Fredericton South: What civil servants and students have in common

Transient students and well-off civil servants. Apartment dwellers and two-vehicle owners.

Candidates fighting for election in Fredericton South on Sept. 24 have the challenge of appealing to both demographics, but these groups are not so very different in a key way, says a politicalscientist.

Fredericton South is one of the most urban ridings in the province, covering thedowntown area of Fredericton and reaching across two universities and a college and across the uptown as well.

Political science professor TomBatemansaid students may not be the richest residents, but they have one thing in common with their more affluent neighbours: ideology.

This is perhaps the main reason Fredericton South made history by electing the first Green Party MLA in the province, Green Party Leader David Coon, said Bateman, who teaches at St. Thomas University.

Students who live in the city temporarily don't have an investment in concrete issues affecting the riding, but have a more general idea about the environment and women's rights, for example.

Bateman said university professors and tax adjustersin the city may care about those issues, but theyare also interested enough in politics to know that diversity in the legislative assembly can make for a healthy political process.

Coon won the riding by 300 votes in 2014. The Progressive Conservative candidate was second.

Bateman said a low youth voter turnout and Fredericton's unpredictable duality makes for a high stakes bet on any of the three highest polling candidates: Coon, Liberal Susan Holt and Progressive Conservative Scott Smith.

The contenders

All three candidates have been campaigning on party lines.

Coon has the advantage of being a party leader and the one who held the seat four years.

"Mr. Coon is the Green Party," Bateman said, "He does have a party behind him but it's actually the fact that he is the party, and so he has the flexibility of an independent as well as the the electoral identity as a Green Party MLA."

Holt and Smith are both locals, and may have some hometown advantage.

Holt, who is active on social media, has been part of both the business community and the service service.

The biggest issue she's heard from going door to door is education whether it's the quality of kindergarten to Grade 12 education or post-secondary funding.

And Liberal Party Leader Brian Gallant has been touting post-secondary funding as one of the areas of Liberal success, especially the free tuition and the tuition relief for the middle class programs.

"My favourite conversation is when I open the door and it's the student who's receiving the free tuition program or tuition relief and they tell me why it helped them go back to school," Holt told Information Morning Fredericton.

Smith said the most prominent issue he's heard going door to door is government overspending.

"You're talking to people at their doorsteps and they're thinking 'New Brunswick is spending money in a way that if I spent money in my household this way, I would lose my house. What's going on with the province?'" he said.

NDP candidate Chris Durrant and People's Alliance Dr. Bonnie Mae Clark may also hit home some points with Fredericton South voters.

Durrant criticized the Greens' lack of environmental work, and Clark said the state of the health care system under the Liberal government has beenunacceptable.

Most prominent riding

Bateman said Fredericton South has the potential to be one of the most significantridings in the province if Liberals and Conservatives don't win enough seats to form a majority government.

"The prominence of Fredericton South will depend on what's happening elsewhere in the province on the 24th," he said.

"This election is very close, it could be a tie between the two major parties. Then suddenly Mr. Coon if he wins Fredericton South has an extraordinary amount of power over the course of the next government, and that will shoot him and this riding to a new level of importance in the province."

- With filed from Information Morning Fredericton