BC Election on October 24th

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And in Ontario, 1987 was a jackpot.

Somehow I can see the BC gap narrowing by proxy, simply because urban vs rural voting demos have "sorted" so much in recent times, no matter what the leadership...

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If somehow, the BC Conservatives get around 15%, would they get a seat?

Depends on the quality of candidates. They could realistically only ever hope to win one of the Peace River ridings.

I can picture a candidate-driven Okanagan pickup as well.

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Yeah, how is this a "hurting" when the NDP is two points *higher* in the poll that gives them a narrower margin.  Most likely, it's just the writ-drop Libs reverting to some approximation of normal levels of support as the non-socialist-horde default option.  And most likely, the NDP was allowing for this kind of polling-convergence "inevitability".

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I would add that right now the BC provincial electoral map is a bit "rigged" to over-represent rural areas. For example the two Peace River seats which are two of the safest BC Liberal seats have less than a third of the population of the average suburban Vancouver riding. i suspect that if the NDP gets a majority they will revise the redistribution act to be more "rep by pop" and the effect of this may be to eliminate a few rural BC Liberal seats...

Either that, or create some friendlier urban seats out of existing "rurbans" in places like Prince George or Kamloops.

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I would add that right now the BC provincial electoral map is a bit "rigged" to over-represent rural areas. For example the two Peace River seats which are two of the safest BC Liberal seats have less than a third of the population of the average suburban Vancouver riding. i suspect that if the NDP gets a majority they will revise the redistribution act to be more "rep by pop" and the effect of this may be to eliminate a few rural BC Liberal seats...

Either that, or create some friendlier urban seats out of existing "rurbans" in places like Prince George or Kamloops.

Kamloops while has NDP pockets, is still pretty BC Liberal overall as is Prince George.  The downtown core and the university are only areas NDP tends to do well in both.  A lot of the blue collar workers who used to vote NDP are now BC Liberal and Conservative federally.  NDP does a bit better in the city proper than rural areas but not a massive difference.  Main hope for NDP is both universities grow a lot larger and become dominant employer and thus becomes a college town sort of like Guelph or Kingston which vote left or in UK like Cambridge and Oxford which vote heavily Labour unlike rest of their shires or in US where you see lots of college towns like Moscow, Idaho; Pullman, Washington; Lawrence, Kansas; Ithaca, New York; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Bloomington, Indiana vote heavily Democrat despite surrounding areas going heavily GOP. 

So if NDP wins again, perhaps a smart policy would be try to expand UNBC and Thompson Rivers University so they have a greater impact than they do now. 

Frankly, for a party polling as well as Horgan's NDP, to depict the BC interior as a budding Red America-style terminal wasteland-but-for-college-towns is IMO jumping the gun.  And I did say "friendlier", not "odds-on safe".

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The federal Liberals did win Kelowna in 2015, so I don't see why the BC NDP can't win there now.

Kelowna has lots of well to do seniors so don't see it going BC NDP.  If you look at recent elections, BC Liberals won it by over 30 points, so NDP would need around a 30 point lead to win there.  Basically if NDP is winning Kelowna, they are looking at around 70 seats province wide, which I don't see happening.

I largely agree with you but places do evolve demographically. I hear that Kelowna is growing very quickly and more and more young people are moving there. I'm not expecting the NDP to ever sweep it - but at some point as it gets cut into several seats, maybe one of them is more "inner city" than the others...you know up until the 1970s Victoria was a total dead zone for the NDP!

Huh. Why was Victoria so conservative?

I am guessing back then, lots of traditional British immigrants as well as back then civil servants weren't reliably left wing like today never mind you now have larger university population and a strong environmentalist movement you lacked back then.

And also back then, there was a stronger "Red Tory" element (even within the provincial Socreds, at least by the Bill Bennett years), while the NDP was seen as more of a rough-hewn union/blue-collar force...

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The federal Liberals did win Kelowna in 2015, so I don't see why the BC NDP can't win there now.

