Waiting for the byelection results..

I encourage all of you hardcore Greens to run as a candidate. (If you are reading this blog, you are probably a hardcore Green.)

It is a delicious experience. Voting for yourself is something you will always remember :-)

Tonight, we are waiting for the results from the four by-elections. Since the last general election in 2006, GPC has not been doing very well in by-elections. There have been five, and in four of them, our vote percentage dropped by an average of 60%. This is embarassing for a young, growing party.

The one byelection where we did very well (300% increase) was LNC, where the whole party rallied behind Elizabeth May.

A great part of the failure in other byelections has been because many of them were in Quebec, where - like the Liberals - we need to build our strength.

So tonight we have a chance to test our strength. There have been some overly-optimistic "poll" results showing us running second here and there. These are, unfortunately, not real polls, conducted rigorously. I wish these polls were predictive, but I fear not.

But so many smart people have been putting so much hard work into these by-elections that I am very optimistic. Jim Harris, our National Campaign Chair, Elizabeth May, Adrianne Carr, and so many others have been campaigning hard. I contributed by doing websites for Lou and Robin, long-distance :-)

To my mind the magic number is 10%. Double digits means that we are a serious player in that riding. It also means that the local GPC EDA will get 60% of their campaign expenses refunded by Elections Canada. THAT means that in the next election, that riding will be able to mount an effective, well-funded campaign from day one.

Best wishes to Robin, Dan, Chris and Lou. Enjoy tonight - I wish I was there!