It's getting easier being Green and other takeaways from the election polls data

Green Party members in New Brunswick hope their counterparts across Canada have taken noteafter successful provincial and federal elections.

The province elected an unprecedented three Greens to the legislature last year, and Jenica Atwin's success in the federal riding of Fredericton on Oct. 21 was one of the biggest election night stories.

The party didn't win another New Brunswick riding, but it made historic gains in vote shares and thrust itself forward as the main alternative to the Liberals and Tories something it already achieved at the provincial level.

"I'm hoping that the federal party sees that there is something fundamentally shifting in the Maritimes ... in the body politic here," said provincial Green Leader David Coon, "that reflects a real strong response to the principles and values that the Greens locally have been bringing to our campaigns.

"I hope that that has an influence on the thinking of the federal party in terms of how to move forward."

But the question facing the likes of Coon, who's vying to continue his party's ascendency, and Laura Reinsborough, a federal Green candidate committed to building the necessary infrastructure for the next campaign, is whetherthey can sustain the momentum.

The federal Greens boosted their share of the vote in the province from 4.7 per cent in 2015 to 17 per cent this year an increase of more than 50,000 votes while making gains over 2015 in each of the 10 federal ridings.

Now, poll-by-poll results provided by Elections Canada reveal hotbeds of concentrated support the party will look to build on.

The green capital

The city of Fredericton is the obvious one.

The southern part of the capital was the first provincial riding to go Green in 2014, but the fervour wasn't matched when the larger federal riding voted a year later.

That changed this time, with Atwin given the edge in all but about a dozen of the more than 100 city-based polls on her way to capturing a third of the vote. The Green Party didn't win a single poll four years ago.

Atwin, Coon and Reinsborough have all told CBC News the groundwork laid by provincial team helped with the breakthrough at the federal level.

"I think most of the barriers that were there in the past for people who might have considered voting Green have fallen down," Coon said.

"My re-election in Fredericton South and then the election of both Kevin Arseneau in primarily an Acadian riding and Megan Mitton in the southeast really dispel the notion that Greens would have trouble in francophone areas or rural areas or even convincingly getting re-elected a second time."

Federal gains mirror provincial success

Much like Coon's victories in Fredericton South in 2014 and 2018, recent party success in the province appears to be a precursor for budding federal support.

In 2018, the party added two new MLAs: Arseneau in Kent North and Mitton in Memramcook-Tantramar. The bulk of both those ridings are located in the federal electoral district of Beausjour, a Liberal stronghold that elected Dominic LeBlanc seven consecutive times and gave him nearly 70 per cent of the votes in 2015.

LeBlanc's vote share fell back to 46.5 per cent in 2019, largely because of a spike in votes for Reinsborough. The party increased its slice of the vote from 4.5 per cent in 2015 to 26.6 per cent, the second-best Green performance behind Atwin.

Coon said he was struck by the excitement in parts of the riding to break out of a "generations-old mould" and vote differently for the first time.

Poll data show LeBlanc didn't loosen his grip on the Dieppe and Shediac areas, but Reinsborough edged the longtime MP who did not campaign because he was recovering from cancer treatment in the precise areas that elected Arseneau and Mitton last year.

For example, in the five polls labelled Saint-Louis (in northern Kent County) the Liberals took 608 votes to the Greens' 42 in 2015. Last month, the field levelled in those five polls with a 315 to 302 advantage for the Greens.

Here's a more glaring example: In Sackville, where Reinsborough grew up and now lives, the Greens mustered 201 votes to the Liberals' 1,211 across 11 polls in 2015. In 2019, Reinsborough earned 884 votes, nearly double LeBlanc's 459.

"I think that surprised a lot of people, and I think that that provides a really strong foundation that we can build on and turn to run in the next election, too," Reinsborough said.

"Now voters also see that a Green vote was not a throwaway vote. It was a vote that really had a strong chance of making a difference."

