Part Two: Don’t Allow Decision BC 2013 Polls to Get You in a Tizzy
Have another look at the BC Election polls above, and the more detailed analysis we published on the weekend, and the following series of questions arise, “How do the poll results relate to the probable outcome of the British Columbia provincial election, how many seats is each provincial party likely to garner on election night, which ridings are in contention that will tip the election result one way or another and, finally, what does it all mean for British Columbia going forward into the future, most particularly between May 14, 2013 and the next provincial election, in the autumn of 2017?”
A few of the questions above were answered in VanRamblings’ weekend post. We’ll address the remaining questions in postings we’ll publish over the course of the final week of the Decision BC 2013 election campaign. Stay tuned, cuz this is going to be one humdinger of a provincial election.
Know this: the BC New Democrats and the BC Liberals are running disciplined campaigns. Both campaigns will stay on message, and both Adrian Dix and Christy Clark will continue to hammer home the main themes their parties are promoting to voters (change vs more of the same).
In the final week of Decision BC 2013, neither of the main contending parties for government will move anywhere close to going off track, although there’s a greater likelihood you’ll see the NDP mounting an edgier campaign in the next seven days, as Adrian Dix raises issues involving the BC Liberals’ sorry record of governance — of which example there are many — the Liberals’ 12-year history of fiscal mismanagement, as well as their abject failure to govern in the interests of a majority of British Columbians.
Let’s face it: there was never any question that the British Columbia election campaign would not tighten up closer to election day, May 14th. Not for nothing has VanRamblings consistently predicted 54 seats for the BC NDP in the legislature for the coming term of office, and somewhere around 26 – 30 seats for the BC Liberals. In the polarized political climate of British Columbia, we in this province have a history of only 3 per cent, or less, of the provincial vote separating the two main parties on election day.
The difference this time? As we say above, in 2013 the advantage goes to the BC New Democrats. The best the BC Liberals can hope for in 2013 is a decent showing at the polls on election night (30+ seats would be considered a massive win for this discredited party), leaving the BC NDP left only to ponder the size of their majority in the British Columbia legislature.
As Vaughn Palmer writes in his weekend column in the Vancouver Sun, the BC Liberals are still fighting an uphill battle, a battle “against the odds.”
To conclude this discussion on the polls and their meaning for the outcome of the campaign for the government of British Columbia, from his commentary published in The Straight on the weekend, here’s Martyn Brown, former Chief of Staff to BC Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell …

“The Liberals’ supposed ‘surge’ amounts to a few points at the NDP’s expense, that still leaves them miles away from where they need to be to have a serious shot at forming the government. While the ‘new horserace’ narrative helps pollsters stay relevant, gives the media something interesting to report, and allows the two main parties’ supporters to become more motivated, it’s way overblown, in my view.

The NDP are still way ahead by any measure, especially in the Lower Mainland, where most of the seats are. If the Green and Conservative votes both collapse to some extent, as I expect they will on election day, the NDP will gain more than the B.C. Liberals will.

If the NDP regain even a couple of points from the Green Party, and if the B.C. Liberals gain even half of all current B.C. Conservative voters, it would still be a wipeout. The NDP would be in the mid-40s and the B.C. Liberals would be in the high 30s.

The NDP voters are more motivated to punish and change the government, and the NDP vote is more ‘efficient’ — meaning that it is more evenly distributed across regions than that of the B.C. Liberals vote, which tends to be more regionally concentrated.

Both of those factors give the NDP a premium of perhaps 3-5%. We saw that in 1996, when the NDP lost the popular vote, but still won the most seats. In an election that is tied, for example, with both parties at about 42 percent, the NDP would form a massive majority government.”

