Durham By-election results.
What does it tell you when one candidate trounces all others but the voter turnout is less that 28%?
My wife said enthusiastically…
“I hope this predicts the kind of results we need in the next general election”!
She wants a Conservative majority government under Pierre Poilivre and for the Canadian public to unceremoniously kick Trudeau out of office never to be seen in politics again. A similar fate for Chrystia Freeland and Jagmeet Singh is also welcome.
What else does the Durham election result indicate?
With a voter turnout just shy of 28%, average Canadians no longer see any point in voting, likely for a range of reasons such as:
“My one vote doesn’t matter in the bigger picture”. Just 32,401 electors still believe it matters out of 116, 259 registered voters. Faith and trust in electoral democracy is abysmal as these numbers show.
When this “popularity contest” is over, elected MPs in Parliament will continue to do whatever they and the federal government czars wants. The “people of state-granted privilege’ no longer consider what the citizens of Canada want. They also refuse to be guided in their duties by the Canadian Bill of Rights while they carry out their duties as our elected representatives and unelected “public servants”.
Valiant efforts like that of Trish Conlin and her PPC campaign team received the same kind of results that any other small political party usually gets. All “fringe” parties are systematically excluded from “the public square” by the Cabal of Political Power - the CON, LIB, NDP, Elections Canada and those subsided media voices such as the CBC, CTV, Toronto Star, Globe & Mail. Trish’s 4% of the vote is an excellent result given the headwinds she faced. For all of her door-knocking efforts, only 1,435 constituents voted PPC.
Unions are known to “get out the vote” in large numbers and encouraging their members to support either LIB or NDP candidates. Approximately 75% of all government workers are required to be union members. As such, every member is a captive audience to easily reach with messages urging them to vote “in solidarity with their brothers and sisters” and in lock-step with the preferences of the union leaders. The fact that the LIB abd NDP vote count was a combined 33% is a reflection of this behind the scenes activity. This is how unionism in Canada lays a heavy hand on the scales of electoral democracy to favour the lobbying efforts of the “organized labour” special interest group.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says
“Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” a group … generally understood to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens.”
Does the results of the Durham by-election live up to that definition?
AI, skewed algorithms, mail in ballots , electoral last minute changes will figure big in the next election including racial and religious ( Especially Muslim )voter base strategies . It will be more American Dem style shenanigans brought North.
It appears to me that the "captive audience" of unionized civil servants and public sector employees are either not a large demographic in Durham, or were part of the 72% that stayed home.
It is sad that the PPC cannot get a bigger turnout, especially when there is such an opportunity as a by-election where the usual "vote-splitting" argument is moot.
That said, I have read some of Mr Jivani's writing, specifically in the book "The 1867 Project". Despite my predisposition towards the PPC, I think that Durham has elected a worthy representative who will stand for Canadian values.