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.

Barring any last minute fumbles by Adrian Dix (as unlikely a prospect as one could possibly imagine), as we head towards E-Day on May 14th, the son of parents Ken and Hilda, immigrants from Ireland and Britain, respectively, fluent speaker of both of Canada’s official languages, graduate of UBC in History and Political Science, husband of Renée Saklikar, a poet and writer, longtime resident and two term MLA for Vancouver’s Collingwood district (the riding called Vancouver Kingsway), one morning very soon you will be waking to the news that Premier Adrian Dix will be sworn into office in the early part of June — along with a cabinet comprised of dedicated, hard-working New Democrat MLAs who Mr. Dix believes can help to right the course for British Columbia, create jobs and opportunity, manage our health care sector for the good of all, ensure that our children are provided with the resources necessary to learn in our public schools, and more, so much more — to become British Columbia’s 36th Premier.
As you can see from the graphic at the head of today’s blog post, Milton Chan, over at the Election Prediction Project, stipulates that the New Democratic Party of British Columbia is guaranteed to win a minimum of 45 seats in the house, two more than is necessary for a majority government, and currently 30 seats greater than the increasingly moribund BC Liberals, a rise of three seats for the NDP over last week’s prediction, and a loss of one for the Liberals. As we’ve written previously, too bad, so sad, ain’t sure it’s been all that great to know ya, don’t let the door whack you on the behind on your way out, better luck next time, we thank you for your efforts in governing British Columbia (however misguided were many of your policies), but the time has come when the citizens of our province are aching for change, and so you are gone, as the Adrian Dix era hath arrived, thoughtful, methodical, humane, policy-developed, slow, sustaining and incremental change for the better. The clocks will not be turned back.

The four leaders are back on the campaign trail, hard at it, Adrian Dix working to increase an NDP majority in the legislature, Christy Clark doing her best to avoid an unrecoverable drubbing at the polls for her BC Liberal party, John Cummins doing his level best to elect a handful of Conservatives in the Interior, and Jane Sterk striving hard to not only get the BC Green Party message out to voters, but ensure that at least a couple of her candidates are elected on May 14th (Oak Bay – Gordon Head and Saanich North and the Islands are identified as the best bets) to represent their constituents in the British Columbia legislature.
Where will the four leaders of British Columbia’s political parties spend their time in the remaining days of Decision BC 2013?
BC NDP leader Adrian Dix spent most of Tuesday in Prince George, where he pledged to the B.C. Mayors’ Council that an NDP government would create a stand-alone ministry for local government and hold annual roundtables with mayors from across the province. Wednesday morning, Adrian Dix had breakfast in Quesnel, where he also attended a campaign event with NDP Cariboo-North candidate Duncan Barnett, who also traveled with the BC NDP leader to a 2:05pm campaign stop in Barkerville.
BC Liberal leader Christy Clark launched a three-day, 10-city campaign tour on Tuesday, hoping to capitalize on the exposure from Monday night’s comme ci, comme ça leaders’ debate. This morning, Ms. Clark had breakfast with supporters in Penticton, after which her campaign bus headed down the road to the offices of Boundary-Similkameen BC Liberal candidate, Linda Larson, a riding the Election Prediction Project’s Milton Chan is now calling for NDP candidate Lakhvinder Jhaj, a pick up for the NDP over the Liberals from 2009. At 3:30pm, the soon-to-be-ex Premier made a stop at the Sanderson Fruit Stand in Keremeos, before she headed down the road to Princeton, for a tour of the Copper Mountain Mine.
BC Green Party leader Jane Sterk spent Tuesday visiting the editorial offices of Vancouver’s two major dailies before traveling home to Victoria. Bright and early this morning, Ms. Sterk had breakfast with party supporters before heading over to Victoria’s CFAX radio station for a one-on-one with morning host, Al Ferraby. At 10:30am, Ms. Sterk was off to participate in an all-candidates forum at the James Bay New Horizons Centre, in support of her candidacy in Victoria-Beacon Hill, where she hopes to defeat former NDP leader, Carole James (an unlikely prospect). At 12:30pm, Ms. Sterk was interviewed by CBC Almanac host, Mark Forsythe. Tonight, at 6:30pm, it was another all-candidates forum at the New Horizons Centre. Tomorrow, Ms. Sterk is scheduled to set out across across Vancouver Island in support of candidates running under the BC Green Party banner.
Yesterday, Conservative leader John Cummins began what he’s calling his pick-up truck tour, where he made stops at the many Interior communities that dot Highway One — Hope, Boston Bar, Lytton, Spences Bridge, Merritt and Ashcroft, among other small towns and villages — before finally arriving at his Kamloops destination, where he spent most of Wednesday plumping for local BC Conservative candidates, Ed Klop and Peter Sharp.
VanRamblings will leave you with the following Christy Clark message …

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