BC Election on October 24th

[adma]

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.

[DC Al Fine]

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.

Yes, that's the issue with doing projections when one party is going from near-zero to a sizeable portion of the vote. We don't have any baseline support to work with so we can only make educated guesses about areas of strength, how efficient their vote is, etc etc.

The same goes in reverse when a party collapses e.g. A 1993 projection would find very different results for the Tories than who actually survived.

[Hatman 🍁]

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.

I mean, if you want to look at possible wins as areas which saw the "last strands of Social Credit", then sure. On that note, one of the Abbotsford seats may also be a pickup opportunity (though, I imagine demographics there may have changed too much since the SoCreds last won seats in 1991)

[DL]

First polls of the campaign by Research Co:

BC NDP 44%
Bc Libs 37%
Greens 12%
Cons    4%

Horgan leads Wilkinson on "best Premier" by 17 points...

And Insights West:

NDP 42%
BC Libs 29%
Greens 16%
BC Cons 12%

https://www.insightswest.com/news/sept-2020-snap-election/

[Hatman 🍁]

So, the NDP is taking a hit for calling an election, but Horgan's still popular. Once those Conservative voters come back home to the Liberals, we're going to have a closer race. BC remains polarized!

[DL]

So, the NDP is taking a hit for calling an election, but Horgan's still popular. Once those Conservative voters come back home to the Liberals, we're going to have a closer race. BC remains polarized!

The Research Co poll has the BC Cons at 4% and Insight West says 12%...its always a bit of a mystery who those people are and where they end up. The simplistic theory is that BC Conservatives are rightwing and therefor 100% of their vote will go BC Liberal...but IMHO anyone who is politically illiterate enough to think that BC Cons are a viable choice are probably largely non-voters or protest voters...and on top of that BC Liberal leader is from central casting as exactly the kind of BC Liberal that people who vote Tory federally would hate (slick, condescending, downtown Vancouver "Laurentian elite" style professional with big L federal Liberal ties).

Similarly when the Green doubled their vote from 8% to 16% between 2013 and 2017 - the conventional wisdom was that this would be fatal to the NDP - but as we all know the NDP lost when the Greens were at 8% and won (sort of) when the Greens rose to 16% - so go figure...

[brucejoel99]

It's almost like calling an early election that nobody wanted is significantly hurting their polling numbers. This was such a bad call, John.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, calling an unneeded snap election in a context like this is incredibly irresponsible. As much as I hate the BC Libs, Horgan fully deserves this drop in the polls.

[DL]

It's almost like calling an early election that nobody wanted is significantly hurting their polling numbers. This was such a bad call, John.

In 2017 the NDP ended up exactly tied in the popular vote with the BC Liberals 40-40...now they are anywhere from 7 points to 13 points ahead - which in BC would constitute a landslide since BC elections are always very close...how is going from dead even to leading by an average of 10 "hurting their polling numbers"?

[Hatman 🍁]

So, the NDP is taking a hit for calling an election, but Horgan's still popular. Once those Conservative voters come back home to the Liberals, we're going to have a closer race. BC remains polarized!

The Research Co poll has the BC Cons at 4% and Insight West says 12%...its always a bit of a mystery who those people are and where they end up. The simplistic theory is that BC Conservatives are rightwing and therefor 100% of their vote will go BC Liberal...but IMHO anyone who is politically illiterate enough to think that BC Cons are a viable choice are probably largely non-voters or protest voters...and on top of that BC Liberal leader is from central casting as exactly the kind of BC Liberal that people who vote Tory federally would hate (slick, condescending, downtown Vancouver "Laurentian elite" style professional with big L federal Liberal ties).

Similarly when the Green doubled their vote from 8% to 16% between 2013 and 2017 - the conventional wisdom was that this would be fatal to the NDP - but as we all know the NDP lost when the Greens were at 8% and won (sort of) when the Greens rose to 16% - so go figure...

There may be truth to some of that, but in the past Liberal numbers have gone up as Conservative numbers drop over the course of the campaign, and their numbers do seem to be higher in the Interior. Most people don't constantly think about politics, so even if they get the Conservative/Liberal distinction confused, by the time election day comes, they get it sorted out.

It is interesting that the Reseach Co poll got the Cons at 4%, which is a big difference than the ~12% everyone else has them at. Maybe it was their ballot box question that specifically asked people to think about their candidate in the local riding?

As for the Greens, they're a centrist party, so of course they are going to take from the Liberals too!

It's almost like calling an early election that nobody wanted is significantly hurting their polling numbers. This was such a bad call, John.

In 2017 the NDP ended up exactly tied in the popular vote with the BC Liberals 40-40...now they are anywhere from 7 points to 13 points ahead - which in BC would constitute a landslide since BC elections are always very close...how is going from dead even to leading by an average of 10 "hurting their polling numbers"?

