At British Columbia’s election to elect a new Provincial legislature on May 12, the Green Party polled 8% of the total vote cast in all districts in the province. See this newspaper story, which labels the showing “poor”.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
2001 12.4%
2005 9.2%
2009 8.1%
Hey, it’s Duverger’s Law:
http://rangevoting.org/TPHist.html
Canada already has a long-standing successful 3rd party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), which has been around for 60 years, won many provincial elections and served in federal coalition governments. The NDP has always been very strong in BC. They co-opted most of the Greens’ agenda in this election.
The BC Greens have gone the way of the UK party, etc – trying to be an alternative Center-Left enviro party; but more Center than Left. I just don’t see this sort of move helping the Greens internationally. Capitalism having once again created a disaster, I can’t help but think some sort eco-socialism is more likely to be of electoral use.
BC has its own two-party system, Liberals and NDP:
http://www.elections.bc.ca/docs/stats/2009-ge-ref/GE-2009-05-12_Party.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Columbia_general_elections
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner.
85 seats x 8.1 / 100 = 6.89 >>> 7 Green seats