Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonRad
I checked out the neighbouring riding of Beausejour, and the poll by poll results confirmed a suspicion for me.
Dominic LeBlanc is the anointed King of Beausejour, and they could run his dog as a candidate in the riding in perpetuity and the dog would be continually elected.........
But, the GRN candidate placed second in the riding with 27% of the vote. All of the polling stations that voted for the GRN candidate lay in the eastern part of the riding, centred around Sackville and extending up to Port Elgin and Cape Tormentine. There is a sharp dividing line between the Acadian part of the riding and the anglophone part of the riding.
Sackville is a university town (Mount Allison), and certainly some of the GRN supporters likely were environmentalists, but it should be noted that the LIB, CON & NDP all had francophone candidates, pandering to the Acadian majority. The GRN candidate on the other hand was anglophone (and unilingual I believe), so I have a strong suspicion that a good chunk of her support was as a result of a protest vote in favour of anglophone rights.......
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Kent and Beausejour are a really good example of NB's shifting demographics.
Kent has always been affiliated with strong francophone and Acadien history and roots who in turn almost usually vote Liberal. With NB's demographics being the way we are we're seeing an aging-out of the Francophone population...and with interprovincial migration being the way it is that Francophone population is being replaced by Anglophones from either elsewhere in NB or from elsewhere in Canada.
What we get from this is LeBlanc, the engrained Acadien incumbent, barely scraping away with a winning margin in the northern part of the riding (Richibucto), losing out on votes to the not-so Acadien GPC candidate Reinsborough. Southern Kent, Shediac, and Dieppe are the remaining strongholds for LPC/LeBlanc in that riding, as Sackville seems to really like the GPC/GPNB as of late, for reasons you've outlined. Likewise, what used to be a very Francophone Acadien area in Cap-Pelé is now steadily becoming more English, making it more accessible to non-Liberal votes. You can see the GPC/CPC vote base creeping in to Cap-Pelé from the East.
You can also see this in the neighbouring riding of Miramichi-Grand Lake, where the GPC was in second place in Rogersville (likely thanks to their local MLA), which is otherwise a very strong Liberal area.
With NB's population shifting i'm really curious to see how the riding redistribution shakes out in 2023/2024. Ridings like Moncton and Fredericton will be tightening up as they densify, which will leave some fun redrawing to be done for the rural remains of the province. The more that Kent becomes Anglophone, and the more suburban Moncton that the Beausejour riding may include, the less likely a Liberal win is given the current voting environment.