I think everyone is comparing their numbers to before the election call

[DL]

I think everyone is comparing their numbers to before the election call

There were a couple of polls in the summer showing the BC NDP with a 20 point lead - but no one seriously thought that was ever sustainable...and would have come down to earth very quickly no matter what. If there was no BC election this year and they waited until Fall 2021 - the NDP and BC Liberals would likely be within the margin or error of each other.

BTW: At the start of the 2017 BC election campaign there were polls that also had the BC Cons as high as 10% and back then we were told those people would all end up voting Liberal...but even though that BC Conservative vote evaporated - it didnt seem to benefit the Liberal to any great extent and in fact polls that asked BC Conservatives who their second choice was showed that they were all over the map. Keep in mind that in 2017 the BC Liberals were an unpopular government and many federal Tory voters particularly hated Christy Clark...

I would add that there is a school of thought that the "leader is the brand" and that in the end if you have the more popular leader you will win the election...and Horgan leads Wilkinson by 17 points on who would make the best Premier

[adma]

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".

[King of Kensington]

The BC NDP has had a pretty consistent 40-42% voting base (2001 debacle being the exception of course).

[King of Kensington]

and on top of that BC Liberal leader is from central casting as exactly the kind of BC Liberal that people who vote Tory federally would hate (slick, condescending, downtown Vancouver "Laurentian elite" style professional with big L federal Liberal ties).

Wilkinson is basically the Ignatieff of BC. 

[MaxQue]

and on top of that BC Liberal leader is from central casting as exactly the kind of BC Liberal that people who vote Tory federally would hate (slick, condescending, downtown Vancouver "Laurentian elite" style professional with big L federal Liberal ties).

Wilkinson is basically the Ignatieff of BC. 

And he actually worked on Ignatieff leadership campaign.

[Benjamin Frank]

and on top of that BC Liberal leader is from central casting as exactly the kind of BC Liberal that people who vote Tory federally would hate (slick, condescending, downtown Vancouver "Laurentian elite" style professional with big L federal Liberal ties).

Wilkinson is basically the Ignatieff of BC.  

They weren't party leaders but he and Ignatieff remind me of former Harper Immigration Minister Chris Alexander and Bill Morneau as well.  All four of them are obviously highly intelligent people who seem to completely lack common sense.

Still Wilkinson did quite well in the campaign against proportional representation and I don't think the NDP should underestimate him.

[DL]

Andrew Weaver who was leader of the Green Party until he resigned earlier this year has officially endorsed John Horgan and the NDP!

[CumbrianLefty]

Andrew Weaver who was leader of the Green Party until he resigned earlier this year has officially endorsed John Horgan and the NDP!

Is it true the Canadian Greens are more "centrist" than in some countries?

[StateBoiler]

Need some historical Canadian political history poster here, but could the American election that's occurring 2 weeks later have played a role in B.C. deciding to call an election here, as far as the general mood down south, there's some on that on the border, let's use it to our advantage? I imagine it has an impact on political campaigns of staff workers that choose to work both sides of the border.

[Hatman 🍁]

Andrew Weaver who was leader of the Green Party until he resigned earlier this year has officially endorsed John Horgan and the NDP!

Is it true the Canadian Greens are more "centrist" than in some countries?

Generally, yes, but their membership is quite diverse, ranging from far left "eco-socialists" to "Tories with bikes".

[warandwar]

Andrew Weaver who was leader of the Green Party until he resigned earlier this year has officially endorsed John Horgan and the NDP!

Huh. I took Weaver to be fairly right, but I guess he's Left compared to the membership?

Edit: ahhhh

Weaver left the Green caucus in January, citing family health problems. By then, the relationship had grown so bad that the door connecting Weaver’s legislature office to the Green office space was boarded up and he had to enter and exit by a separate hallway. He was symbolically and physically walled off from the party

[King of Kensington]

Huh. I took Weaver to be fairly right, but I guess he's Left compared to the membership?

Doesn't seem to be a big ideological difference between Weaver, the Green caucus and Horgan frankly.  Weaver likes competent technocrats and Horgan has offered competent technocratic government.

[King of Kensington]

BC historically had probably the sharpest class-based voting in North America, almost like the Australia of Canada.

However as elsewhere it has eroded.  The "metropolitan-periphery" and "coast vs. interior" split is quite evident now.  That trend was first evident with Christy Clark's 2013 populist campaign - where the urban professional vote swung left and she even lost her own Point Grey seat!  Doesn't seem like the patrician Wilkinson will win those voters back.

[DL]

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...

[DL]

So now the BC Liberals - whose entire "brand" is based on balanced budgets and fiscal rectitude - are promising to eliminate the 7% provincial sales tax for a year and have cut to 3% for another year as part of some half-baked Covid recovery scheme. I have to say this sounds like a really bad idea on almost every level...it will cost about $8 billion a year when the province will already be facing a money crunch. Its also a bit of a solution in search of a problem - of all the major problems BC will face in the coming year  - cutting a few cents off the price of everything seems like a very expensive promise that will solve absolutely nothing. I'm not sure it even makes political sense - I could see this going over badly with the public in the current environment.