I said at green party .ca that new westminster,bc really was where we could/should concentrate …set up and really win

It is a much better choice and for many reasons.
Dawn Black has stepped down to provincial politics and as such there is no incumbent
The riding already votes left and the green are definitely left leaning with their sane anti prohibition cannabis policy…its too bad they themselves do not know how powerful an issue it really is as the others are all afraid of it it seems.
The immediate surrounding area encompasses many ridings with a lot of experienced people…
smack dap in the center of the lower mainland with the best transit in canada

I just do not get the wish to always target some one already a winner instead of an opportunity…in a vacated seat

my 2 cents

Van Isle, as you point out is the furthest west point in Canada, with all the travel logistics problems related to that. It is also the furthest point from Ottawa, intellectually at least, and out here voters believe in a strong constitutency MP, rather than a partisan. That’s why Keith Martin has survived through his Reform/CA/Liberal phases. For someone to parachute in and try to convince us to elect the first Green MP is a non-starter, particularly given the likelihood that May would spend little time in the constituency after being elected.

Secondly, on Vancouver Island, folks tend to be “green” rather than “Green”, by which I mean we are into recycling, eating local food, conservation, etc., but not necessarily into Green Party politics. For instance, in the last provincial election, the leader of the Green Party ran in Colwood, which is part of Keith Martin’s riding, and was roundly defeated. By contrast, an Independent took on the ruling Liberals and defeated Wally Opel, a former Cabinet member.

Thirdly, it’s very difficult to extrapolate the data from the last election with any accuracy. Gary Lunn ran against Briony Penn, officially a Liberal, but a former Green, as well as the perennial Green candidate in this riding. There was also the confusion caused by the withdrawal of the NDP candidate, who I believe was also a former Green member.

Bottom line, the Greens could win some polls in the Islands and in the UVic area, although a lot of the University folk actually live in the riding of Victoria, not S-GI. Lunn on the other hand will do well in suburban Saanich and his secret weapon is all the grannies in the retirement homes, who come out en masse for him. He tells them he used to drink coffee but it stunted his growth, and they think he is quite the lad.

All in all this is not a good choice for May, and while she clearly has aspirations of being in a Liberal cabinet, misplaced though they may be, I guess you have to question why she feels it necessary to knock off a sitting Minister when her priority should simply be to get elected.

indexing also allows us to see the relative “productivity” of each riding — for example, a riding with a higher index for votes than members (like Guelph) suggests its team was more “productive” than a riding with a riding member index than vote index (like Ottawa Centre). of course, there’s not a 1-to-1 relationship between the size of a riding membership and the size of the campaign team, but there is likely strong correlation.

likewise, a vote index that’s higher than the ID index probably suggests a stronger local candidate, since they got solid votes despite a weak GOTV operation, although we must be careful here, because some GPC ridings refuse to use the GPC’s voter ID system, because they don’t want their “friends” to be IDed and thus called by the GPC for fundraising — that explains, for example, why Okanagan-Shuswap’s ID # is much lower than it probably is in reality. it also shows how far the GPC has to go to become a more professional organization, when its own candidates, in this case, someone on the shadow cabinet, refuses to share information with the head office.

Also I’m not sure where the index comes from at all, is it equally weighted across all of the factors you have identified?