BC Election on October 24th

[mileslunn]

I am normally a BC Liberal supporter, but I think PST cut an incredibly stupid idea.  In theory only debt will go up as in 2023 PST will return to 7% thus depending on recovery may be able to balance budget then.  But just adds extra debt.  While its true some places like Germany have cut VATs, they are only cuts and must shorter duration. 

A better solution is make hotel purchases and restaurant purchases including tips tax deductible up to $1,000 for one year after vaccine introduced.  This would encourage more spending in sectors that were really hard hit rather than just a general cut which people may spend on more stuff at Amazon or other online retailers who don't need help.

In terms of impacts, it suggests to me internal polls are not great for BC Liberals.  If they were tied or close to, would probably be being more cautious wanting to hold and gain a few points, not throw out some big idea and hope it sticks.  It may be a hail mary, but I actually think this is likely to help NDP as they can just retort to Wilkinson, what programs will you cut and right now with people struggling programs probably more important.  If economy was doing well, I think tax cuts would be popular although I think an income tax cut would probably sell better than a sales tax cut.

[adma]

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.

[mileslunn]

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. 

[McMuffin2020]

BC NDP for the win! We need 4 more years of Horgan

[adma]

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".

[DL]

Brand new poll from Ipsos has the BC NDP leading by 18 points

BC NDP - 51%
BC Libs - 33%
BC Greens - 12%
Other - 4%

Contrary to many theories here - not prompting for the BC Conservatives does NOT seem to help the BC Liberals

https://globalnews.ca/news/7365572/bc-election-ipsos-poll-week-1/

even more brutal for the Liberals - On the question of best premier, John Horgan is the choice of 44% of voters, Andrew Wilkinson 14% and Sonia Furstenau 6%...and thius was conducted before the BC Liberals unveiled their ill-conceived plan to eliminate the sales tax and add 8 billion to the deficit

[Hatman 🍁]

Amazing if true. Perhaps people upset with the election call have gotten over themselves?

I'm always skeptical of Ipsos, as they use an opt-in panel, but I hope they're right!

[DL]

Amazing if true. Perhaps people upset with the election call have gotten over themselves?

I'm always skeptical of Ipsos, as they use an opt-in panel, but I hope they're right!

Polls can be wrong...but they are almost never THAT wrong and if you look at the 2017 BC election Ipsos was dead-on - as was everyone. In contrast to the 2013 polling fiasco in BC, in 2017 the polls were all very accurate

[Jeppe]

The BC NDP is leading in the interior by 5 points. Seems quite likely that a few of the urban seats in the interior such as in Kelowna and Kamloops may be picked up by the NDP if that lead holds.

[DL]

The BC NDP is leading in the interior by 5 points. Seems quite likely that a few of the urban seats in the interior such as in Kelowna and Kamloops may be picked up by the NDP if that lead holds.

The NDP has some history of being competitive in Kamloops and has held that seat federally and provincially they have come close in North Kamloops. Kelowna is a different story. The NDP has never won a seat there at any level. If they were to win a seat in Kelowna it would be a real breakthrough. Kelowna is now about the same size as Victoria and as it urbanizes its easy to image that eventually there will be a city centre seat there that could be an NDP "beach head"

[King of Kensington]

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

[King of Kensington]

The Liberals' zero sales tax pledge could be their version of Tim Hudak's "eliminate 100,000 jobs" pledge - a poorly executed, poorly thought out "big idea" that derails their campaign.

[DC Al Fine]

Brand new poll from Ipsos has the BC NDP leading by 18 points

BC NDP - 51%
BC Libs - 33%
BC Greens - 12%
Other - 4%

*Low whistle*

[mileslunn]

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.

[Hatman 🍁]

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

Hmmm. While the provincial NDP is more moderate than the federal party, we're still dealing with apples and oranges here. I can't see Kelowna voting for a nominally social democratic party.

[mileslunn]

The Liberals' zero sales tax pledge could be their version of Tim Hudak's "eliminate 100,000 jobs" pledge - a poorly executed, poorly thought out "big idea" that derails their campaign.

Sounds good on paper, as who doesn't like paying less taxes.  Problem is it blows an $8 billion hole in budget so for those on left, question is what will he cut.  Martyn Brown who was Gordon Campbell's former chief of staff pointed out even Campbell's big tax cuts in 2001 were only 1/3 the size of this and those were still controversial but at least you had some economists who agreed with them.  Also Campbell unlike Wilkinson had an excuse as that was the year Alberta brought in their flat tax so tax cuts mainly done to help stench more wealthy moving to Alberta, whereas now with Alberta in the tank economically that is not a risk and nor would it be applicable to sales tax anyway.

For those on the right, this might push some away as NDP is actually more fiscally conservative here as a BC Liberal government would result in larger debt than an NDP one sort of going against conventional wisdom and tradition.

