Newly-minted NDP candidate Mira Oreck is the latest entrant into what’s likely to be a closely-watched race in the new riding of Vancouver-Granville, joining a high-profile Liberal candidate who’s been campaigning for several months and a Conservative who is a relative newcomer.

The new riding, which covers a central swath of the City of Vancouver from False Creek to the Fraser River, is drawn from four current ridings: parts Liberal-held Vancouver Centre and Vancouver Quadra, Conservative-held Vancouver South and NDP-held Vancouver-Kingsway.

Vancouver Granville

Map shows the party that won the most votes in each polling area in the 2011 election. Click on an area for more details.

Conservative Liberal NDP Green Tie





If the polling station results from 2011 were transposed onto the new boundaries, the Conservatives would have received 15,440 votes, the Liberals 13,137, the NDP 10,670 and the Green party 4,026, according to Elections Canada.

For pollster Mario Canseco, Vancouver-Granville will be the most interesting of B.C.’s six new ridings to watch because it’s made up of three distinct areas: an eastern flank that is solidly NDP, a southern tip that consistently voted Liberal until the last election and the wealthy neighbourhoods of Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy in the middle, which tend to vote Conservative, Canseco said.

“It’s almost as if you have these three bands in the riding and it’s really a matter of the ground game. Can you ... find as many voters as you can in the places where your party tends to be strong. Because it’s fairly close.”

In 2011, the vote breakdown was 35 per cent Conservative, 30 per cent Liberal and 24 per cent NDP.

“If (the Conservatives) lose two or three per cent of their vote because people might be upset with the Harper government or they don’t like the candidate, and the Liberals gain those two or three points, then it’s a Liberal seat.

“You could also make the case that if the NDP continues to rise nationally, if we have a situation where the campaign starts to become a referendum on whether (NDP leader Tom) Mulcair or (Conservative leader Stephen) Harper will be the prime minister, then they could actually gain some votes as well. So this is probably the most fascinating race in the entire city.”

Candidates also matter. Liberal Jody Wilson-Raybould, who has been the party’s official candidate for months, was B.C. regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations. She is also a lawyer, starting out as a Crown prosecutor in Vancouver before moving into treaty law. She has been repeatedly billed by the Liberals as a star candidate, Canseco said.

The NDP’s Oreck is a first-time candidate, but not new to politics. Oreck, a director with the left-leaning Broadbent Institute who grew up in the riding, has worked in the backrooms of several campaigns, including the 2012 re-election campaign of U.S. President Barack Obama and Gregor Robertson’s bids to get elected both as an NDP MLA and as mayor of Vancouver.

Conservative Erinn Broshko is also a new candidate. Broshko, who grew up in North Battleford, Sask., moved to Vancouver after law school to be with his wife. He has worked as a corporate lawyer, as CEO of a biomedical company and as an investment fund manager. He has also worked in local Conservative riding associations.

The federal election is scheduled for Oct. 19.

tcarman@vancouversun.com

twitter.com/tarajcarman

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