Editor’s note: This story has been updated with more recent polling data from the Green Party, which was shared shortly after its publication.
Paul Manly, Green Party candidate for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, says he’s the progressive choice to defeat the Conservative’s Tamara Kronis, but in a riding where four different candidates are garnering community support, the race could lean in a different direction according to early projections.
“I’m the one that’s going to beat Tamara Kronis, and we’ve done multiple polls to show that,” Manly told The Discourse on Saturday. “I’m a strong fighter. I’m going to get into the House of Commons, and I’m going to fight for the people in Nanaimo—Ladysmith.”
Meanwhile, NDP candidate Lisa Marie Barron said Manly has said similar things before.
“This is what the Greens do,” she said. “In the last election, the Greens put out a poll that said that Paul Manly was going to win the election. Well, I won the election. Now, they’re putting out another poll that says that they’re going to come in second.”
New poll shows Liberal momentum in Nanaimo-Ladysmith
A new poll conducted by Oraclepoll Research for the Green Party between March 29 and 31 shows support for the Liberals in Nanaimo—Ladysmith has surged with the party now in third place with 27 per cent of decided voters saying they would vote Liberal (up 21 percentage points since February).
Liberal Leader Mark Carney had the 45 per cent of respondents saying they had a favourable opinion of him, the highest of any federal leader, and 28 per cent of voters thought that Liberal candidate Michelle Corfeild would be a good MP for the riding.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s favourability rating was 34 per cent (down 10 percentage points from February), Green Party co-leader Johnathan Pedneault had a 29 per cent favourabilty rating , while 14 per cent of respondents had a favourable opinion of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh (down nine percentage points).
Thirty-four per cent of respondents said they had a good impression of Paul Manly when he was a Green MP in 2019-2021 (down one percentage point) while 32 per cent of respondents said Conservative candidate Tamara Kronis would make a good MP (down eight percentage points) and 23 per cent had a favourable opinion of NDP incumbent Lisa Marie Barron’s time in the House of Commons (down three percentage points).
The poll puts the Conservatives in first place locally with 34 percent of decided voters in Nanaimo—Ladysmith saying they would vote for them (down seven percentage points since February.) Twenty-nine per cent said they would cast a ballot from the Greens (up one percentage point). NDP support has fallen to nine per cent (down 13 percentage points), and two per cent of respondents said they would vote for the People’s Party of Canada (down one percentage point). Thirteen per cent of respondents said they were undecided (down six percentage points).
The poll, which was a live-telephone survey inclusive of cell and land lines, spoke with 600 people and is considered accurate, within four per cent, 19 times out of 20.
The poll showed that support among Conservatives and Green voters was the strongest at roughly 80 per cent for both parties, while 64 per cent of Liberal and NDP voters said their vote was strong, followed by PPC voters at 56 per cent.
PPC supporters were most likely to say they might change their vote at 33 per cent, followed by Liberal and NDP voters at 30 per cent.
A poll by the same company, conducted in mid-February before Paul Manly had announced his candidacy, asked Green voters if they would vote for another Green Party candidate if Manly didn’t run and 92 per cent said they would, with five per cent saying that they would not.
The Liberal Party’s national numbers have recently passed the Conservatives to 44 per cent according to polling aggregator 338 Canada. The Conservative Party’s support has dropped to 38 per cent, the NDP’s support has fallen to eight per cent while Green support across the country has ticked down to two per cent.
Early projections by polling aggregator 338 Canada suggest the Conservative candidate is currently in the lead to take the Nanaimo—Ladysmith electoral district, followed closely by the NDP, Liberal and Green parties.
Nanaimo—Ladysmith ‘one of the most interesting ridings’
The February Green Party poll also asked Liberal and NDP supporters if they would vote for the Green Party if it was a two-way race between the Green Party and Conservatives. Eighty-eight per cent of NDP voters said they were somewhat-to-most likely to vote Green in that scenario, followed by 78 per cent of Liberal voters.
However, both the NDP and Liberals are also running candidates.
Michael MacKenzie, the Jarislowksy chair in trust and political leadership at Vancouver Island University, says the Nanaimo—Ladysmith riding is “one of the most interesting ridings in the country.”
