Shore tends to lean right. Stewart announced in 2013 he would run in the next election in the new riding of Burnaby South instead. Newcomer Carol Baird Ellan, a retired judge, is running for the New Democrats in Burnaby North-Seymour. Her main competitors are Conservative Mike Little, a city councillor on the North Shore, and Green candidate Lynne Quarmby, an SFU professor.
NOTE: This article was embargoed for 9 p.m. on Wednesday and set to auto-publish at that time, but due to a website glitch with our content management system, it briefly appeared online Wednesday afternoon. We deeply apologize if this caused any trouble for Dogwood's Kai Nagata and other reporters working under the embargo. It was an error; it was completely unintentional.
