Cariboo—Prince George (British Columbia) 57/338

 Cariboo—Prince George (British Columbia)

Today we're in Northern British Columbia with Cariboo—Prince George!

Cariboo—Prince George has existed as a riding since 2004, created from Cariboo—Chilcotin and Prince George—Bulkley Valley. The population centers are Prince George (65,510 in 2016, shared with Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies), Quesnel (12,064 in 2016), and Williams Lake (10,508 in 2016). The riding has a very high indigenous population, about 17% of the riding is indigenous, 11 points more than the BC average.

Politically, this riding is very interesting. While it has solely elected Conservatives in modern history, that is not to say it hasn't been close: The Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP were all within 6,000 votes from winning in 2019, the NDP was within 300 votes of winning in 1988 in one former riding, and the NDP did win in 1988 in the other former riding. The riding is currently represented by Conservative MP Todd Doherty.

The interesting thing about BC rural ridings is that they're not as polarized as other western rural ridings. What makes them like this? It could be attributed to urban centers. Here in BC, almost every riding is connected to a major urban center. The province also has historically high support for the four major parties. In 2019, the riding was 40/42 in BC and 267/338 in Canada by margin.

Rating:

Name: 8.4/10 - It's good that it's named after Prince George and the region, maybe Cariboo would be fine on it's own.

Shape: 6.7/10 - It is okay with following rivers, but sometimes it arbitrarily decides not to.

Individuality: 6.4/10 - It is really cool how close it got and when it flipped in 1988, but it has mostly stayed above 50%.

Total: 21.5/30 (71.7%)

See you tomorrow in Carleton!