“It’s a genuine four-way race between the NDP, the Conservatives, the Green Party and, this time in Nanaimo, the Liberals are projected to get more votes than last time. So now we have to factor the Liberal Party into this already very competitive riding,” he told The Discourse.
Barron told The Discourse people are telling her they are worried about Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre winning the election and “making more cuts at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet.”
“The NDP are the only party that is able to stop Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives,” she said.
When asked what she based that statement on, she responded that it was from talking with people at the doors.
Both Manly and Barron questioned the accuracy of 338 Canada, saying it didn’t show them winning in 2019 and 2021 respectively.
“338 has never gotten it right here,” Manly said. “When I was elected, they never predicted that I was going to win.”
An archived version of the 338 Canada website showed that Manly was “likely to win” in 2019 and that the race was a “toss up” in 2021, both of which were correct projections within the margin of error.
MacKenzie cautions that the 338 Canada projections “have quite a large margin of error, so it can go in any direction, but it does give you a sense of who’s ahead and who’s behind.”
In a close race, getting out the vote will be key says political scientist
Manly said the Liberals “have no ground game” in the riding and “haven’t elected someone here since 1940.” He also slammed the NDP for failing to “make proportional representation part of their confidence and supply agreement” with the Liberals and mused that it might be regretting that decision with “plummeting” poll numbers.
Green Party co-Leader Elizabeth May said that if Manly didn’t run for the Greens in Nanaimo—Ladysmith, “then you have a Conservative Member of Parliament.”
Barron concedes that the rising poll numbers for the Liberals are having some impact on what she’s hearing at the doors.
“When I go to the door and I talk to somebody, this comes up: ‘I’m thinking about voting Liberal,’” she said. “Then I have a conversation about how it can look different nationally versus locally. In Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we know that the NDP is the party that can beat the Conservatives.”
MacKenzie thinks Barron is in a difficult race this year and can’t afford to lose much of the 29 per cent of the vote that she got in 2021.
“There’s quite a large majority in Nanaimo—Ladysmith against the Conservatives, but the Conservatives are currently projected to win, and that wouldn’t happen in another more proportional electoral system,” he said. “If the Conservatives are going to lose in this riding, the non-Conservative vote has to coalesce around one of the candidates, and currently it’s not doing that.”
It may come down to what party is better at getting out the vote on election day and in the advance polls.
“If you can pull out your vote, you can get enough to win,” MacKenzie said. “Lisa Marie Baron won last time with about 29 per cent of the vote, but the Conservative candidate was not far behind her. So if you can pull out a few more people you can win in a competitive race.”
Electoral reform advocated by both Greens and NDP
Both the Green Party and the NDP have long-advocated Canada’s first-past the post system be reformed, with the Greens advocating for a “proportional representation” system and the NDP arguing for a “mixed member proportional” system.
“A lot has changed since Canada first became a country, and we need to see our electoral system evolving and adapting to the needs of Canadians today,” Barron said. “That means that we need a system that is reflective, that allows people to cast their votes and then to see those who are elected into Parliament are reflective of those votes.”
During her stint as MP, Barron tabled motion M-86 calling for the creation of an independent, non-partisan National Citizens’ Assembly.
Barron also held a series of town halls in the riding on electoral reform before the debate on her motion.
Mackenzie, who served as a policy analyst with the citizen’s assembly on electoral reform in Ontario in 2006, said that it’s a “very good way to assess the electoral system” as political parties have vested interests in how elections are conducted and a citizen’s assembly would be a “randomly selected group of people representing the population as a whole.”
“If we’re going to reform the electoral system at the federal level or even in any one of the provinces, I think that’s now the best practice,” he said.
While both Ontario and B.C. have put electoral reform to referendum, in 2007 and 2018 respectively, support for changing the first-past-the-post system fell short in both cases.
During the 2015 election, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau promised that it would be the last election using the first-past-the-post system, but abandoned that promise after forming his first government. After resigning as prime minister in January, Trudeau said he regretted not moving forward with a ranked ballot system.
“Vote for what you want and you’ll get what you want,” Manly said. “If you’re always voting with this strategic strategy in mind, you’re getting what you don’t want.”
Liberal candidate Michelle Corfield and Conservative candidate Tamara Kronis did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting interviews for this story.
