2017 British Columbia election

[DL]

It's been a while since we have had any polling in BC but apparently Mainstreet will have a release tomorrow. I'll bet that after Horgan did so well in demolishing Christy Clark in the radio leaders debate we may start to see a bigger NDP lead

[DL]

The latest JMI poll uses a different online methodology than in 2013. This time it's based on google analytics based panel. Not saying it's better or worse than in 2013 just that it's different. But they were also in field April 18-20 meaning they would not be capturing the impact of the radio debate last week where Horgan crushed Clark

[DL]

Comparing apples to apples these polls by Mainstreet show a clear trend. It has to be particularly distressing to the BC Liberals that Green voters who have a second choice pick the NDP over the Liberals by a 74 to 7 margin. That means that if the Green vote declines at all the NDP picks up TEN votes for every one that goes to the BC Liberals

[DL]

Yeah, if the NDP wins the popular vote by 10 points, i would say that an NDP majority is guaranteed and likely a super-majority. In 1972 the NDP won the popular vote 39% to 29% and in seats they took 38 to 10 for the Socreds. In 1991 the NDP took 41% and the BC Liberals 33%...in seats that translated into NDP 55 and Libs 17!

As for those numbers for the Lower Mainland, i would like to know what the geographical definition of Greater vancouver is? Would Fraser Valley places like Chilliwack and Abbotsford even be considered Greater Vancouver or would they be lumped into the Interior?

One thing to keep in mind is how some of these places rapidly changing. Not too long ago Abbotsford was considered Bible Belt and ultra conservative...but in recent years it has been bursting at the seems with young lower middle class families fleeing the high cost of housing in Vancouver...and parts oif Abbotsford are getting to be as heavily South Asian as parts of Surrey. it might not happen this election but I would be surprised if the NDP starts to become competitive in one of those seats soon.

[DL]

Check out this hard hitting ad by the BC NDP. It takes a sledge hammer to the BC Liberals and smashes them into a million pieces. It will be particularly effective with blue collar workers in the interior

https://www.facebook.com/bcndp/videos/10150864124154978/

[DL]

One thing to bear in mind is that polling errors and methodological biases from one election rarely carry over into the next. Polling companies refine their methodologies and factors change. There is a hypothesis that in the 2013 BC election the online polls overestimated NDP support and underestimated Liberal support because a ton of people joined online panels during the anti-HST campaign and they were mostly people who were angry at the government...

However, in the 2009 BC election it was a very different story. In that election all the phone based polls forecast a BC Liberal landslide with a lead of 8 to 11 points over the NDP. Only the final online poll by Angus Reid had it close at 44-42...and the results were 45-42. So in 2009, the one online poll was almost dead-on while all the phone polls overestimated the Liberals and underestimated the NDP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_general_election,_2009#Opinion_polls

What will happen this time - only time will tell.

[DL]

I notice something interesting in the crosstabs of the Ipsos poll - they asked people who they voted for in the 2013 election:

54% say they voted Liberal (Libs actually took 44% in 2013)
37% say they voted NDP (NDP actually took 40% in 2013)
8% say they voted Green (same as 2013)
no numbers on reported past vote for BC Conservatives/Other.

So contrary to the theory that this online panel might over-represent New Democrats - if we look at reported past vote - the sample is actually wayyy more Liberal than it ought to be. I'm not questioning the overall findings, just pointing this out for people to interpret as they wish

[DL]

The latest poll from Forum is pretty whacky

BC NDP  - 37%
Bc Liberals - 29%
BC Greens - 24%
BC Cons - 7% (says something about how incompetent and unprofessional Forum is that they would still be prompting for a party that is only running 10 candidates)
Other - 3%

Its very weird that Ipsos has the Greens at 14% and Forum at 24% - that is a huge gap even by BC polling standards.

From a seat point of view its actually not as good as it seems for the Greens. The only place where they stand to actually win any seats is on Vancouver Island and there the NDP leads with 39% with the Greens and Liberals at 28% and 27% respectively. A vote split like that would likely mean the Greens adding Saanich North and possibly nothing else!

Forum's seat projection model is also kinda bizarre - they say this popular vote split would mean NDP 47 seats, BC Libs 34 seats, Greens 4 seats and 2 "other".   where pray tell is there is a single solitary "Other" candidate with any chance at all of winning in BC??? Also, if (and very big IF), the NDP actually beat the Liberals by a 37-29 margin, I suspect the Liberals would do far worse than 34 seats. In 2013 the Libs took 44% of the popular vote. If that dropped to 29% that would mean a 15 point drop...that would mean A LOT of losses in terms of seats.

http://poll.forumresearch.com/post/2717/bc-final-week/

[DL]

I've noticed that in each Forum poll they have had a strangely small interior sub-sample. I don't understand why they would do that since its not as if there is anything particularly difficult about IVR polling interior BC!

Still even if we ignore the "interior issue"...if the NDP actually carried the Lower Mainland by 6 points and carried Vancouver Island by 11 points - it would be a blow-out in terms of seats in those regions.

[DL]

PS: Some people (who shall remain nameless), have suggested that IVR polls systematically overestimate NDP support. I find no evidence of that. In fact in the last Ontario election the reverse happened. The final Ekos poll had the NDP at 19% and the final Forum had them at 20%...in fact they got 24%!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_general_election,_2014#Opinion_polls

[DL]

Of course, I don't know what our dear friend Lo'Ler is rambling on about these days, I have him on ignore.

That's probably good for your mental health :-)

[DL]

Mainstreet: 42% (-2), 37% (+3), 21% (-1).