Kelowna has lots of well to do seniors so don't see it going BC NDP.  If you look at recent elections, BC Liberals won it by over 30 points, so NDP would need around a 30 point lead to win there.  Basically if NDP is winning Kelowna, they are looking at around 70 seats province wide, which I don't see happening.

I largely agree with you but places do evolve demographically. I hear that Kelowna is growing very quickly and more and more young people are moving there. I'm not expecting the NDP to ever sweep it - but at some point as it gets cut into several seats, maybe one of them is more "inner city" than the others...you know up until the 1970s Victoria was a total dead zone for the NDP!

If we are looking at the Kelowna-Okanagan area, based on 2017, the NDP targets should be:

->Boundary-Similkameen - 32% with no Conservative candidate, a low BCGreen vote. If the Cons runs here that will eat into BCL and the BCNDP already polling high.
->Vernon-Monashee - 29% no BCC, high BCGreen vote (21%). If the BCGreen tanks some, and would likely shift to the NDP could be a target.
https://338canada.com/bc/map.htm - predicts only Boundary-Similkameen as a BCNDP pick-up. As always take that as you will.

Everything else is plus 50% for the BCL, should be one of the only strong areas for BCLs.

One additional reflection on Kelowna which plays on that 2015 federal result: it might be historically barren for the NDP, but it's not necessarily barren for the "non-right", at least in the vestigial "Judi Tyabji populist" sense.  Or in UK terms, it's the kind of place which'd have a certain "Con-LD marginal" element (at least in terms of the Blair years)

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One point I remembered later on the seemingly anomalous win of the Federal Liberals in Kelowna in 2015: my understanding is that the Liberal candidate, Stephen Fuhr, was a relatively high profile long time former Conservative Party supporter, and many of the voters in 2015 shared his defacto view of "I didn't leave the Conservative Party, the Conservative Party left me."

And also, the Greens stood down on his behalf.

But I still stand by my "Con/LD marginal" point re Kelowna (whereas in UK terms, Kamloops and Prince George would have more of a traditional Con/Lab dynamic)

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Three ridings with just 2 candidates on the ballot (all Lib vs NDP, obviously); Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows (NDP held marginal), Richmond South Centre (historically safe Liberal), and Surrey-Green Timbers (safe NDP).

I suppose without the Greens on the ballot, the NDP could pick up Richmond SC? The idea of the NDP winning any seats in Richmond seems alien to me, but I know they're likely to pick up Richmond-Queensborough this time.

I think there is generational divide within the Chinese community.  Most that came over in the 80s and 90s before Hong Kong handover always go BC Liberal as they have a strong anti-socialist bent and even though NDP are nothing like communist party, sort of like Vietnamese and Cuban-Americans voting heavily GOP although former much less so.  NDP gaining in Richmond amongst millennial Chinese who weren't around when parents came over and instead likely vote the same way millennials across province do.  So its more thanks to generational change, not NDP picking up previous BC Liberals voters, but rather NDP winning most new voters who become of age but weren't earlier.

It's also an urbanization/intensification/"cosmopolitanization" byproduct, particularly in a case like RSC (and maybe also last time, an Asian NDP candidate vs a non-Asian BC Lib incumbent)

Queensborough, of course, is a special case, as it's the New Westminster "thumb" of the riding that provides the core NDP base more than the Richmond part.

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In 1972 the NDP beat the old Social Credit Party (which was more or less reincarnated as the BC Liberals) 39% to 30% in the popular vote but beat them in seats 38 to 10! But back then the NDP vote was more evenly spread across the province so they were able to run the tables in the interior. This time even in a worse case scenario for the BC Liberals it’s hard to see them getting less than 25 seats.

And there was also 7 seats for the provincial Libs and PCs in 1972; whereas now the "non-socialist-horde" vote tends to be united in one camp (and the Greens don't count as either)

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Needs more Lotuslander

Hah! I wonder whatever happened to that guy

Got kicked, possibly?