Let’s follow up on the reference made by seasoned political strategist Martyn Brown in the last paragraph of his commentary above, and get a bit more graphic about the 1996 British Columbia election result …

In 1996, as can be seen in the graphic above, in a legislative house with 75 MLAs — with only 624,395 votes cast in their favour, amounting to 39.45% of the popular vote, Glen Clark’s BC New Democrats maintained a comfortable 39-seat majority in the British Columbia legislature, even though Gordon Campbell’s BC Liberals managed 37,534 more votes (BC Liberals’ total: 661,929), for a 41.82% showing at the polls. As Martyn Brown says — by the way, Mr. Brown was campaign director for the BC Liberals and their massive win in 2001, as well as the BC Liberals’ wins in 2005 and 2009, therefore, he should know better than most of the pundits out there commenting on the probable election night results come the evening of May 14th — ”the NDP are still way ahead by any measure.”

See you back here during the course of the week. In the meantime, full VanRamblings election coverage is available by clicking Decision BC 2013.

The story of the week in BC politics was the surge in support for the BC Liberals, who have risen from a desperate 26% in the polls pre the televised debate to a more comfortable 34%, according to the latest Angus Reid poll.
Even so, writes Martyn Brown — author of the new e-book Towards a New Government in British Columbia, former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell’s long-serving chief of staff, top strategic advisor to three provincial party leaders, and former BC deputy minister of tourism, trade, & investment …

“The only real hope for the B.C. Liberals, at this point, is for voters to abandon the NDP in droves, for the Conservative vote to completely collapse, and for the Green Party to retain virtually all of its current support. Fat chance. It would take a colossal screw-up by Dix and a sea change in Clark’s approval numbers to make that happen.”

“So chill out, New Democrats. The sky is not falling yet again, as it has in so many past elections. At 34 percent in the polls with a little over a week until voting day, the B.C. Liberals may be giddy with delight, given where they’ve been. But they are still staring into the abyss, with no real route to salvation in sight, especially if Dix becomes more passionate and aggressive.”

Mr. Brown ends his commentary in the Georgia Straight, advising …

“To the extent that voters believe that the NDP is still the runaway favourite to win on May 14, and if they remain focused on what they want their legislature to look like on May 15, they may find other motivations for voting than simply who will form the government.”

“The important thing is to get out and vote, because the individual choices that voters make in each riding can still change the face of the government that our elected representatives will lead and deliver. Like the song says, “there’s got to be a morning after …”

This weekend, Milton Chan’s Election Prediction Project, factoring in the latest polls, still has the NDP winning a whopping 45 seats, with only 16 seats guaranteed to the Liberals, and a further 23 currently up for grabs.
ThreeHundredEight.com — the Canadian equivalent of Nate Silver’s prestigious and uncannily accurate FiveThirtyEight political calculus blog, which correctly predicted 50 out of the 50 states in the 2012 U.S. election, for Congress, Senate and for President — currently has the NDP at 46 seats to the Liberals 38 seats, with one more seat going to Independent Vicki Huntington in Delta South, still very much majority territory for Adrian Dix and the BC New Democratic Party.
The UBC Sauder School of Business and their generally right on the money BC Election Prediction Market, as of this weekend, projects that the BC NDP will take 52 seats in the legislature, the BC Liberals, 27 (a drop of 22 seats from their 2009 majority win), with another two going to the BC Green Party (likely, Oak Bay – Gordon Head and Saanich North and the Islands), two more projected for the BC Conservatives, with two Independents filling out the full legislative contingent in Victoria for the next four years.
On Friday, as Tom Barrett at The Tyee reports — and as you’ll hear from Global BC’s legislative reporter, Keith Baldrey, above — pollster Ipsos-Reid released the results of a BC Election 2013 poll conducted for BC’s news leader — giving the BC NDP a 10-point lead (45% of the electorate indicating a vote for the NDP) — over the BC Liberals, at 35%, leaving the BC Conservatives at 7%, down four points, and the BC Green party at 10%. Other parties, including independents, are left with 3% of the vote.
British Columbians will know the results of Decision BC 2013 by 10pm, Tuesday, May 14th, if not earlier on that most important evening.
Part Two of VanRamblings’ analysis of the polls results, what it all means for the BC NDP come election night, May 14th (hint: a majority NDP government), and more, here on Monday morning. See you then.
In the meantime, full VanRamblings election coverage is available by clicking Decision BC 2013, as we continue our daily coverage of the B.C. election.
We’ll leave you for now with, perhaps, the most important poll of all …