This feels about right...I think the previous Mainstreet poll that gave the NDP a 10 point lead was likely an outlier and this marks a reversion to the mean. A few things stand out to me in this poll though:

Regionally, looks like BC is moving towards a serious urban-rural split with the NDP doing really well in the Lower Mainland, consolidating their lead on Vancouver Island (with a 10 point lead over the Greens, the Greens will likely be stuck with just 1 or 2 seats), but getting crushed in the interior.

The NDP vote is now the most solid, while Greens vote is softening with about 40% of Greens saying they could still change their minds...If the Green vote drops, the NDP gets 3.5 votes for everyone 1 that goes to the Liberals.

A lot can and likely will happen in the coming week and i expect an exceedingly close election

[DL]

Weaver could have devoted his time to only discussing policies and issues and made it clear that in a hypothetical minority situation he would cooperate with whatever party was closest to him on the issues, instead he recited BC Liberal talking points about John Horgan's personality. That's what is known as "going off message"

[DL]

Its interesting that the latest online surveys by Angus Reid and Ipsos have the Greens at a very disappointing 14-15%...while the latest IVR polls by Forum and Mainstreet have them in the low 20s... Usually if anything online polls tend to overestimate support for 3rd parties compared to IVR.

Any theory as to what is going on here?

[DL]

Apparently Innovative is not so innovative if they are prompting for the non-existent BC Conservatives!

[DL]

The conventional wisdom is that the two best chances the Greens have in the whole province of gaining any seats are Saanich North and Cowichan Valley. If they can't lock down Saanich North and are trailing this badly in Cowichan Valley it suggests they may be lucky to get anything beyond the 1 seat they currently have. Weaver may end up Asa footnote in history as the Ralph Nader of 2017

[DL]

The final poll from Insightwest is out and it its another indication of a cliffhanger:

NDP - 41%
Libs - 41%
Greens - 17% (and a distant 3rd on Vancouver Island now)

http://www.insightswest.com/news/outcome-uncertain-as-a-divided-british-columbia-prepares-to-vote/

PS: People say the NDP has only ever won when the rightwing vote was split - but in 1991 the BC Liberals were nothing like the BC Liberals of today. They ran as a sort of federal Liberal-like small "l" liberal party that was more left of centre

[DL]

Forum did a final IVR poll all conducted yesterday that also points to a photo-finish. Looks like they finally came to their senses and stopped prompting for the BC Conservatives and they also seem to find a last minute drop off for the Greens

NDP 41% (up 4 from last week)
Liberals 39% (up 10 from last week)
Greens 17% (down 7 from last week)
Other 3% (unchanged)
Conservatives 0% (down from 7% last week)

I wouldnt be surprised if the Greens fall further to 14-15% as people go to the polls seeing screaming headlines about a photo-finish

[DL]

Green vote collapsing as expected. However, it seems to be helping the Liberals. Perhaps the NDP can only win when the centre and centre-right are divided? Green voters are as a whole not in the centre, but perhaps their softest supporters are in the centre.

The only poll that shows the Green vote "collapsing" is Forum and I'm sceptical they were ever as high as 245 in the first place. I suspcet that there is relatively little Green-Liberal movement. I think that there is movement of the vestigial BC Conservative vote to the Liberals and some Liberal gains from undecideds, counterbalanced by the NDP picking up last minute tactical votes from Greens who don't want to split the vote and re-elect the Liberals

[DL]

I am almost certain the Greens will not actually get what they're polling at. Close elections have a tendency to depress third party turnout.

I agree. If the average of the final polls has them at 18% - i expect they will be at 14-15%...in the last three BC elections final polls had the Greens around 12-13% and they wound up at 8%

[DL]

Polls have consistently shown that soft Green voters when asked their second choice would go NDP over Liberal by about a 4-1 margin. Some greens will stay home since a lot of their voters are younger and disengaged. But a lot of Green voters are also very anti-Christy Clark, so I think that the lower the Green vote the better for the NDP. Whether its enough is anyone's guess

[DL]

Where is Lotuslander tonight? Is he on suicide watch?

[DL]

In the end the polls were highly accurate most had it 41-40 for the NDP and it ends up behind 41-40 for the Liberals which is well within the margin of error and perfectly acceptable. There was no error like in 2013.

Riding polls on the other hand were a total fiasco. Main Street did four riding polls that were all spectacularly wrong. They had Liberals incumbents ahead by quite a bit in delta north and Surrey Fleetwood and both were trounced. They had the Liberal 35 ahead Fraser-Nicola...they eked outa win by 5 points and they had the Liberal narrowly ahead in Saanich north, he came in a distant third.

Oracle did t do so well either. They had the Liberal leading in Comox-Courtenay by 18% and the NDP won it by 9 votes! They had the Green a distant third in Cowichan Valley, she ended up winning quite handily.

I don't think I've ever seen an election where riding polls were so consistently dead wrong

[DL]

I wonder if the unlamented "Lotuslander" will ever grace these pages again. He must feel totally disgraced and humiliated by the results and how totally wrong virtually all of his pontificating turned out to be...

[DL]

If the seat count stays as is, the diversity of the two Caucus look like this: (feel free to verify, I eye-balled it)

BCNDP - 41
Women - 19, 46%
Visibly Minority - 12, 29%
LGBT - 4, 10%

BCLiberal - 43
Women - 13, 30%
Visible Minority - 5, 12%
Physical Disability - 1, 2%

People can discuss the NDP's internal nomination process's but its hard to argue with the results when about half the MLAs elected are women and almost half come from minority communities.  

I was trying to count up who was LGBT in the NDP caucus. I could think of Chandra Herbert, Farnsworth, Elmore...and who is the fourth one?