Establishing the party

The gains are even more remarkable considering the Reinsborough campaign started from scratch in terms of fundraising, volunteers and other resources.

"We didn't have even a riding association when we began," she said.

"With that taken into consideration, I am especially proud of how far we came and what results we showed, and now we have that built so that a second time around there will be a lot more."

Reinsborough said she pursued the nomination knowing she would run in a "few elections," giving herself time to build a connection with the voters.

Strengthening local organizations is one of two ways the provincial Greens can capitalize on the recent success, Coon said. The other, he said, is on him to get out around the province, present the party's vision and listen to voters.

Interim federal Green Leader Jo-Ann Roberts said she believes the growth is sustainable because the "Green tide lifts all boats."

"We're building momentum by building on our strength and then the strength of those ridings helps lift ridings nearby," Roberts said.

So what could that mean for support in New Brunswick in the next election? Roberts said the success 20 of 25 Maritime Green candidates receiving more than 10 per cent of the vote will give them a financial boost.

Those candidates are entitled to a 60 per cent reimbursement of eligible expenses.

"So, there is also some money coming back into those ridings and we'll be working hard because forty-nine ridings across the country for Greens hit that 10 per cent level," she said.

A new northern hub?

The Liberals secured the northern ridings of Acadie-Bathurst and Madawaska-Restigouche with ease, as incumbents Serge Cormier and Rne Arseneault received more than 50 per cent of the votes.

In Madawaska-Restigouche, which covers the very north of the province, stretching from the border with Maine to the Chaleur Bay, the Greens finished third and sometimes fourth in the nearly 130 election night polls.

But there was one exception: Saint-Quentin.

Candidate Louis Brub took six of seven polls (and nearly the seventh) in the community about an hour's drive west of Campbellton. That was good for 576 votes, almost 200 more than the Liberals. In 2015, his party received a grand total of 24 votes.

Coon noted Charles Thriault, the 2018 Green candidate for Restigouche-West, as another provincial party member who helped rally supporters. Thriault, the first Green candidate to run in the provincial riding, finished a distant second to the Liberal MLA Gilles LePage yet collected 31.5 per cent of the vote.

Tories storm back

The Conservatives were hoping for greater success in New Brunswick, but they did manage to flip three Liberal-held ridings, and they did it in style.

Rob Moore in Fundy Royal, John Williamson in New Brunswick Southwest and Richard Bragdon in Tobique-Mactaquac clinched decisive victories with at least a 46 per cent vote in all three.

Williamson won all but 12 of the 152 polls in ridings the only losses came mainly in St. Andrews and St. Stephen. Fundy Royal was also a near clean sweep for Moore, just a couple of Liberal pockets in the southern riding.

Linguistic divisions

Bragdon's win in Tobique-Mactaquac wasn't as complete as his southern counterparts. The new MP did earn half of the votes, but he didn't fare as well in the northern, more francophone reaches of the riding.

Similar to the provincial electoral map, the Tories struggled to break through in predominantly francophone areas. The contrast was stark in Miramichi-Grand Lake, the tightest race of the night, where communities north of Miramichi, at the base of the Acadian Peninsula, went Liberal.

Moreover, anglophone communities south of Miramichi, like Chipman, Minto, Blackville, voted Conservative, while francophone areas around Rogersville andAcadievilleleaned Liberal.

NDPlosses

It was another rough election in New Brunswick for the New Democrats.

After a dismal provincial outing last year furthered a string of poor performances, federal NDP support shrank by more than 40,000 votes, to 9.4 per cent from 18.3 per cent in 2015.

It may not be surprising considering thelittle time leader Jagmeet Singh has spent in the province, but even the base of NDP support in Acadie-Bathurst has eroded following former NDP MP Yvon Godin's retirement.

Daniel Thriault managed to get only a third of the votes the party received in the riding in 2015. Reliable Acadian communities, like Le Goulet and Saint-Saveur, which could be counted on for a couple of hundred votes turned Liberal, leaving the party with little to build on for the future.