Video and numbers for now. More to come.
Liberal, Bob Rae: 14,187, 59.2%
NDP-New Democratic Party, El-Farouk Khaki: 3,299, 13.8%
Green Party, Chris Tindal: 3,263, 13.6%
Conservative, Donald Meredith: 2,982, 12.5%
AAEV Party of Canada, Liz White: 123, 0.5%
CAP, Doug Plumb: 97, 0.4%
Total number of valid votes: 23,951
Polls reporting: 275/275
Voter turnout: 23,951 of 85,976 registered electors (27.9%)
Join us…
“Comment from Jason Cherniak
Time: March 18, 2008, 10:21 am
Join us…”
No. You join us. We’ll stand up for our ideals and won’t clam up in Parliament like Harper’s new flunky, Stephane.
The Green Party is a party of peace. How could we join the architects of the Afghanistan fiasco? How could we join a party that puts its own electoral problems ahead of the lives of Canadian troops?
When Dion and your Liberals chose to allow Harper to extend the absurdly flawed mission, he lost the respect of most Greens and also of a large number of Liberal supporters. The unsuccessful, backward-moving war will continue unabated for another two years thanks to Liberals Manley and Dion. People will die so that Dion doesn’t have to face the voters.
There are now 2 antiwar parties in Canada. It seems like Canadians who are opposed to the idiocy of war are mostly choosing the Greens rather than the NDP.
Congrats to Chris for nearly tripling the GPC share of the vote. For the first time, we are officially neck and neck with our antiwar friends, the NDP. That’s pretty much where the opinion polls put us pre-vote. So much for soft support.
Congrats also to Bob Rae. His share was remarkable. Not as remarkable as Chris’s but still… ;)
Jason: Thanks for the compliment. ;-) There was a funny moment last night at Bob’s victory party when his campaign manager Chris said “welcome to the party,” and I was like, “yeah…but, just this party, not the party.” He responded by letting me know there were membership forms at the back.
Seriously though, see this post.
Jim and other Greens, thanks for the congrats! We’re all a part of this. Let’s not turn this thread into a debate or argument between any two parties though. Today is a day to celebrate.
Point taken. I’ll play nice from here on. :)
Congrats to our other GPC candidates, too. Jim Harris has a good blog post on the improved performance.
By way of a general gripe, I’m disappointed in the turnout. I heard it was 19%, nationally. TO Centre got out the vote to the tune of 27%. That’s apparently better than the typical 22% for a by-election. Still, with turnout so low, a party that can really GOTV can do exceptionally well — disproportionately well, even.
The turnout shows just how isolated most people are from both local news, and events of real importance to their lives. It’s so much easier to abdicate responsibility for good governance to someone else, and it’s too bad that is so dangerous to the causes of peace and liberty.
Joining the Liberals is in a sense an abdication of personal responsibility to an organization that has lost its way and has no more meaning left except ‘to win’.
I love you so hard Chris Tindal.
Everyone who pitched in did an INCREDIBLE JOB!
Greens certainly are a force, and I am only more excited to see how much we can grow in the future.
Congratulations Chris, Jeff, Jason, Robyn, and all the other dedicated members of Toronto Center :)
Chris… congratulations this is a big achievement. I look forward to seeing what you are able to accomplish the next time out.