About a year before the last election I decided the most useful thing I could do was to try to get as many young Canadians to vote as I could.
So together with many other people and organizations all over the country, I set out to convince them that if they didn't vote our country might die.
And their future could die with it.
And although I knew from the election results that it did work, now it's official.
Young Canadians did turn out to vote in spectacular fashion.
Droves of young voters showed up to the polls last October, leading to the biggest gains in youth voter turnout since the new millennium.
Voter turnout increased across all age groups, growing 7.6 percentage points overall between 2011 and 2015 elections, according to data released by Elections Canada on Wednesday.
The biggest gains were amongst youth between the ages of 18-24, which grew from 38.8per cent in 2011 to 56.2 in 2015.
And beyond the satisfaction of seeing the young and the boomers join forces to defeat Stephen Harper and his foul Con regime.
And give Justin Trudeau his surprising majority...
What also pleases me is remembering how the Con media didn't see it coming, and got it so wrong. With almost all of them back then claiming that trying to win the youth vote was a waste of time.
And David Akin even suggesting that the parties should forget about the youth vote.
While the “youth vote” is a perfectly suitable topic for a panel discussion at a conference of academics and activists, federal political parties with seven months until election day would do well instead to focus their energies on that group of voters that actually make a difference at the ballot box — namely, older people.
The facts are stark: Voter turnout rates in recent years for those 34-years-old and younger have been abysmal, much effort to the contrary.
And how wrong he was.
So when you see him and other members of the Postmedia gang attacking Justin Trudeau like a pack of rabid hyenas.
Just remember that they don't know what they are talking about, and they're just singing for their own survival...
And the best news? Seven months after the election those young voters are showing no signs of abandoning Justin Trudeau.
For according to the latest polling average at ThreeHundredEight.com Justin Trudeau's numbers are soaring way above the others.
The numbers continue to show that Justin Trudeau's Liberals are holding on to the new support they captured in the aftermath of the 2015 federal election.
The Liberals averaged 48 per cent in the month of May, up 0.6 points from where they stood in April.
Trudeau is still much more popular than he was on election night. And if an election was held tomorrow, he would win even more seats...
And since even more millennials will be eligible to vote next time, if they can join forces with the boomers like they did last time, the results could be even more spectacular.
We can make the Con media eat even more crow.
And bury the Cons once and for all...
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12 comments:
Other than young people who have been indoctrinated by their conservative parents, there would seem little that the CPC offers that could possibly attract an informed and progressive youth.
I feel badly for Albertan kids who have had to grow up listening to the constant lies and historical revisions of the conservative base. And this idea of separating western Canada is sad and pathetic. As any Canadian who has made the effort to travel across this stunning land, I would not wish to give up or reject one square inch.
It is a fact of life that not everyone can be happy all the time, and concessions and compromise are necessary for the good of the whole. This trait has been one of that Canadians have displayed proudly.
Fear of the unknown is never an excuse for prejudice, but one must make the effort to communicate and be willing to learn and be open to changing one's perception.
From what I read, Bernie Sanders may still have a chance to become a presidential candidate. It is his honesty and humility that can change the rhetoric.
What happened to the NDP? They've seriously lost their way. No longer considered the nation's conscience it appears.
With Tommy's leadership, the NDP are nothing but burnt toast.
Irene
The Con media had blinders on while they tried to lull us into thinking Harper was the best choice. How they could kneel to their corporate masters and do their bidding while destroying any journalistic integrity they may have had is pathetic. They are not journalists, they are mere puppets on a string waiting until their strings get jerked again.
Our young voters have risen and will help keep us from the likes of Harper for a long, long time and that is a beautiful thing.
JD
I am hoping this happens South of the Border in November.
TS
I suspect the pre election talk of dismissing the youth vote was part of a propaganda "suppression" plan to discourage young people from voting and keep the turnout low which as we know strongly favored the Cons.
It wasn't a bug but actually a feature. The only problem for the Cons was that the 'yout' don't read MSM like their elders do (or did, in my case) and did the unexpected so everything went badly like almost everything did in the entire Con election plan.
hi Liberta...I can't imagine that any young Canadians would join the Harper Party. It's everything they don't believe in. And whether Bernie becomes a presidential candidate or not, he has made it clear that his revolution will continue, and it is influencing young people in this country. So I'm pretty optimistic about the future, generational change is in the air, and better days are ahead...
hi Irene...yes the NDP numbers are really catastrophic. I knew they were down after that ridiculous elbowgate stunt. But with those numbers Mulcair should resign tomorrow, because the NDP will never recover as long as he is their leader....
hi UU4077....yes, I was going to use those numbers for a post just on the NDP, because they are absolutely stunning and depressing. The Mulcair Party has done everything wrong starting with its absurd election campaign. And they don't seem to understand that attacking a government which is still hugely popular, like they used to attack the Cons, will make them only more unpopular. I blame a clique of older members, who portray themselves as the keepers of the torch, look down on the young, and although they are well intentioned don't know what they're doing, and are as boring as bat shit....
hi JD..yes as I said in my post, it gives me great satisfaction to see the Con media made to look like fools. The Postmedia coverage of the campaign made it look like a branch of the Con Ministry of Propaganda and Disinformation, and the Globe editorialists endorsing the Cons but not Harper made them look like fools. But the good news is that we were able to use social media to motivate young voters, with a little help from Justin Trudeau. ;) And what we did then we can do even better next time...
hi TS...I think you're going to see something very similar. Hillary Clinton is not as popular with millennials as Bernie Sanders is, or for that matter Justin Trudeau is with young voters. But hopefully the young idealists will realize that we have to be practical and must do whatever it takes to defeat the crazed fascist Trump....
hi dan...yes I'm sure it was a plan to suppress the youth vote, along with all the changes to the election act. But I don't think the Cons appreciated the power of social media which did allow us to both get our message out, and convince the young to vote. I first saw that happen during the referendum in Scotland, when all the establishment papers were dead set against independence. And although that option lost, the social media organization they set up for that, one, helped give the SNP a big victory in the next election, so it's a useful tool that can and should be adapted for use in this country, where the internet rules....
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