Things are quiet on the federal election campaign at UBCO – literally.
This is the week for campus clubs to set up display booths and troll for new members.
There are student clubs for musical theatre, dodge ball, cyclists and even something called atomic jazz.
Somewhat notable for their absence, especially since a federal election campaign is underway, are any kind of youth-oriented political clubs.
Liberal and Conservative clubs existed at UBCO last year, but haven‘t yet re-formed. Neither the Greens nor the NDP have had an active campus club for several years.
“Doesn‘t say much for democracy, does it?” Rob Nagai, manager of the student union, said Tuesday.
While 80 per cent of people aged 60 and up vote, turnout among those aged 18-24 in the last federal election was less than 25 per cent.
Theories abound on reasons for the low turnout: many issues politicians tend to talk about – health care, taxes – tend not to be ones that engage the youth; at 18, people may simply be too immature to understand or care about politics, and no campaign to get them to the polls will succeed.
But at least part of the explanation, locally anyway, may be that even politically aware young people have an appreciation for the long odds of anyone but a Conservative candidate winning in Kelowna.
Phil Armstrong, one of the 17 members of UBCO‘s Young Liberals of Canada club last year, said: “Kelowna has a lot of churches and it‘s an older community. Religious people and seniors, they just tend to vote Conservative.”
That‘s not to say the election is of zero interest at UBCO. David Ding, a political science professor, said he‘s heard students discussing ways that they might achieve a sort of vote swapping.
The idea is that students who might favour the Greens or the NDP actually cast ballots for the Liberals, so as not to split the left-of-centre vote and present a stronger challenge to the Conservatives.
But Conservative Ron Cannan won the 2006 election with 49 per cent of the popular vote, so all the vote-swapping in the world would barely be enough to beat him this time.
“The polls suggest the Conservatives are getting even more popular nationally than they were during previous election campaigns, and that‘s probably happening to an even greater extent here,” Ding said.
“I really don‘t see any way the Liberals could overcome the gap and defeat the Conservatives.”
