Dimitri Pantazopoulos, President @ Yorkville Strategies, Inc. | Partner @ Maple Leaf Strategies

Dimitri Pantazopoulos could very well play a determinative role in the outcome of the 2024 British Columbia provincial election.

Should John Rustad’s fledgling B.C. Conservative Party emerge victorious late on the evening of Saturday, October 19th, such an outcome will arise in part from the genius organizing skills of Mr. Pantazopoulos, the pollster / de facto co-campaign manager for the upstart, recently revived British Columbia political party.

Dating back to 2004, Dimitri Pantazopoulos was Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper’s pollster, a role he played through until the defeat of the Harper government in 2015. Mr. Pantazopoulos remains to this day the definitive pollster for Pierre Poilievre’s — certain to be government in 2025 — federal Conservative party.

When it comes to British Columbia, Dimitri Pantazopoulos’ myth-making claim to fame arises from B.C. Liberal Premier Christy Clark’s come from behind victory at the polls on Monday, May 13, 2013, in that year’s all-important provincial election.

When Dimitri Pantazopoulos arrived in British Columbia in early 2013, from his home in Ottawa, to survey the political scene in our province on behalf of the B.C. Liberal party, Mr. Pantazopoulos and his crack team from Maple Leaf Strategies set about to conduct intensive polling in the, then, 84 provincial ridings that comprised British Columbia’s tumultuous, voter capricious political landscape.

At the time, an unpopular Premier Christy Clark was mired at 26% in the polls, while newly-minted B.C. New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix was riding a wave of unprecedented popularity, registering 49% support from British Columbia residents, an electorate eager for change, ready to make Mr. Dix B.C.’s 35th Premier.

In late mid-March 2013, a confident, ebullient Dimitri Pantazopoulos told the Premier, B.C. Liberal campaign manager Mike McDonald, and top B.C. Liberal fundraiser, Bob Rennie that the election could not only be won by Premier Clark, but that she could secure a majority government early in the evening of May 13th.

To say that Premier Clark, Mike McDonald and Bob Rennie were incredulous upon hearing what Mr. Pantazopoulos had to say would be to understate the matter.

Here’s what Dimitri Pantazopoulos told the political trio of disbelieving doubters.

“Having surveyed the province, my team and I believe that the B.C. Liberal party could win 50 seats on election night. We’ve identified those 50 seats. The remaining 34 ridings are write-offs, and represent unwinnable NDP strongholds into which the B.C. Liberals, although you may nominate candidates in those ridings, should not put one plug nickel into supporting the B.C. Liberal candidates running in those ridings.

On the other hand, in the 50 winnable ridings for the B.C. Liberal party, you’ll want to pour all of your resources into those ridings. Maple Leaf Strategies will conduct nightly polling in those 50 ridings, and “meet” with the candidates in those ridings each morning to advise them of the issues — identified in our nightly polling in the riding — that should be the focus of their activity and public pronouncements that day. I guarantee, should the B.C. Liberal party move forward on my recommendation, the party will secure victory in each of those ridings, as we run a hyper-local campaign for office in 2013.”

Premier Clark, Mike McDonald and Bob Rennie thought that Mr. Pantazopoulos had lost his marbles — but what did they have to lose in adopting Dimitri’s electoral strategy? Defeat seemed almost certain at that point. Dimitri Pantazopoulos offered the doleful B.C. Liberal election team a ray of hope that the party would not be wiped out at the polls, as unconvinced as they remained of the prospect of victory at the polls two months hence.

Premier Christy Clark, grinning like the chesire cat that both got the cream, and swallowed the canary

Premier Christy Clark did, indeed, emerge victorious with a comfortable majority government on May 13, 2013 thrilling the Premier, her campaign manager and major fundraiser. Dimitri Pantazopoulos had been right and there was untold joy at B.C. Liberal election headquarters that night.

Conservative Party of British Columbia leader John Rustad. Soon to be 38th Premier of our province?

In 2024, Dimitri Pantazopoulos has returned to British Columbia with a vengeance, working overtime to a secure victory for the band of untested newbies running for office with the embryonic, nascently inchoate British Columbia Conservative party.

You know what we can’t afford? The EBYNDP, their $5 billion deficits, opioid deaths, free crack pipes, shuttered Emergency Rooms, traffic snarls, crumbling infrastructure. We can’t afford EBYNDP’s radical schemes. https://t.co/OhUY5Oj3mF

— DimitriPantazopoulos (@DPinBC) August 30, 2024

Nine years on, Mr. Pantazopoulos and his team have identified 55 winnable ridings for the B.C. Conservatives, a number that may rise now that B.C. United has folded into the B.C. Conservative party. The fly in the ointment in 2024, though? The B.C. Conservative Party is woefully underfunded, having raised a paltry three million dollars, a fraction of the $26 million with which Premier David Eby’s New Democratic Party of British Columbia will fight the upcoming provincial election.

In some measure, the success of the B.C. Liberal campaign in 2013 was due to the 30-second game changing ads that ran incessantly, multiple times during the Global BC, CTV Vancouver and CBC morning, noon, 5pm, 6pm and 11pm newscasts — not to mention, every radio station across the province — that cast Adrian Dix as an ineffectual flip flopper, and a poor choice for Premier of the province. Add to that two botched debates by the NDP leader.

Taking into consideration Dimitri Pantazopoulos’ game plan, together with the devastatingly effective campaign ads run again Mr. Dix, and the poor debate performances by the NDP leader, spelled electoral doom for Adrian Dix’s New Democratic Party, which lost and lost badly to Christy Clark’s B.C. Liberals.

Underfunded or not, Dimitri Pantazopoulos and his team believe a victory for John Rustad’s B.C. Conservative party a near certainty — not, of course, if Premier David Eby’s BC NDP have anything to say about the matter. And they do, and they will.

All said, the wind is at the back of British Columbia’s provincial Conservative party, as they ride the wave of popularity that federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre currently enjoys in all parts of British Columbia, and across Canada.

Add to that, members of the election teams that helped secure victory for Conservative Premier Tim Houston in Nova Scotia, a second term for Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and last year a surprise victory for far-right-of-centre Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, the outcome of British Columbia’s upcoming election — our provincial election officially gets underway on Saturday, September 21st — may be far from certain, but given, as well, that the B.C. Conservatives, apart from the controversy that some of their soon-to-be-former candidates caused, could win it all on Saturday, October 19th, and form the next government.

Two fine B.C. Conservative candidates, one of whom we’ll endorse, the other who we like very much

Wednesday and Thursday on VanRamblings, we’ll take a look at the Vancouver-Yaletown and Vancouver-Little Mountain ridings, where two strong B.C. Conservative candidates for office are currently vying for elected provincial office.

The Curse of Politics podcast, where the ineffable David Herle, Jordan Leichnitz and Kory Teneycke discuss and debate the shenanigans that have gone on in British Columbia politics this past week.