Quote:
Originally Posted by adamuptownsj
Thinking about the presumed 2024 general election, new boundaries will have to be in place. I assume the 2021 census will shift one seat from the upper river valley/eastern Acadia towards Moncton, and Fredericton's ring of suburban/rural seats will probably need to shrink quite a bit inwards.
On a micro level, Portland-Simonds will probably have to shed population to Saint John East, but Harbour and Lancaster won't change too much.
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I've done some thinking on this recently and I agree with your overall assessment. It depends on how the electoral redistribution commission proceeds with shifting things around but assuming that they have the same criteria for electoral populations...
Under the assumption that the number of electorals has increased slightly in the past decade (which is a safe assumption given the additional population we've added):
- Fredericton South becomes an even smaller riding, likely, shedding areas southeast of Route 8 and potentially picking up a little bit of riding from Fredericton West-Hanwell to the intersection of Hanwell & Prospect
- Fredericton North may also shrink in geographic size
- I think the River Valley ridings continue shifting down south a bit, tightening further to Fredericton and widening nearer to Edmundston.
- I'm not sure what the procedure will be for the North...it's possible Campbellton gets merged into Restigouche West with Dalhousie moved into Restigouche-Chaleur.
- It's possible that this is the riding loss, otherwise it will occur on the Acadien Peninsula, potentially splitting Caraquet between Bathurst East and Shippagan, or splitting Bathurst East between Bathurst West, Caraquet, and Tracadie.
- Something will also have to be done with Fredericton-Grand Lake and Southwest Miramichi-Bay-du-Vin. It wouldn't shock me if F-GL and F-York absorb the western parts of M-BDV with the rest of the riding merging into Kent-North and Miramichi. This will lead into the Kent ridings shifting further south.
- It wouldn't surprise me if Shediac became its own riding for 2024. There's been enough growth in this area to warrant it. If this happens it's possible that Shediac Bay-Dieppe merges with the remainder of Beaubassin-Est to form a sort of crescent-shaped riding around the new Shediac riding.
- Moncton is likely where the new riding emerges and there's a number of different scenarios for this...one would be a new Dieppe/Moncton East riding, one would be combining Moncton SW and NW with the urban remainder becoming a new central riding. I assume both Moncton South and Centre tighten further to reflect pop. growth.
- Albert becomes more weighted towards Riverview and probably sheds Salisbury. If a new central Moncton riding is added it's possible Moncton SW absorbs Salisbury and Eastern section of Gagetown-Petitcodiac for a new suburban Moncton West riding (Salisbury-Petitcodiac-Berry Mills area).
- Saint John ridings likely stay the same. Harbour's low turnout probably keeps it from tightening.
- I think at some point Saint Croix absorbs all of the Fundy Islands to become an actual fully SW NB riding.
I haven't looked at the electoral counts in a while but I know there was a lot of variance initiated a decade ago to attempt to predict future pop. growth (which were pretty accurate, IIRC). I guess it would be easier if I grabbed a map and simply drew out some of these
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