There has been quite a bit of talk over the last couple of days (weeks) on whether the SSM legislation could quickly turn from a Liberal victory to a defeat as the Liberal stance alienates the “ethnic” vote (I will use the politically incorrect short-hand to make this easier) since they tend to support the traditional definition of marriage. One of the reasons that I am conservative is that I can’t help but question conventional wisdom so my immediate question was “is there validity to this or is this wishful thinking by Conservatives?” A quick (and totally non-scientific) study provides the answer.
I found the semi-colon delimited data and started with Ontario (I am from there and I had to start somewhere). I looked at the percentage vote by the winner and determined that if the candidate had greater than 49% of the vote their seat was safe (I told you it was un-scientific) and pulled them aside. These “safe” seats told a story right away.
Riding Candidate % of vote % margin
Ajax--Pickering Mark Holland 49.77% 16.14%
Bramalea--Gore--Malton Gurbax S. Malhi 49.54% 18.95%
Davenport Mario Silva 50.69% 16.56%
Don Valley East Yasmin Ratansi 54.62% 26.63%
Don Valley West John Godfrey 59.79% 31.48%
Eglinton--Lawrence Joseph Volpe 60.24% 35.19%
Etobicoke Centre Borys Wrzesnewskyj 58.28% 29.89%
Etobicoke--Lakeshore Jean Augustine 50.24% 19.67%
Etobicoke North Roy Cullen 63.32% 44.64%
Huron--Bruce Paul Steckle 49.79% 18.73%
Kingston and the Islands Peter Milliken 52.45% 29.33%
Markham--Unionville John McCallum 66.31% 43.82%
Mississauga--Brampton South Navdeep Bains 57.16% 33.07%
Mississauga East--Cooksville Albina Guarnieri 56.70% 30.67%
Mississauga--Erindale Carolyn Parrish 54.37% 22.42%
Mississauga South Paul Szabo 51.67% 18.04%
Mississauga--Streetsville Wajid Khan 50.56% 18.83%
Oak Ridges--Markham Lui Temelkovski 51.73% 18.21%
Oakville M.A. Bonnie Brown 52.01% 16.66%
Ottawa--Vanier Mauril Bélanger 49.17% 24.98%
Pickering--Scarborough East Dan McTeague 56.98% 28.99%
Richmond Hill Bryon Wilfert 58.48% 33.60%
St. Paul's Carolyn Bennett 58.39% 38.02%
Scarborough--Agincourt Jim Karygiannis 64.08% 43.09%
Scarborough Centre John Cannis 56.65% 33.39%
Scarborough--Guildwood John McKay 57.53% 34.80%
Scarborough--Rouge River Derek Lee 57.92% 40.05%
Scarborough Southwest Tom Wappel 49.46% 25.68%
Thornhill Susan Kadis 54.58% 20.12%
Toronto Centre Bill Graham 56.53% 32.78%
Vaughan Maurizio Bevilacqua 62.96% 39.28%
Willowdale Jim Peterson 61.39% 38.28%
York Centre Ken Dryden 54.79% 28.52%
York South--Weston Alan Tonks 59.83% 38.62%
York West Judy Sgro 64.74% 49.45%
Ajax, Etobicoke, Mississauga, Scarborough…these areas have high concentrations of recent immigrants to Canada and are exactly the people who are said to believe in the traditional definition of marriage. But look at those margins of victory, 20%, 30%, 44%!
These margins are so high I decided to not dig into demographic numbers any further. Sorry folks, but in the urban Ontario ridings it will take a lot more than SSM to win the day.
However that does not mean there are not a few seats that could switch. Jerry Pickard (Liberal) won Chantam-Kent-Essex by 407 votes over Dave Van Kesteren (Conservative). Rose-Marie Ur (Liberal) won Middlesex-Kent-Lambton by 164 votes over Bev Shipley (Conservative). Paul Macklin (Liberal) won Northumberland-Quinte West by 313 votes over Doug Galt (Conservative) and Marlene Catterall (Liberal) won Ottawa West-Nepean by 1380 votes over Sean Casey (Conservative).
Furthermore, if the Liberals don’t walk the middle correctly on this issue they could bleed votes to the NDP on the issue, since they are honest on their position. Hamilton East-Stoney Creek and Hamilton Mountain could both flip to the NDP (although it is unclear how much of Sheila Copps effect comes into play in Hamilton) and Olivia Chow lost by only 805 votes in Trinity-Spadina.
But, as I said, I don’t think this issue will be the difference maker…add it to the list however.