I think if BC Liberals maybe eliminated PST only in a few key sectors hurting like restaurants and tourism, that might have been a winning formula as not as big a cost and targeted at sectors who need help most.

[DL]

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!

[MaxQue]

The Liberals' zero sales tax pledge could be their version of Tim Hudak's "eliminate 100,000 jobs" pledge - a poorly executed, poorly thought out "big idea" that derails their campaign.

Sounds good on paper, as who doesn't like paying less taxes.  Problem is it blows an $8 billion hole in budget so for those on left, question is what will he cut.  Martyn Brown who was Gordon Campbell's former chief of staff pointed out even Campbell's big tax cuts in 2001 were only 1/3 the size of this and those were still controversial but at least you had some economists who agreed with them.  Also Campbell unlike Wilkinson had an excuse as that was the year Alberta brought in their flat tax so tax cuts mainly done to help stench more wealthy moving to Alberta, whereas now with Alberta in the tank economically that is not a risk and nor would it be applicable to sales tax anyway.

For those on the right, this might push some away as NDP is actually more fiscally conservative here as a BC Liberal government would result in larger debt than an NDP one sort of going against conventional wisdom and tradition.

I think if BC Liberals maybe eliminated PST only in a few key sectors hurting like restaurants and tourism, that might have been a winning formula as not as big a cost and targeted at sectors who need help most.

Nothing new there. The right do unfunded tax cuts and the left is forced to cut things/raise taxes to save the budget.

[mileslunn]

The Liberals' zero sales tax pledge could be their version of Tim Hudak's "eliminate 100,000 jobs" pledge - a poorly executed, poorly thought out "big idea" that derails their campaign.

Sounds good on paper, as who doesn't like paying less taxes.  Problem is it blows an $8 billion hole in budget so for those on left, question is what will he cut.  Martyn Brown who was Gordon Campbell's former chief of staff pointed out even Campbell's big tax cuts in 2001 were only 1/3 the size of this and those were still controversial but at least you had some economists who agreed with them.  Also Campbell unlike Wilkinson had an excuse as that was the year Alberta brought in their flat tax so tax cuts mainly done to help stench more wealthy moving to Alberta, whereas now with Alberta in the tank economically that is not a risk and nor would it be applicable to sales tax anyway.

For those on the right, this might push some away as NDP is actually more fiscally conservative here as a BC Liberal government would result in larger debt than an NDP one sort of going against conventional wisdom and tradition.

I think if BC Liberals maybe eliminated PST only in a few key sectors hurting like restaurants and tourism, that might have been a winning formula as not as big a cost and targeted at sectors who need help most.

Nothing new there. The right do unfunded tax cuts and the left is forced to cut things/raise taxes to save the budget.

Most tax cuts not of this size or blow as big a hole.

Harper's GST cut blew a huge hole but that was pre Great Recession so large surpluses then.  Nonetheless Harper could have balanced budget by 2013 had GST been left at 7% which would meant more money to spend on things to help in 2015. 

Ralph Klein's tax cuts were when oil was at over $80 a barrel so worked fine at time, problem was when oil prices fell, it blew a big hole.

Gordon Campbell and Mike Harris both had large income tax cuts but not on this scale.  Harris cut income taxes by 30% and Campbell by 25%.  In both provinces sales tax bring in almost as much revenue as income tax although a bit less so this would be more akin to both cutting income taxes by 75%.  Heck Wilkinson if wanted to blow same amount could have just said for next two years, all income under 100K is tax free and that would have cost roughly same amount, but probably delivered better results.

[Hatman 🍁]

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?

[mileslunn]

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.

[DL]

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.
[/quote]

Exactly right

[brucejoel99]

Brand new poll from Ipsos has the BC NDP leading by 18 points

BC NDP - 51%
BC Libs - 33%
BC Greens - 12%
Other - 4%

Contrary to many theories here - not prompting for the BC Conservatives does NOT seem to help the BC Liberals

https://globalnews.ca/news/7365572/bc-election-ipsos-poll-week-1/

even more brutal for the Liberals - On the question of best premier, John Horgan is the choice of 44% of voters, Andrew Wilkinson 14% and Sonia Furstenau 6%...and thius was conducted before the BC Liberals unveiled their ill-conceived plan to eliminate the sales tax and add 8 billion to the deficit

Wow, what a lead. When the election was called, I figured (as the last page can tell you) that this might be an interesting race to watch because the decision to have it certainly seemed fairly controversial, but if these numbers hold for the NDP, then it won't be as much of a barn-burner as previously thought.

[adma]

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...

[DL]

One more little “x” factor is that tomorrow is the deadline to nominate candidates and it looks like the Greens are already conceding that they will have far less than a full slate