I checked his Twitter--nothing but "one person followed/one person unfollowed" data for at least the past year and a half...

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Vancouver Quilchena is to Vancouver what River Heights is to Winnipeg. As long as the BC Liberals are led by a stuffy patrician like Wilkinson who has a big L federal Liberal pedigree they will win there. But if after Wilkinson the BC Liberals pick a new leader who is a rightwing conservative populist... they could lose places like Quilchena too

They could lose; but not necessarily to the NDP--that is, whatever their straits, the BC Liberals are still a "big tent" party; but if rightwing conservative populism leads to a schism, or perhaps a rebranding as "BC Party" in order to cleanse associations with the federal Liberals, I can see Quilchena opting for a Lib Dem-style "middle option" (perhaps led by Wilkinson?) should something like that exist by that point.  More so than the NDP or Green.

Quilchena's like Don Valley West without the Thorncliffe element.

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Is this the first time an incumbent has had to step down during an election? In a "safe" seat too (I suppose it was going to be close this time though)

Sure there have been other, but would have to dig back in history quite a ways.  Closest I can think of was Derek Zeisman in British Columbia Southern Interior in 2006.  This was a conservative held riding, but Jim Gouk, outgoing MP retired.  Conservative candidate Derek Zeisman was dropped by Harper after story surfaced he had smuggled booze over the border.  NDP flipped the riding and interestingly enough have held it since.

And interestingly, there's *already* a high-profile "anti-Zeisman" independent on the ballot (Chilliwack councillor Jason Lum), who could be poised to benefit particularly if voters find the NDP a "bridge too far".

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Interestingly the NDP has a huge lead among people who are voting by mail or voting at the advance poll while its very close among election day voters...i guess that means that on election night it may look close and then we all have to wait two weeks for the mail in votes to be counted!

It could also reflect the relative states of the parties, i.e. NDP voters having more early-decision determination, whereas the undecideds are likelier to be erstwhile BC Liberal supporters not sure whether to stick with the compromised tried and true, or to make the "inconceivable" leap to NDP, or even offer their vote to the Conservatives where applicable...

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Another good example: In 2019 CBC called Calgary Centre a riding to watch and a "Liberal-Tory battleground". On election day, the Tories won the seat by 30%.

Edit:
Calgary

Liberals won by 1% in 2015
+ Modest national swing against government
+ Huge regional trend against government
+ Incumbent fired from cabinet for sexual harassment

Yeah, I don't think anyone in the Tory or Liberal camps were spending much time worrying about the result of that race.

Though in cases like that, the psephological geek might figure it "one to watch" not for who wins, but for the scale of defeat...

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Given how the BC Tories got 35% on the 2 Peace River districts and came in an easy second place, any chance they eventually flip in 2024  or next election?

Actually, it'd seem that the BC Cons outperformed virtually *everywhere* they ran this time--not just the Peace River results, but 10%-ish results as the rule most elsewhere that they ran--and on top of that, the *CHP* overperformed in seats where the Cons were not a factor.  That is, this was the best BC election for "minor" right-of-centre parties in eons (and even Throness holding his own in Chilliwack-Kent and outperforming the BC Libs in Chilliwack proper counts)--one would assume that a lot of that reflects "anti-Wilkinson" sentiment on the right that wasn't ready to commit to Horgan.  And it *could* have some bearing on what happens on the right spectrum in BC over the next few years--though it might have been likelier had the Cons actually succeeded in gaining any of those Peace River seats.  (I'll also suppose that "anti-Wilkinson" sentiment also factored into the Greens outperforming riding-by-riding expectations.)

But the fact that the NDP couldn't "match 1972" (or even, in share-of-legislative-seats terms, 1991) can be explained through the Libs' "interior wall" (i.e. the Kamloops/PG/Cariboo/Kootenay seats) largely holding all the same--then again, the way the Horgan wave worked out was such that they didn't *require* all of that, so perhaps they deliberately allowed the line to slacken...