Click on the Burger Heaven poll above to read the bios of the leaders

Is there any person in British Columbia, be s/he pundit or average citizen, who believes for one bloody moment that Christy Clark and her discredited B.C. Liberal party are on track to catch up to Adrian Dix and his surging New Democratic Party? Is their any rational person in British Columbia - who cares about B.C., and who follows B.C. politics - who doesn’t believe that the electorate are hankering for change, who doesn’t believe that a vast majority of British Columbians want to see the backside of the B.C. Liberal party, and their harebrained governance under the quizzical non-leadership of the thoroughly discredited Christy Clark? Puh-leeze. For all that Canada’s national right-wing rag might have their in-house Forum Research pollster engage in fantasy-filled projection on their behalf on the outcome of the May 14th British Columbia election (see graphic above), that publisher PostMedia deigns to report such on the front page of their near financially bankrupt national newspaper, there is nothing about the poll above that bears any semblance to the political reality felt by British Columbians in the dying days of the Decision BC 2013.
Yes, the Decision BC 2013 race is tightening up, both the Conservative and Green votes appear to be in freefall, and the BC Liberals are seemingly picking up some of the slack, but will they form government for a fourth consecutive term of office when election results are announced the evening of May 14th? Not bloody likely unless Dix stumbles, and he ain’t gonna.
Somewhere between the 48% for the NDP and 26% for the B.C. Liberal party that Angus Reid reported in their poll released earlier in the week, and their poll conducted for CTV BC on May 1 and 2, and released today (see video above) — not to mention the 70 to 12 seat majority the Vancouver Sun projected yesterday — and the National Post’s way-out-of-right-field Forum Research poll, above, lays the reality of where we’ll end up on election night. As VanRamblings reported yesterday, the race will probably continue to tighten up some in the remaining 9 days of Decision BC 2013, the Liberal Party may yet climb to 35% in the polls, as the Conservative and the Green Party vote continues to collapse, but make no mistake, the BC New Democratic Party are on track to form government post May 14th.
When you have longtime Vancouver Sun legislative columnist Vaughn Palmer reading the political tea leaves — and realize he has access to the internal polls for both of British Columbia’s main parties — when Palmer advises the B.C. Liberals to “keep your chins up”, as he did in his column yesterday, as the discredited current government heads toward certain defeat at the polls in 2013, you know that this is a race that, although it’s tightening up some, is a race headed in one direction and one direction only, with the all-but-inevitable outcome of a majority BC NDP government set to guide our province over the course of the next four years.

For the latest VanRamblings election coverage, click on Decision BC 2013.

With only a handful of days left in Decision BC 2013, as most pundits had predicted, the campaign race has tightened some this week over last, with the BC Liberals gaining 3% in the polls, as the Green Party and Conservative vote begins to collapse. The NDP vote has remained steady at 44.2%, though, enough to catapult BC’s long out of government centre left political party to victory on May 14th, with a projected 56 seats in the British Columbia legislature, a gain of 21 seats, and 34 more seats than the floundering BC Liberals.
VanRamblings has told friends that we believe the NDP will garner 54 seats in the house come election night, May 14th, a perfect number for the BC NDP, and leader Adrian Dix — enough to appoint a cabinet of 24 – 26, with another 24 – 26 parliamentary secretary appointments, as well as an NDP house leader, party whip, Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House, thereby keeping any idle NDP electeds from possible mischief that could hurt the party, and also affording increased salaries for each NDP member in the legislature, newly-elected and sustaining. We’ll see come May 14th.

