Nathan Grills, 21, is confident the Green Party will take Victoria in the upcoming federal election.
“The Green wave is spreading and I don’t think it’s a question of whether we’re going to take Victoria, but how many ridings we’re going to take with us,” says Grills, the party’s western outreach co-ordinator, who recently graduated from the University of Victoria.
It would be easy to dismiss Grills’ enthusiasm as youthful naivete -- the party has only ever elected one MP, leader Elizabeth May.
But Grills could be right. The party has major momentum in Victoria.
Since 2013, the city has been represented provincially by Andrew Weaver, B.C.’s first and only Green MLA. And in the November 2012 federal byelection, the Greens finished just a few points behind the NDP, capturing 34 per cent of the vote and knocking the Conservatives from their second-place status.
Grills analyzed poll-by-poll data from election night in 2012 and says if the whole riding had voted like those who showed up to campus polling stations, “it would have been a Green landslide.”
In recent elections, polling data often shows younger voters lean toward smaller, more left-wing parties.
Blogger Eric Grenier recently analyzed polling data from before the 2011 election and found 64 per cent of those aged 18 to 29 supported the NDP, Liberals or Greens, while 28 per cent had supported the Conservatives.
Meanwhile, among those 60 and older, 50 per cent supported the Conservatives.
The preference among youth for the smaller, more left-wing parties is also apparent if you look at the 31 ridings home to large university campuses. In the 2011 federal election, the NDP came out on top in 14 of these 31 “university ridings” -- almost half of them.
The Liberals also outperformed their Canada-wide results in university ridings, taking eight of the seats -- about one in four -- despite only winning about one in 10 seats nationwide.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, took only about one-third of the university ridings, despite getting a majority of the 308 seats nationwide.
What’s especially interesting when considering the student vote is that the last federal election happened in May 2011.This one is taking place on Oct.19.
During the last election, many young people had already left campus, heading to summer jobs in other ridings -- and far away from political activists like Grills, whose campus Green club aims to help get out the vote.
This time students will be on campus -- as they were in Victoria in November 2012 when the Greens almost broke through.
Grills isn’t the only one who thinks this could translate into a bigger impact for student voters.
University of New Brunswick professor Paul Howe has studied youth voting and believes targeting young voters could be a winning strategy – if only in a handful of ridings.
“Students are concentrated at the universities and colleges and that does make it easier to target them and encourage them to participate,” he says.
“If it’s a riding that’s a close one -- a swing riding -- targeting young voters could make good sense.”
Howe says the 2014 victory of David Coon, New Brunswick’s first provincial Green Party representative, is anecdotal evidence that students’ preferences can make an impact. Coon represents Fredericton South, which includes the University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University.
Still, Howe says some parties may dismiss potential student voters because of the stubborn trend that youth are about half as likely as seniors to vote.
Statistics Canada estimates about 39 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 cast ballots for the 2011 federal election, compared to 75 per cent of people aged 65 to 74.
Overall, about 60 per cent of eligible Canadians turned out to vote in the last election. A similar gap was observed in the previous three elections.
The turnout gap between young and old is so large pollster Nik Nanos concluded after the 2011 election that the Conservatives may not have won a majority if young people had voted as much as everyone else.
Grills, of course, knows all about the challenge of getting more youth to the ballot box, and he says his campus Green club is more prepared than in 2011.
The UVic Greens club now has 350 members, who can be mobilized on Facebook and Twitter, to knock on doors, and to sit at tables on campus where they explain the Green Party platform to students, which he says is focused on “fighting climate change, improving democracy and building an economy that works for everyone.”
The club also organizes fundraisers, including a recent one aimed at Victoria’s Island Sexual Health Society’s clinic.
“That was an opportunity to talk about our policies on women’s rights, (LGBTQ) rights and preventative health care,” he says.
What’s more, Grills says, it was an opportunity for students to “make a connection between the political issue (and the) huge impact of sending more Greens to Ottawa.”
Another thing Grills and team talk about is how voting requirements have changed. This time around a voter will need to bring photo ID with his or her current address, or two pieces of non-photo ID, at least one of which shows the current address.
That’s because legislation known as the Fair Elections Act -- pushed through in the spring of 2014 -- tightened up rules around the third way to vote: vouching.
It used to be enough to have another qualified local voter swear at a voting place that a person lived in the riding. Under the new rules, voters without proof of address can only be vouched for in writing.
Grills thinks the changes to vouching will make it harder for students, who move around a lot and are less likely to have photo ID that matches where they’re living while attending school.
The Canadian Federation of Students, a national advocacy group funded by university student fees, also thinks the changes to vouching could limit the student vote.
The group has held protests, launched online awareness campaigns and even filed a constitutional challenge to the legislation.
An Ontario judge ruled against the CFS -- and its partner, the Council of Canadians -- in July when they attempted to get an injunction that would have temporarily put a stop to some aspects of the legislation.
Ironically, Professor Howe thinks a possible strategy to boost the youth vote could be a campaign where students feel they’re fighting back against an “unfair elections act” by bringing more students out to vote.
Either way, there will be many more students on campuses across the country this time around to potentially coax into voting.
