B.C.’s South Asians helped hand eight ridings to the NDP

2017/05/17 Leave a comment

The power of ethnic voting based upon issues that affect the community:

A range of negative factors, which some might call a perfect storm, hurt B.C. Liberal Leader Christy Clark and sharply swung South Asian voters to John Horgan’s New Democratic Party in the May 9 election.

The B.C. Liberals lost all eight Metro Vancouver ridings with large South Asian populations, with political observers saying the governing party failed to connect with voters on both regional issues and worries specific to South Asians.

South Asians felt particularly betrayed by the B.C. Liberals’ approach to the trucking and taxi industries in which South Asians are predominant, said Kwantlen Polytechnic University political scientist Shinder Purewal and prominent radio host Harjit Singh Gill.
Most of Metro Vancouver’s more than 260,000 South Asians also showed little interest in the B.C. Green party, which means that, unlike in many predominantly white urban ridings, the potential NDP vote was not siphoned off to the third-party Greens.

In north Surrey and north Delta, where South Asians often account for 50 to 80 per cent of the population in neighbourhoods, the NDP on May 9th took four ridings away from the B.C. Liberals (including the defeat of two cabinet ministers) and held on to three others.

The NDP’s George Chow also won Vancouver-Fraserview, which has a sizable South Asian population, defeating Liberal Attorney General Suzanne Anton.

In addition to issues of special concern to South Asians, Gill and Purewal made clear South Asians were miffed with the B.C. Liberals because of three key conflicts that cut across ethnic lines.

Like many others in Surrey, they said, South Asians were ticked with the B.C. Liberals for placing tolls on the Port Mann and proposed future bridges, about thousands of Surrey students making do with school portables and by the Liberals’ abandoned promise to build a second hospital in Surrey.

“South Asians felt betrayed by the people they had sent to Victoria,” said Gill, host of a popular Punjabi- and English-language radio talk show at 1550 AM.

Gill maintained his more than 100,000 listeners saw the B.C. Liberals as “becoming very arrogant” and under the influence of would-be Punjabi “kingmakers;” insiders whom he said had manoeuvred to have their favourites acclaimed as candidates, without nomination battles.

Gill focused several radio programs on the party’s failure to help thousands of Metro Vancouver truck drivers.

The United Truckers Association (UTA), whose membership is predominantly South Asian, publicly hammered the B.C. Liberals for abandoning truck drivers. “They’re going through a very hard time now,” Gill said. Many truckers had gone on strike and “are being exploited by their owners.”

Purewal, who attended UTA meetings as an observer, estimated 80 per cent of Metro Vancouver’s truck and taxi drivers are South Asians.

Surrey itself, he said, is home to more than 7,000 truck drivers.

The B.C. Liberals’ promise in March to support the arrival of Uber, the ride-hailing service, also aggravated many South Asian taxi drivers, said Gill and Purewal.

Source: B.C.’s South Asians helped hand eight ridings to the NDP | Vancouver Sun

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Unsettling U.S. Political Climate Galvanizes Muslims to Vote – The New York Times

2016/06/03 Leave a comment

Not surprising. A similar shift happened in the Canadian 2015 elections with Canadian Muslims:

In late December — after the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., and the call by Donald J. Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” — the United States Council of Muslim Organizations, a national umbrella group, announced plans to register a million voters.

“When your existence in society is in danger, you try to mobilize your community,” said the organization’s secretary general, Oussama Jammal. “You have to be part of the entire society.”

While the effort is mostly geared toward the November election, groups here have made a push to register Muslims in time for the state primary on Tuesday. Drives were held on a recent Friday at 21 mosques and Islamic centers in the Bay Area and Sacramento and at seven places in the Los Angeles area.

“Muslims are a big campaign issue, as big as the climate, the economy and immigration. We’re spoken about as if we’re not there,” said Rusha Latif, an organizer of the Rock the Muslim Vote campaign. “We want to amplify our voices.”

For organizers, the time is ripe for registration.

“It’s hard to encourage people to participate based on good things happening,” said Melissa Michelson, an author of “Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate Through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns” and a professor at Menlo College. “Fear and threats are much more powerful motivators.”

As the general election approaches, Muslim organizations will pay particular attention to swing states, where “several thousand voters have the ability to tip the elections,” said Robert S. McCaw, the director of the government affairs department at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Muslims make up about 1 percent of the United States population. A study conducted by the Institute for Social and Policy Understanding, a nonpartisan think tank, found that only 60 percent of citizens who are Muslim were registered voters, compared with at least 86 percent of Jews, Protestants and Roman Catholics.

“A lot of Muslims didn’t participate in elections because they didn’t see a lot of difference between the parties,” said Emir Sundiata Alrashid of the Lighthouse Mosque in Oakland, where a voter-registration drive was held last month. The mosque sits in a residential neighborhood near a freeway overpass.

Source: Unsettling U.S. Political Climate Galvanizes Muslims to Vote – The New York Times

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Big Shift or Big Return? Visible Minority Representation in the 2015 Election

2016/03/05 Leave a comment

My presentation at the Metropolis 2016, analyzing the election results and the record level of visible minority representation, 14 percent of all MPs, close to the percentage of visible minority Canadian citizens. This presentation also reviews how this representation is reflected in Cabinet, Parliamentary Secretaries, Opposition critics, and parliamentary committees.

Big Shift or Big Return? Visible Minority Representation in the 2015 Election

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More women, minorities running in GTA in federal election

2015/08/14 Leave a comment

Election_2015Encouraging but will see how many elected (47 percent of the GTA are visible minorities):

Many GTA voters can look forward to voting for either a woman or a person from a diverse background during this year’s federal election.

While the nomination process is ongoing — the deadline for candidates isn’t until Sept. 28 — there has already been a concerted effort by the federal parties to court women and minorities to run in Toronto-area ridings.

When it comes to women, the NDP leads the way with 21 of its 50 nominated candidates being women. The Liberals trail closely behind, while about one-in-four Conservative and Green Party candidates are female.

 

Incumbent NDP MP Peggy Nash, who is running again in Parkdale-High Park, said it’s positive to see so many women in the race.

“I think that a strong slate of women, really offers Canadians a full choice and broad representations so that they’re full range of views are getting heard,” Nash said.

While the number of female candidates in the GTA and the rest of Ontario is going up, the co-founder of Equal Voice — an organization that encourages women to run — says there’s still work to be done, especially given the fact that just 25 per cent of the 41st Parliament was female.

“That doesn’t nearly approximate the percentage of women in the population. And it does suggest that our democracy is not fair,” said Donna Dasko.

The number of minority candidates also appears to be on the rise, with the Liberals leading the way.

 

Ratna Omidvar, of Ryerson University’s Global Diversity Exchange, said growth in this area is inevitable given Toronto’s diversity, particularly in the suburbs.

“Think of Brampton, think of Scarborough, it is then inevitable that all parties will be running candidates from these communities,” Omidvar said.

More women, minorities running in GTA in federal election – Toronto – CBC News.

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