Elizabeth May will be lonely no more in the House of Commons. In a byelection on Monday, Nanaimo-Ladysmith voters chose Green Party candidate Paul Manly to keep her company.
With Manly鈥檚 election following closely on Green MLAs being elected in Prince Edward Island, May has reason to hope that the federal and provincial Greens are on a roll.
Of course, byelections are not general elections. It鈥檚 easy for byelection voters to slap down the ruling party or elect candidates who don鈥檛 survive the next general election.
Nevertheless, the results in Nanaimo offer lots of scope for post-mortem analysis. The federal NDP could ill afford the loss of the seat that Sheila Malcolmson gave up to switch to provincial politics. And the federal Liberals must be chagrined to finish fourth behind the Conservatives and the NDP.
Federal and provincial politics are usually separate, but discontent with sa国际传媒 NDP policies could have spilled over into the federal vote.
Compared with the 2015 general election, the Greens鈥� share of the vote surged from about 20 per cent to 37.3 per cent, while the NDP dropped about 10 percentage points and the Conservatives rose by a couple of points.
It seems unlikely that this result is the beginning of a Green wave that will crest this fall, but it鈥檚 clear that many voters on both the left and right are angry with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau鈥檚 government.
Even discounting the quirks of byelections, Trudeau must take a hard look at his message and his performance over the months before the writ is dropped.
The voters in Nanaimo-Ladysmith are not the only ones in a restive mood.