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Lots of ridings going NDP that would seem crazy even three years ago. But they couldn't flip fraser-nicola. Any idea why?

Skeena is another interior one-that-got-away that *should* have been low hanging fruit for the NDP.

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Lots of ridings going NDP that would seem crazy even three years ago. But they couldn't flip fraser-nicola. Any idea why?

Skeena is another interior one-that-got-away that *should* have been low hanging fruit for the NDP.

An interior riding they lost by 10 points last time? Not that disappointing, even if it used to be reliably NDP.

Except insofar as it's a far north interior sort of riding named "Skeena", the notion of which conjures up mental associations with the federal entity of the same name.

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Ok I will agree that this NDP is less “radical” than the Barrett government was in 1972 but how is it any less “radical” than the NDP was under Harcourt or even Glen Clark for that matter

That government would be covered by the remark about the whelk stall.

And it, together with Rae in Ontario, cemented the crippling notion of the NDP as a clown-car in power (Romanow in Sask being the exception that proved the rule)

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I don't know if "more radical" is the right term, but the sort of person who would see the Liberals as sensible forward thinking moderates in the 90s was very much put off by them this time (confidential source in Kits Point liked Sam Sullivan but voted for "the Party").

Actually back in the 90s the BC Liberals were a much more rightwing party than they are now. They were positioning themselves as the reincarnation of Social Credit and they ran on platforms of drastics cuts to social services in 1996 and 2001 and they also pandered to anti-Indigenous racism back then by promising to make any First nations treaties subject to approval by a referendum of all of BC - Andrew Wilkinson would seem positively leftwing compared to the Gordoin Campbell of the late 90s.

But i think the political centre of gravity in BC has changed drastically since then. Back in the 90s and 00s, BC was voting heavily for the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance and was seen as a bit of a hotbed of rightwing populism - that is all gone. BC has followed a very similar path to California - one a Republican leaning state that is now a super safe Dem state.

And there was even a bit of a "yes and no" re the BC Libs' right-wingness in the 90s; largely because in the name of the big tent they still had to retain something of their class-of-1991 centrist spirit (Gordon Wilson's departure notwithstanding), not to mention Gordon Campbell himself representing the patrician-Vancouverite class--in the end, it was more of a Bill Bennett than Vander Zalm Socred that they were reincarnating.

And just generally, by today's "woke" cultural standards the 90s can seem more casually "right wing" no matter what side of the spectrum you're on (thus the comment below about Glen Clark being to the right of Horgan).

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The expectations based on the polling from myself and the riding prediction sites were that the NDP would make a comeback in the interior, not make major gains in the Fraser Valley.  So, the total number of seats the NDP has won so far is the same as predicted, but the seats  aren't entirely as expected.

Though the between-the-lines evidence of something like the 2015 (less so 2019) federal results might have offered hints of what was to come in the Fraser Valley--that is, the "Justin left" blazing a trail for the "Horgan left".

And I'm also how much of that miscalculation was born out of an underestimation of the Con/CHP vote factor, perhaps under a presumption than the BC Cons were too much of a dead party walking to be a valid protesty vote-park wherever they ran.  (In a way, it's like they were expected to be like the NB NDP in 2020, but turned out more like the N&L NDP in 2019--poor in candidate numbers, but compensating through ballot-box "efficiency".)

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Why did Chilliwack go NDP?

A few reasons:

1. General province wide swing and a rising tide raises all ships
2. Vote splits - there were Conservative and Independent candidates in both Chilliwack seats
3. Chilliwack is changing a lot. It used to be a Fraser Valley Bible belt town...now its become more of an exurb of Vancouver and young families who can't afford housing closer in are moving there - so its a totally different place than it used to be

Though Abbotsford remains elusive--then again, that may be illusory, given how the NDP shares in the Abbotsford seats were comparable to those in the Chilliwack seats; it's just that the Libs were more capable of "holding their vote" there (though Ab-Mission could still flip with the mail-ins).