To throw a monkey wrench into the whole election prediction game, according to Chad Skelton, at the Vancouver Sun, if one takes into account the most recent Angus Reid poll, an online seat prediction tool created by The Sun newspaper “predicts the NDP winning a whopping 70 seats and the Liberals just 12, with another two for independent candidates and one for the Greens.” Again, we’ll just wait to see what occurs on May 14th.

Given the figures expressed in the polls above, in his latest column for the Vancouver Sun, longtime legislative reporter Vaughn Palmer writes that the B.C. Liberals are simply trying to keep their chins up, and hang on.

Looking to the current campaign, NDP leader Adrian Dix is fighting to win everywhere, though his party denies (not all that persuasively, in my view) that he means to crush, crush, crush the Liberals the way Campbell did the New Democrats in 2001.

The Liberals, in fighting against the odds to turn things around, are also serving the dual purpose of trying to save as much as they can of their seat complement to establish a sizable opposition beachhead for the next four years. Plan B, one might call it. And unless the gap between the two main parties drops to the single digits very soon, I expect it will become the operative one for the Liberals as election day approaches.

Has Palmer had a look at the Vancouver Sun poll above? Must be, cuz he seems to be writing off the Liberal’s chances with 12 days still to go.
BC Election 2013: News from Here, There & Everywhere
As is the case with the mainstream media, VanRamblings has pretty much ignored the travails of the BC Conservative campaign, and whatever machinations it’s deer-in-the-headlights leader, John Cummins, performs each day on the campaign trail. In an April 30th story, the Vancouver Sun’s Mike Hager reported that the Conservative party had failed to file the proper paperwork by last Friday’s nomination deadline for four of its candidates — Vancouver-Quilchena’s Bill Clarke, a former Progressive Conservative MP; Burnaby-Lougheed’s Christine Clarke; Burnaby North’s Wayne Marklund; and Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows’ Manuel (Mike) Pratas. As a consequence, the candidates will run unaffiliated. Oh sure, the four ‘quasi-semi-sorta-but-really’ non-Conservative candidates — who won’t have their affiliation made official on the ballots — will still campaign as Conservatives, using party paraphernalia like lawn signs and logos, and the like, but they won’t be - like, y’know - official Conservatives. Poor John Cummins, he’s running a provincial campaign where the wheels keep coming off the bus.
And then there’s this story about the …

… triumvirate of candidates dropped by the B.C. Conservative party in the past week over their controversial online comments, who have pledged to continue running as independents. Ian Tootill announced he will be running in Vancouver-False Creek after party leader John Cummins took offence to several of his comments made on Twitter. Two other Tory candidates dumped by the party for their controversial comments, Vancouver-West End’s Ron Herbert and Boundary-Similkameen’s Mischa Popoff, will also run as independents.

The wheels on the Conservative campaign bus go click, click, clack …

We’re not sure why, but for some reason or other VanRamblings has quite consistently neglected to steer readers in the direction of The Tyee’s otherwise superior coverage of the 40th British Columbia provincial election, an oversight we’ll attempt to remedy, at least to some degree, now.

• In this Tyee story, one of the NDP’s most prominent candidates, labour opposition critic and caucus chair Shane Simpson, said he’s “not 100 percent sure” his party will achieve B.C.’s 2020 climate target if elected to lead the province.
• Tyee reporter Pieta Woolley wonders why it is that during the course of Monday’s debate, no party leader made a peep about fixing British Columbia’s clearly broken foster care and child protection system.
• Then there’s The Tyee’s “scroll in and find your riding, or information on any other riding in the province” BC Election 2013 Map and Guide.
• There’s a great deal more to learn about the issues of concern respecting Decision BC 2013 that may be found on The Tyee’s front page, as well, if you care to take a gander.

Well, that’s it for VanRamblings May 2nd coverage of the BC Election.
For the latest VanRamblings election coverage, click on Decision BC 2013.