43rd British Columbia general election

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Maybe if the top priority is really to defeat the NDP the BC United and the BC Conservative parties should merge and call themselves the BC Liberal party :-)

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Regardless of the BC United vs BC Conservatives split - the elephant in the room is the fact that the NDP is at 48% which is extraordinarily high for a second term government. Its like the BC NDP is the new "natural party of government" in BC.

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Its interesting that BC Greens are doing so badly. Supposedly there were all these environmentalists upset with the BC NDP for going ahead with Site C and with various LNG pipelines - and yet if anything the Greens are doing even worse than in 2020.

I suppose it is worth noting that before their boomlet in 2017 under Andrew Weaver when their popular vote went up to 16% - they typically would only get about 8% of the vote in BC elections.

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It’s notable how badly the Greens have been doing lately in BC provincial polling even though they are trying to outflank the NDP on the left these days and if you listen to Twitter and some alternative press squawking you’d think there was a lot of vulnerability there

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When there are Liberal governments federally or provincially Ontario the NDP is usually able to capitalize as the progressive alternative and if people in BC were upset with the BC NDP environmental record they could vote Green and then the NDP would feel the need to shore up its flank and react. With numbers like these the message to the Eby government is that it’s OK to ignore the Greens and that they don’t have to worry about any defections on the left

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ods of the two right wing parties merging at some point?

Its not clear to me that they will ever merge. The BC Cons are wayyy too populist and socially conservative for the base of the old BC Liberals/BCU who could best be described as Paul Martin era federal "business Liberal" types. I think that there are major, major divisions on key policies between BCU and BC Cons - not least that the BC Liberals created the carbon tax while the BC Cons are blatant climate change deniers!

Its probably more likely that with the rightwing hived off into the BC Cons - the BC United party will evolve into more of a centrist socially liberal, fiscally conservative party that will try to poach soft NDP votes and BC will become a three party province much like Ontario - only with a stronger NDP and a weaker conservative option.

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So we've got a Vision Vancouver vs. OneCity nomination battle in Vancouver-Little Mountain? :-P

It won't be good for Vancouver City Council if Boyle wins, since she's the only progressive/non Green member of council. I wonder if a by-election is held, would One City win? The race would be at-large across the city, so it would be a referendum on mayor Sim.

Another of the many reasons wy electing city councillors At Large is so absurd - the fact that anytime a vacancy occurs on Vancouver city council - it has to be fllled through a byelection across the entire City of Vancouver - ridiculous!!

[DL]

So we've got a Vision Vancouver vs. OneCity nomination battle in Vancouver-Little Mountain? :-P

It won't be good for Vancouver City Council if Boyle wins, since she's the only progressive/non Green member of council. I wonder if a by-election is held, would One City win? The race would be at-large across the city, so it would be a referendum on mayor Sim.

From what I have heard Vancouver city council already takes the cake for being the most parochial and NIMBY-oriented city council of any major city in Canada - hard to see how it could be any worse if they had a ward system!

Another of the many reasons wy electing city councillors At Large is so absurd - the fact that anytime a vacancy occurs on Vancouver city council - it has to be fllled through a byelection across the entire City of Vancouver - ridiculous!!

It is ridiculous, but Vancouverites love it for some reason. They think adopting wards would make council much more parochial.

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NDP 2012 byelection winner and Chilliwack-Hope MLA from 2012-2013 Gwen O'Mahony is the B.C Conservative nominee for Nanaimo-Lantzville.

Nanaimo is something of an NDP stronghold, but it's also an area that has supported populist right wing types in the past.

She also ran for a federal NDP nomination as recently as 2019. Usually when people swing wildly from left to far right either they are a TERF or they were anti-vaxxers who got radicalized during the pandemic and joined convoy protests etc...

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A lot of the remaining BC United voters are federal Liberal types - and I suspect that many would vote NDP before they would vote for a party of rightwing conspiracy theorists, climate change deniers and anti-vaccine fanatics like the BC Cons. Christy Clark's ex-husband Mark Marissen tweeted this week that he would vote NDP if the only alternative was the BC Cons.

Also, no one knows the BC Con leader John Rustad - and by all accounts he is very weak and underwhelming - so once you get into a leadership focused campaign - the BC United party could regain some ground since they have way more money, more incumbents and a leader in Falcon, who while unappealing - is much more experienced performer than Rustad

[DL]

This seems more like US would be had Sanders instead of Biden won Democrat nomination in 2020 and what would establishment GOP who hated Trump do in that case?  Biden was centrist enough easy to support him but if Sanders was chosen I bet they would have run a third party candidate so in a roundabout way I am saying your business types who supported BC Liberals but cannot stand right wing populism are probably sticking with BC United even if that is all they have left.

FWIW, Christy Clark's ex-husband Mark Marrissen who is a dyed in the wool "blue Liberal" old Paul Martin backer has tweeted that if he has to choose between the BC NDP under Eby and the climate change denying crackpots in the BC Conservative party - he is voting NDP

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A big weakness for the BC Cons is that they are just coasting on a generic party brand right now . Their leader is totally unknown and that probably helps because he is very unappealing and the more people see John Rustad they less they will like him. He is not be any stretch of the imagination someone anyone can picture as premier

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I find it amusing how they still use this dated 1970s language about saving "free enterprise" - as if the NDP under Horgan or Eby ever posed the slightest threat to free enterprise. Its not as if the BC NDP has workers of the world unite as its mission statement and wants to nationalize all heavy industry.

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There are lots of companies in the resource sector who are not crazy about some federal Liberal policies and yet the Liberals are never labelled anti-free enterprise - in fact they are very much the party of big business

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I find it amusing how they still use this dated 1970s language about saving "free enterprise" - as if the NDP under Horgan or Eby ever posed the slightest threat to free enterprise. Its not as if the BC NDP has workers of the world unite as its mission statement and wants to nationalize all heavy industry.

I understood "free-enterprise coalition" to just be the colloquial term for the anti NDP alliance of Liberals and Tories in BC. I'm pretty sure it's just useful shorthand carried over from the NDP vs Social Credit era when the NDP did in many ways pose a threat to business. The BC Liberals/BC United even presented themselves as a "free enterprise coalition," so it can't imagine that exactly harmed the idea of continuing to use that phrasing.

I'm not saying that "free enterprise" terminology necessarily harms anyone - its just so dated and vestigial. At one time all the wealthy and educated people from the business elites voted en masse for which ever party was anti-NDP - and the NDP got massive support from people with lower incomes. Like much of the western world - the political coalitions have changed enormously. The BC NDP now wins some of the highest income ridings and tends to do well among high income highly educated people many of whom work in business in the private sector...the issues that separate the NDP from the parties on the right are no longer things like nationalizing entire industries - its now more cultural issues and environmental issues 

[DL]

That’s all true but it’s not like this is the first time the Conservatives have been riding high in BC federally. The Tories did very well in BC during the time of the 2005, 2009 and 2013 BC elections and the BC Liberals were led at the time by people who were very rightwing but who had strong federal Liberal pedigrees like Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark. Ironically, Kevin Falcon is the first federal Conservative to become leader of the B.C. Liberals and its under his leadership that that party is collapsing at the expense of the BC Conservatives