OTTAWA—There were two winners from opposite political poles in Monday’s byelections — Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

May, because of her party’s impressive vote totals in Victoria and Calgary Centre and Harper, not because he held two Conservative seats, but because any Green growth will only further split the progressive left and ease the path for him or his successor to replicate his 2011 majority in 2015.

But before we start divining national trends from the votes, perspective is pounding at the door, demanding to enter.

Byelections, by their nature, are the weeds in the electoral lawn.

They are often hyped and analyzed well beyond their importance.

They give voters a chance to shake things up without changing government and they can often signify absolutely nothing nationally.

But they can also change history — providing the Reform Party with its first MP in Deborah Grey, the Bloc Québécois with its first elected MP in Gilles Duceppe, giving Tom Mulcair a once lonely NDP toehold in Quebec.

Monday’s results, in which no ridings changed hands, delivered a trove of new data to analyze — if only anyone had bothered to vote.

In Calgary Centre, a riding which received intense national attention, only 29.4 per cent of eligible voters bothered to trudge to the polls.

The turnout was slightly better in Durham, at 35.8 per cent, and Victoria, which positively shone in comparison, with a 43.9 per cent turnout.

That leaves us to study the entrails from results forged by far fewer than half the eligible voters.

The Calgary numbers might have been depressed by the ghost of last spring’s provincial election and it shows an ongoing schism within the Conservative party in its power base.

Joan Crockatt, the Conservative winner, is a member of the Wildrose faction of the Alberta Conservatives and it is apparent many of the provincial PCs who sent Alison Redford to the premier’s office, sat on their hands rather than back her.

Much will be made of the progressive split which gave Crockatt the seat, but Conservatives, who watched their Calgary Centre support plummet by 21 points must be concerned about putting their provincial battles behind them in time for the 2015 federal election.

The Greens, meanwhile won 34.3 of the vote in Victoria, where May holds the neighbouring seat, and a remarkable 25.6 per cent in the riding which is home to the headquarters of Canada’s oilpatch. That represents a 23-point jump on Vancouver Island and a 16-point surge over the party’s showing in Calgary over the 2011 general election.

May desperately wanted a seatmate, but the party had to be buoyed by this performance, even if it is impossible to predict that it could mean anything in the next general vote, where its resources are stretched and its national reach is shallow.

The Greens have shown life in byelections in the past, only to take a step back during a general election, but in being selective and establishing beachheads, the party could be on the brink of a minor breakthrough in 2015.

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In the two western ridings, they took votes from all three other parties, including the Conservatives.

Crockatt’s victory margin of 1,167 votes puts her in strong company when it comes to Conservatives whose journey to Ottawa was propelled by vote splits on the centre-left.

An intemperate and ill-timed anti-Alberta rant by Ottawa South MP David McGuinty likely helped Crockatt, but it is more difficult to analyze the effect of the two-year-old anti-Alberta lament by leadership front-runner Justin Trudeau unearthed last week.

Trudeau likely helped Liberal candidate Harvey Locke by appearing alongside him during the campaign. It is just as likely that some Conservatives who may have moved to Locke were kept at home by the Trudeau comments.

The real lesson — if there is one to be gleaned from such a small sample size — is that May could emerge as a player in the debate over unifying the left.

The morning of the vote, Liberal MP Joyce Murray joined her party’s leadership race, calling for co-operation from the three centre-left parties in ridings where a unified candidate could defeat the Conservatives.

A similar proposal by NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen helped give him a third-place finish in his party’s leadership.

Political hubris, long-held rivalries and blind ambition make any such move to co-operation difficult.

May surely can see how this can help her party and further her objectives in the long run. She says she’s ready to talk to try to ease the progressive logjam.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca

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