Cariboo-Prince George no longer a Conservative stronghold: Derrick
With a tear in her eye, long-time NDP supporter Joy McKellar greets Cariboo-Prince George NDP candidate Trent Derrick shortly before he conceded defeat Monday night
By Bill Phillips
NDP campaign organizers in Cariboo-Prince George certainly pushed voters to vote strategically in Monday’s election.
And voters certainly did. The only miscalculation for the NDP was that those strategic votes would go to the Liberals rather than the NDP as Trent Derrick polled third, behind Liberal Tracy Calogheros and winner Conservative Todd Doherty.
“At the end of the day, the voters voted, and they wanted change,” Derrick said. “… With the strategic vote, I think there’s a lot of factors that played into it as well. Todd won with 36 per cent of the vote, we’ve had a sold second and third. It’s no longer over 50 per cent.”
With an Environics poll putting Derrick in the lead just a week before Election Day, the third place was disappointing.
Speaking to supporters, Derrick said if there is one good thing to take away from the result it’s that the riding is no longer a Conservative stronghold.
“It’s going to be a dogfight every single election,” he said.
Derrick said the campaign has been a learning experience and one of the things he’s learned is that people do care.
“It showed me the true character and amazing people out there and how much passion for the community and the riding there is,” he said. “People have put their heart and soul forward, not for me, they did it for believing in a better Canada. Sixty-four per cent of the people wanted a better Canada, wanted that change.”
Derrick said he believes the NDP ran a strong campaign.
“At the end of the day, we did everything we could,” he said. “… We left our hearts out there and we bled orange.”
Comments
I think a lot of the ndp campaigns got sucked into the whole vote swapping, and strategic voting charade. IMO the whole set up was a liberal rouse from the get go with the CBC as its biggest pimp.
Its always sad IMO when you have people that will vote ‘strategically’ rather than for there own absolute best interest, and abandon their choice as to the best candidate. Just the idea of influencing a vote by suggestion, rather than knowledge and debate, I think goes against the whole soul of a democracy.
The ndp though is known not to take the fight to other political entities when they are playing low ball with them. Its a weakness that keeps them in the political wilderness. I was surprised the ndp went along with the whole vote swap and strategic voting concepts when they should have come out both barrels blazing against that; and then rattling off their own merits that differentiate their policies.
Trent Derrick ran an honest campaign and nothing to be ashamed of. With this experience it can only help him in future endeavors.
Mulcair’s urgent message that the NDP’s avowed goal is to get rid of Harper obviously hit a brick wall in these two local ridings! If the concept of strategic voting had been understood by local NDP supporters we would have had two more Liberal ridings with representation in Ottawa! Alas, now we are relegated to being represented by an impotent opposition!
However, it still is a great day to wake up to!
Prince George. I seriously doubt that you could call the Conservative Opposition impotent. That was true of the NDP Opposition, however they have been relegated to the position they deserve. Third.
The Conservatives will keep the Liberals feet to the fire, and will be an effective Opposition.
Trent, my political beliefs may not align with yours. But you are a very good man. you will be in politics soon.
Unfortunately, it was your goodness and your popularity which denied Tracey of her post.
Thanks
If Trent and the NDP didn’t mislead the local voters with his fake polls it may have been a Liberal win here. Its good to see Harper go, but because of strategic voting Tracy fell 2500 votes short.
The NDP has much to be proud of, despite the seats lost. By and large, they ran an extremely honourable campaign and, given where we started from, they saw the urgent step was to take seats from the rightfully despised Harper regime. That backfired for a number of reasons, but this has been a very good lesson for the progressive vote in Canada. At the riding level, we have to get much better at coordinating our votes. Best of all, we can see that a non-Tory vote is possible in our own region.
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