John Sewell’s CityState column in this week’s eye weekly explains Olivia Chow’s defeat thus:
She lost by about 1,345 votes. (ed: He's using figures published on election night, when 50-odd polls had yet to report. The correct margin is 800.) Green Mark Viitala attracted 1,607 votes, but it's optimistic to think that those votes would have gone to the NDP if the Greens weren't in the race -- those voters might not have voted at all. The real problem for Chow was that conservative-leaning votes in the riding rushed over to Ianno to block Harper.
The theory that the riding’s Red Tories swung to Ianno, giving him the margin he needed, actually does explain quite a lot.
Chow lost on Monday by exactly 800 votes. The Tory candidate in the riding, David Watters, got 4,605, or 8.65% of the vote.
In 2000, in the redistributed results for of Trinity-Spadina (ie. the 2004 boundaries of the riding projected backward on the 2000 election), the combined votes of the Tories and Alliance were 5,443, or 12.84%. 12.84% of the total 2004 vote in Trin-Spadina would have been 6,838 votes.
So on Monday, the riding had 2,200-odd ex-Tories, disaffected Tories, exiled Tories, call them what you want to, who in the past had voted either PC or in theory Alliance, who were looking for a place to park their ballots.
There isn't any reason I can think of why somebody who voted for the Alliance in 2000 wouldn't want to vote for the CPC this year; so they'd pretty much have to be Tories in the old-fashioned sense.
Centrist Red Tories voting Liberal are going to be an ongoing liability for the NDP.
Posted by Patrick at July 2, 2004 03:30 PM