Deadline for the Fall UREAP competition is Oct. 15, 2015 at 4 p.m.
When offered the opportunity to develop his own research project, fourth-year Bachelor of Arts student Steve O’Reilly didn’t hesitate.
Supervised by political scientist Dr. Terry Kading, and Canadian historian Dr. Tina Block, O’Reilly embarked on his own Undergraduate Research Experience Award Program with a project titled: “The Significance of the Bellwether Distinction: A Historical Examination of Voting Behaviour in the Kamloops Region.” The project couldn’t be more timely what with the next federal election set for Oct. 19.
Having completed the independent research project in September, O’Reilly — who intends to pursue political history in graduate school — now has some unique insight into the upcoming federal election.
“This project has given me a much clearer understanding of one of the most important federal elections of our history,” he said, qualifying that there has never been a legitimate, three-way race, nor has there been another campaign that has lasted so long.
In O’Reilly’s final report, he states: “Kamloops electoral districts have voted for the winning party in virtually every provincial election,” but added that the region has been inconsistent in its voting preference at the federal level.
The project compares a series of federal and provincial elections, giving context to the results by exploring the key election issues in the region at the time. Specifically, O’Reilly explores the federal and provincial elections dating from 1986 to 2005. To complete the project, he spent the bulk of his time pouring over microfilm, analyzing newspapers from those time periods to gain a better understanding of the voter sentiment during the time.
O’Reilly noted that in every federal election since 2006, Kamloops voters have elected an MP from the party that went on to form government, and concluded: “The federal election of 2015 will likely help to confirm or deny whether the Kamloops region may have become a bellwether riding at the federal level.”
