BC Election on October 24th

[DL]

Horgan is taking a gamble here but I disagree that he would have been better waiting a year. A year from now the “rally around the flag” sentiment will be gone, there will likely be a bad economy, a towering deficit and possibly more Indigenous blockade etc... I think the government could get very un popular over the coming year

[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/

[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...

[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"?

[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

[DL]

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

[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.

[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

[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

[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"

[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!

[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

[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

[DL]

and we have another poll showing a massive NDP lead. This time by Leger:

BC NDP - 47%
BC Libs - 31%
Greens - 12%
BC Cons - 9%

Of course since the Greens and especially the BC Cons will run less than a full slate - their support is likely going to be a lot lower.

https://vancouversun.com/news/b-c-ndp-leads-liberals-by-significant-margin-early-election-poll-finds

[DL]

The NDP has candidates in all 87 ridings listed on their website...there is always a lag before Elections BC officially certifies candidates and a flurry of last minute qualifications. I'll bet that the NDP and Libs end up with full slates and that the Greens end up with 65-70 candidates and the BC Cons with 15 or so

[DL]

In fact Chilliwack went NDP in a byelection in 2011

[DL]

FWIW BC continues to be doing remarkably well on the Covid front. Only 82 new cases today and the lowest per capita rate of Covid in North America. That can’t hurt if you are John Horgan

[DL]

Another day another poll. Today it’s Mainstreet’s and they are a phone based poll and the other a have been online. Similar results:

BC NDP - 45%
BC Libs - 34%
Greens - 16%
BC Con - 2%
Other - 3%

Note that the collapse of the Conservatives does not seem to help the BC Liberals...

https://qc125.com/proj/2020-10-01-Mainstreet-BC.pdf

[DL]

Note that the collapse of the Conservatives does not seem to help the BC Liberals...

A bit disingeneous. Every recent poll that had the Conservatives/Other at 10%+ had the Liberals sub-30, and nearly every poll with the Conservatives/Other at <10% have the Liberals above 30.

Of course it would be helpful to compare polls from the same pollster but Ipsos and Leger were both in field at exactly the same time. Leger had the BC Cons at 9% while Ipsos had "Other" at 4% and didn't include the BC Cons as an option at all. Ipsos had the BC Liberals at 33 instead of 31 and had the NDP at 51% instead of 47% - so in other words when you drop the BC Cons as an option - the gap between the NDP and Liberals grows from 16 to 18

[DL]

I’d like to see a list of the 14 ridings with no Green on the ballot and also a list of 19 ridings with Conservatives on the ballot

[DL]

What about ridings with a Conservative but no Green?

[DL]

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.

I’ve heard that the BC NDP tends to well with the Taiwanese Chinese community. The other thing to remember is that while Cubans in the US tend to be political refugees, that is rarely the case with recent immigrants to Canada from China. They generally did nit leave China due to an aversion to communism (and there is little tnat is communist about China anyways). They just wanted a better Life and many of them are actually quite defensive of the Chinese government and are not motivated by anti-comminism.

[DL]

And yet another poll shows a crushing lead for the BC NDP. This time it’s Angus Reid and it’s post the BC Liberal promise to eliminate the PST.

NDP - 49%
Libs - 31%
Greens - 14%
Other - 5%

How do you spell LANDSLIDE?

http://angusreid.org/bc-election-top-issues/

[DL]

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.