York Region resisting NDP orange wave

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 8, 2015
By Simon Martin

The 2011 federal election will be remembered for the “orange wave” that swept across Quebec making the New Democratic Party (NDP) the official opposition. A similar “orange crush” crashed through Alberta in the 2015 provincial election as the NDP ended decades of Progressive Conservative rule.

But as the NDP gains steam in other areas of the country, the party remains a distant third through much of York Region.

It’s as though dykes - stretching from Steeles Avenue in Markham, all the way to Lake Simcoe in Georgina - have held back the “orange wave” flooding into York Region.

But will this month’s federal election mark a long-awaited breakthrough?

Gregory Hines certainly hopes so. He is the NDP candidate for Markham-Stouffville. “Right now, people are fed up with the status quo,” he said.

The first-time candidate said he believes the NDP has suffered in York Region because a lot of NDP voters have voted Liberal in recent elections to get the Conservatives out of power. “I think there is a big shift now because people think we can win,” he said. It would take a gigantic wave for the NDP to win a seat in York Region in 2015.

While the party certainly made some gains in the 2011 election - winning Official Opposition status - it still failed to get more than 22 per cent of the vote in any of York Region’s seven ridings. It placed third in each riding, except York-Simcoe, where it finished a distant second place with 19.3 per cent of the vote.

While the NDP received 25 per cent of the vote in Ontario, it was significantly behind the mark with only 16 per cent of the vote in York in the 2011 federal vote.

And the 2011 results were the best NDP finish in the region in recent memory. In the 2004, 2006 and 2008 federal elections, it finished third in every riding.

The story is much the same provincially as the NDP has finished in third place in every regional riding in the 2014, 2011 and 2007 provincial elections.

There are many reasons for the NDP’s struggle to break through in York Region, York University political science professor Thomas Klassen said.

“Many of the residents like to think of themselves as living in small towns. That’s not really the case anymore, but the values and culture of small towns are still dominant: self-reliance, independence and small government. That’s not fertile ground for the NDP,” he said.

Another reason cited by Klassen for NDP woes is York Region’s family median income of more than $90,000, which is higher than most other places in Ontario.

“Higher income families tend not to vote NDP,” he said.

That doesn’t mean the NDP doesn’t have hope going forward in the region, but to break through, Klassen suggested the party target one or two ridings and pour resources into those areas.  “Keep doing this for several elections in a row for both federal and provincial elections,” he said.

That’s exactly what NDP candidate for Newmarket-Aurora, Yvonne Kelly, is trying to do. She helped provincial candidate Robin Wardlaw campaign in the riding and felt the NDP’s message resonated.

“We made some real inroads in the riding and won some polls in different areas,” she said.

That being said, Kelly knows it is still an uphill climb. In 2011, the NDP finished 5,000 votes behind the Liberals and 22,000 behind the Conservatives.

The good news is the party’s message of creating jobs, building community supports and protecting the environment is being embraced by more and more people in the area, she said.

“We are building a strong movement. It is kind of like a rolling stone.”

Even though Kelly is excited about how her campaign has gone so far, she said there she still runs into voters who don’t know whether to vote for the NDP or the Liberals. “There are people desperate to get rid of the Harper government,” she said. “It’s a struggle for them.”

The notion that the Liberals and the NDP can be thrown into the same bucket is a perception Kelly wants to change. “I don’t see that we have a whole lot in common at all,” she said. “I said right from the very beginning, if you oppose Bill C-51 (the Conservative’s controversial anti-terrorism legislation), work with me.”

For political strategist Warren Kinsella, it’s no secret why the NDP has been pitching shutouts in the region. “They don’t take it seriously,” he said. “Voters aren’t stupid.”

He pointed to the fact that NDP Leader Tom Mulcair has not visited the region during the election as a sign the NDP doesn’t expect to win a seat here.

However, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau have visited York Region multiple times during the campaign.

Kinsella, the senior campaign strategist to former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and, more recently, the one-time campaign manager in Olivia Chow’s bid to be Toronto mayor, who now runs the Daisy Group, said the list of NDP candidates in York has been historically underwhelming.

The problem for the NDP, Kinsella said, is that the Ontario NDP needs to bring more of its prairie roots to Ontario.

“In urban Ontario, the NDP has the York University pro union in every circumstance feel. It doesn’t work for you in the 905,” he said.

To find the last NDP candidate who has made it to the federal or provincial legislature from York Region, you have to go all the way back to 1990 when Larry O’Connor won the York-Durham riding that included Georgina, East Gwillimbury and Stouffville.

He didn’t really expect to win.

“Tom Mulcair has got a platform that people say, ‘Hey, this makes sense’,” he said. “York Region has a lot of middle class. I think that is his strength.”

While optimism abounds from NDP, history shows it will be incredibly difficult for it to win a seat in York Region.

Can the NDP break up the shutout? Richmond Hill NDP candidate Adam DeVita thinks so. It’s difficult to see the gains the NDP has made the past 15 years because it was starting from so far behind, he said.

Now, the party has to work to put ridings in play in the region. For DeVita, that starts with building the base in the area.

“We have to get people thinking about voting NDP before they will vote NDP.”