The Angus Reid Institute surveyed 2863 citizens in every riding across the province — online, on the phone and in focus groups — a statistically valid sampling of a representative group of voters in each riding / region of the province, and predicts a majority NDP government will be elected on October 19.

Come 9pm this upcoming Saturday night — October 19th, 2024 — incorporating an up-to-date riding by riding analysis, and a representative cross-sampling of the twenty most reliable polling companies which have weighed in and reported out on the 2024 British Columbia election, VanRamblings has come to believe the good citizens of British Columbia will elect David Eby to a full term of office, as our province’s duly-elected Premier-designate, as the British Columbia New Democratic Party is set to enjoy majority government through the autumn of 2028, with a good prospect of being re-elected to office again that year.

The Honourable Thomas R. Berger, leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party in 1969.

For a good long while, VanRamblings believed that the BC NDP’s 2024 campaign for office bore a distinct relation to Tom Berger’s failed and far too “intellectual”, professorial and “coldly calculating” NDP campaign for office, in 1969.

VanRamblings no longer believes that to be the case.

Over the course of the past 10 days — in the post-debate period — the conditions of the 2024 BC NDP campaign have been radically reset, as a warmer David Eby has emerged on the campaign trail, no longer providing deadly boring lectur-y and utterly enervating policy pronouncements devoid of humanity.

Instead what British Columbians have seen in televised press conferences held in, for example, Courtenay-Comox, Campbell River and Surrey, is a David Eby who radiates warmth, the David Eby many of us know so well — the David Eby who consistently polled at a 53% approval rating for the past two years, as Canada’s most popular Premier — once again emerging on B.C.’s political stage, humble and comfortable in his skin — not to mention, affable and engaging — while providing the information British Columbians need to know before they cast their ballot.

VanRamblings advised B.C. NDP leader David Eby to be more aggressive on the campaign trail. David Eby, wisely, ignored VanRamblings’ advice, instead saying to himself, “Well, if I’m going to lose this campaign, I’m going to lose it being me, not as some automaton the campaign created.” David Eby has, as we expected would be the case, taken charge of his campaign for re-election over the course of the past ten days, his waggish sense of humour and his love of the province and all of its citizens front and centre in a rejuvenated and re-energized B.C. NDP campaign.

BC NDP leader Glen Clark emerges victorious and Premier-designate in 1996’s British Columbia election

Then we got to thinking, “If the correlation between the failed 1969 BC NDP campaign and the 2024 BC NDP campaign for office doesn’t hold water, what about the 1996 election, when Glen Clark became Premier, in spite of the fact that Gordon Campbell’s insurgent B.C. Liberal party garnered 43% of the popular vote to Mr. Clark’s 39% of the vote, yet due to ‘voter efficiency,’  the British Columbia New Democratic Party would form and hold government from 1996 through 2001?”

The BC NDP in 2024 have consistently polled five points ahead of the BC Conservatives. What if a situation occurred in 2024 that, although the BC NDP is polling ahead of the BC Conservatives, on a riding-by-riding basis and in the targeted riding campaign BC Conservative co-campaign manager, Dimitri  Pantazopoulos has run, BC Conservatives pull ahead on the seat count on election night to form government, despite winning fewer votes than their BC NDP rival?

Nah, we concluded. Too many differences between the 1996 and 2024 campaigns.

The upstart BC Conservatives are running a seat-of-their-pants election, devoid of a GOTV (Get Out the Vote) electoral machine necessary to win government, with much less money, many more untried candidates, and in a campaign that is rife with … see below as to what we believe to be a more relevant campaign correlation that may well inform the outcome of the 2024 British Columbia election.

On March 26th of this year, VanRamblings published a prescient column titled, Bozo Eruptions Disrupt Election Campaign, where we tracked then Alberta Wildrose party leader Danielle Smith’s failed bid for office.

See if you don’t think that there’s a correlation between Danielle Smith’s failed 2012 campaign for office, and the BC Conservative’s calamitous 2024 campaign.

As Stuart Thompson wrote, at the time, in The National Post …

It is a surefire rule of politics that at any given moment, somewhere in Canada a bozo is about to erupt.

Just as a political campaign is looking to flip the script, or turn the corner, or recapture the narrative, some bozo will ruin it for them, prompting damage control, tearful apologies, or, in the most severe cases, a resignation.

The bozos simply can’t stop themselves from erupting.

Conservative strategist Tom Flanagan, who ran Smith’s 2012 campaign, oversaw one of the most memorable stretches of bozo eruptions in Canadian political history: Smith wanted a big tent party, and open and unvetted candidate nominations.

Two days after the 2012 election was called, a Wildrose candidate’s year-old blog post was unearthed declaring that all gays were destined for a “lake of fire”. Smith refused to rebuke her candidate, saying the party “accepts a wide range of views.” And the hits just kept on comin’ for the Wildrose campaign, as day after day after day, a new candidate bozo eruption garnered front page coverage, and the lead story status on the evening news.

Danielle Smith’s dreams of becoming the Wildrose Premier were dashed, the party 20 points behind their polling on Election Day.

