The B.C. legislature will have a noticeably different look when it resumes sitting later this week, as a sea of new faces – 27 of them – will take their places as rookie MLAs.
But the two main parties will have different looks as well, and this difference – and it’s a critical one – bodes well for the New Democrats and not so much for the B.C. Liberals.
The 2017 election results mean the NDP will field a much younger and more ethnically diverse team than the Opposition.
The New Democrats now have eight MLAs who are 40 or younger. The B.C. Liberals have none.
The NDP have 11 MLAs who are of either South Asian or First Nations descent. The B.C Liberals have five.
Why is this important?
Not only is it healthier to have a caucus that better reflects the makeup of the general voting population, it’s also a lot more effective politically, especially at election time when that voting public is being wooed for support.
And the demographics of the voting population are changing, with increasing speed. The baby boomer generation – those born between 1946 and 1964, whom for years has pretty much determined almost all aspects of governments’ public policies – is starting to decline in numbers.
The millennial generation (those between 18 and 35) are now the single biggest section of potential voters and it will continue to grow.
The boomer generation has, historically in this country at least, tended to vote for conservative or liberal-leaning parties, both provincially and federally. Nanos Research says at the federal level, the NDP has never enjoyed more than 20 per cent support from these voters.
But millennials have strongly supported both liberal and left wing parties, and shunned more conservative ones.
Of course, millennials have tended not to vote in any great numbers. That changed in the last federal election, when a surge of young voters helped propel Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberal party to power.
There is now a realistic possibility the turnout of the youth vote may start to climb in B.C., given the NDP government’s shift in policies to better suit younger voters (a reflection as well of its younger caucus).
The need for greater ethnic diversity is also seen in demographic changes. Metro Vancouver’s South Asian population continues to grow rapidly, and will play a key role in determining which party wins elections (and winning Metro’s suburban ridings, as we saw in May, is the key to holding power in the province).
On both of these fronts, the NDP is moving in the right direction. The B.C. Liberals are not, but if the party wants to compete in the coming years, it better get a lot younger – and a lot more ethnically diverse.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.
