Freeland favoured, but University-Rosedale could still swing either way

There’s less than a week left in the 2015 federal election, and while recent projections are consistently placing the Liberals in first place, it’s by a narrow margin, with many contested seats that could easily swing the other way.

University-Rosedale is in a similar situation, with some experts saying the new riding could either go to the Liberal’s Chrystia Freeland or NDP candidate Jennifer Hollett — though University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman thinks the former is more likely.

“I believe Chrystia Freeland is well ahead in that riding,” Wiseman says. “She won (in 2011), and if anything, I think the reconfiguration of the riding helps her even more.”

Carved from northern sections of the 2011 boundaries for Toronto Centre, which Freeland currently represents, and Trinity-Spadina, the new riding of University-Rosedale no longer includes a large section of the old riding that would have voted against the Liberals, Wiseman says.

“That’s precisely why Linda McQuaig, who’s the only NDP candidate who increased the NDP vote in a byelection since (2011), decided to run in Toronto Centre, because that south part of the riding got cut out of University Rosedale,” Wiseman says. “I’d be shocked if Chrystia Freeland didn’t win.”

As of Oct. 13, poll aggregation website ThreeHundredEight.com was listing Freeland’s win as an 81 percent probability, projecting she would receive 46.6 percent of the vote, Hollett 31.5 percent, and the Conservatives’ Karim Jivraj 14.8 percent.

However, in an article posted on the CBC website on Oct. 7, ThreeHundredEight founder Éric Grenier provided analyses of several ridings in Toronto, including University-Rosedale, which he identified as a “potential” gain for both the Liberals and NDP — that is, a riding in which the results may be close.

As a general rule, the poll results in a federal riding go up or down alongside the more frequently gathered national polls, Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff says, and even though University-Rosedale is a new riding, it can be as good an example of this trend as any.

“In new ridings, what you can do is take the new boundaries and superimpose the old results on them,” Bozinoff says. “When you do that for University-Rosedale, you find that the riding leans NDP. But … right now we have it as a toss-up.”

Forum conducted a poll of University-Rosedale in August, concluding that Hollett would receive 46 percent of votes versus 32 percent for Freelend and 17 percent for Jivraj. By September, however, the company discovered in a second poll that support for Hollett had dropped to 39 percent, versus Freeland’s 38 percent, while Jivraj’s support had grown to 20 percent.

And the Liberals’ momentum has only grown since then, which could be a plausible reason for ThreeHundredEight to increase projections for the Liberals, Bozinoff says.

While Environics Analytics cannot offer predictions for Oct. 19, the organization’s method of collecting post-election data and dividing it into the company’s signature PRIZM Canadian lifestyle categories does yield some interesting observations, says Rupen Seoni, Environics Analytics’ vice president and practice leader.

According to the organization’s data, the NDP would have won University-Rosedale had the riding existed in 2011, receiving 43.1 percent of the vote versus 30.8 percent for the Liberals.

“Here the battle between the NDP and Liberals was drawn more on age lines,” Seoni says. “Urban Digerati here (average household income: $102,524 per year) tended to vote NDP, along with other younger segments in condos and apartments, and with more culturally diverse populations.”

“The Liberals dominated among the affluent, older voters in Cosmopolitan Elite” with an average household income of $469,882 per year, he says.

While the percentage breakdown of each PRIZM segment in University-Rosedale is a closely guarded secret, Seoni says that broadly, the NDP-leaning Urban Digerati is the riding’s largest segment, while the number of NDP-supporting younger and multi-ethnic voters, and Liberal-leaning affluent voters, are very close in size to one another.

So regardless of projections, the riding could still swing Hollett’s way, says Pauline Beange, who teaches Canadian politics, parties and elections at the University of Toronto.

“Classically, NDP support is associated with blue-collar trade unions,” Beange says. “Over the last decade or two that has swung — a very strong portion of NDP support is now professional public sector workers.

“I think you could argue that [University-Rosedale] has a very high percentage of unionized professionals,” she says.