Parkdale High Park By-election

Keep your eye on the by-election this Thursday September 14 in the Ontario riding of Parkdale-High Park. The news in the Globe and the Star this morning strongly suggests an impending NDP win. The Liberals have launched a late campaign attack on NDP candidate Cheri DiNovo. They would have refrained from doing so if they were confident of victory. So either the NDP will win or come close in a riding the Liberals’ Gerard Kennedy won overwhelmingly with 58% of the vote in the 2003 provincial election to the NDP’s 16%.

However, the NDP’s Peggy Nash won this riding in the January 2006 federal election after just missing in 2004. That suggests a large NDP vote that now appears to be showing up provincially. As a footnote, watch the Green vote, the first test of the party since it chose its new national leader Elizabeth May. The Greens received 7% of the vote in 2003. My bet is that the Greens will tend to vote strategically for the NDP (as happened in the last B.C. election) or won’t show up at the polls and their percentage will drop significantly.