Danielle Smith’s failure to rebuke a candidate. Kind of sounds like BC Conservative Party leader John Rustad, who has consistently refused to censure any racist, intolerant, misogynist and homophobic utterance by any of his candidates.

What does the above have to do with British Columbia’s October 19th election?

Everything.

From the day after the Leaders’ Debate through until today, the BC Conservative campaign has been dogged by the shocking controversy surrounding their Surrey South candidate, Brent Chapman, such that the entire focus of leader John Rustad’s campaign for office has not been on the issues he’s raised at the daily press conferences he has held over the past week. Talk about being off message.

Brent Chapman, the B.C. Conservative Party’s Surrey South candidate, has said that what happened at residential schools is a “massive fraud”, called for a “boycott” of Air Canada to stop airlifts of Syrian refugees, questioned high profile mass shootings such as Sandy Hook elementary school where 20 children were murdered, while denying the white nationalist terrorist attack on a Québec City mosque.

Think of Rustad’s BC Ferries press conference, which got buried in an avalanche of questions put to the leader about whether Brent Chapman would be allowed to continue as a candidate for the BC Conservative Party in the riding of Surrey South.

The entire focus of reporter questions related to the ongoing, disastrous Brent Chapman fiasco, with no questions whatsoever on the BC Conservative plan for BC Ferries, or on subsequent days on the BC Conservative issue of the day, as the BC Conservative campaign was consistently held off message.

Can you say, devastating, calamitous, detrimental, hapless and noxious?

Chapman also shared a graphic posted by a far-right meme account.

The graphic features images of two handguns and the silhouettes of two heads.

“To those liberals who said they would kill themselves if Trump were elected,” the graphic states. “Don’t fuck this up too.”

The graphic suggests “liberals” should aim the gun at the centre of their brain rather than at their chin, an apparent reference to how best to commit suicide.

The most damning Chapman post — and destructive to the BC Conservative campaign — occurred surrounding the resurfacing of past statements demonizing Muslims and Palestinians, accusing them of “inbreeding.”

2. Mr. Chapman has many opinions on people of the Muslim faith. Here he refers to Muslims as, “little inbred walking, talking, breathing time bombs…” #bcpoli #vanpoli #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/pPXC2Ze06K

— Jas Johal (@JasJohalBC) October 10, 2024

Why destructive to the BC Conservative campaign? Well, just see above.

Also, because 43% of the voters in the Surrey-Cloverdale riding where former BC United MLA, Elenore Sturko, who joined the BC Conservatives in June — who, only two weeks ago was polling at 56% in the riding, as Brent Chapman’s extremist anti-Muslim rants came to light has seen her potential to win the riding evaporate, as NDP incumbent Mike Starchuk, with the full support of the 43% Muslim electorate, is now set to win the riding Saturday night, and re-election to the BC Legislature.

Keith Baldrey, veteran Global BC Legislative reporter

On Mike Smyth’s CKNW talk show, Global BC reporter Keith Baldrey stated that Elenore Sturko was fully aware of Brent Chapman’s extreme views before she decided to run alongside him, as Ms. Sturko described Chapman as “an extremist” and a “QAnon conspiracy theorist” shortly before she defected.

“A week before Sturko made her jump, her announcement that she’s going to join the BC Conservatives, I ran into her in the Legislature library. And in my Facebook feed was suddenly a video from Brent Chapman and it was sort of about his candidacy. And I didn’t know him, I didn’t know he was married to (federal Conservative MP) Kerry-Lynne Findlay … I said to Sturko, “Oh, so you’re running against an actor?” And she says, “Oh, this guy, he’s a…” and she called him “an extremist,” said he was a ‘QAnon conspiracy theorist, that he’s crazy, you know.’ And at that point, she was still a member of BC United.” (CKNW, Oct 10)

All of the unsettling and disturbing news that has emanated from the BC Conservative campaign, following a dreadful — what CHEK-TV reporter Rob Shaw called a cadaver-like — Leaders’ Debate performance by John Rustad, giving the “win” to David Eby at 48%, with only 32% support for John Rustad, has caused the BC Conservative campaign not only to stall, as the party continues to lose momentum and more and more voter support with each passing day, but to recede, or perhaps even collapse, making a BC Conservative win on Saturday, at best unlikely.

As occurred in 2012 during that year’s Alberta election, come Election Day when Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Party lost 16 percentage points in support due to the day after day, drip by drip revelations of racism, intolerance and the hate espoused by many of her candidates, VanRamblings believes, come Saturday, when the vast majority of British Columbians will cast their ballot at the polls, British Columbians of conscience will make the decision to cast their ballot for the principled candidate for Premier, David Eby, and a British Columbia New Democratic Party where you have heard nary a whisper of intolerance, because as British Columbians we realize when we enter our local polling station, the only reasonable political party to vote for to form government will be the British Columbia New Democratic Party.

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You’ll want to watch / listen to what former BC NDP Premier Glen Clark has to say about the 2024 British Columbia provincial election. If you don’t see the Hotel Pacifico podcast YouTube video above, you can listen to it here or here or here.