Talk Elections

Results will be here: http://electionsbcenr.blob.core.windows.net/electionsbcenr/REF-2011-001.html

Sign seen when I was in Vancouver
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Report expected from my blog when the results are in.

I predict people will vote Yes to Extinguish the HST by a 54-46 margin.

It is expected to be close.

What does it mean?

The HST is an unpopular tax the BC Liberals brought in to harmonize provincial and federal goods and services taxes. While it will save the governments money, it also increases taxes on certain things. Ontario introduced the HST here too, but there was less outrage about it. (In BC, the Premier resigned over it, and they got a referendum). One of its effects was increasing tax on gas, which pissed a lot of the working and middle classes off. In Ontario, the NDP and the Tories are against it, and in BC the NDP is against it. Voting yes on the referendum will get rid of it.

If it increased tax on gas, count me as a no.

I was hoping the HST discussion would be amalgamated into my BC politics thread. Then again, the referendum has eclipsed all other politics in a way.

Adding to Hatman's post...
The HST is a VAT that combines the provincial Provincial Sales Tax and the federal Goods and Services Tax. Since the HST operates under GST rules, services previously exempt from the PST are subject to a tax hike from 5% to 12%. The outrage from such an unexpected rise lead to a campaign to stage a referendum on its future.

If people want, I could write on the consequences of either option winning.

So it's levied in one step, the money then split between the feds and the province?

I remember when I was in Alberta that you always had to mentally add sales tax to supermarket prizes. Quite annoying, I thought that.

Wha? Groceries are exempt from VATs.

Maybe it was only on certain items? This was 17 years ago.

According to wikipedia, Alberta doesn't even have a provincial sales tax.

The referendum results are out: 54.7% YES to 45.3% NO
The HST is dead - may this Liberal government fall with it.

Quick notes:

-I hope no one says "suburbanites voted against the HST". Prominent exceptions are White Rock, Cloverdale, West Vancouver and Abbotsford. But these exceptions are majority white. Look at the suburbs that voted for (Richmond, North Surrey, North Delta), and I come to the conclusion that immigrants heavily supported abolishing the HST. They were unlike native electors, some who would have noticed the government's promise of a 2% rate decrease.
-Vancouver is divided between the affluent West side (voting ~55% NO) and the hodgepodge East (voting ~65% YES).
-Every riding represented by a NDP candidate voted YES, the average margin being around the high fifties. The lowest YES percentage in a NDP riding is Saanich South, 52.5%. The NDP candidate won there by 400 votes.
-Kamloops-North Thompson is the riding with results closest to the provincial mean, being the same to the nearest hundredth.

-There is zero probability of a fall election. This is unusually strong language from me, but I do not see the Liberals going along with a green leader when half of their caucus could perish in the process.

So, does this mean an election?

Not unless Clark wants to lose badly to Dix's NDP. Her task of restoring the BCLP's fortunes before 2013 was hard enough, now it's become a lot harder.

map

Finance Minister Kevin Falcon stated the HST will be abolished by March 31st, 2013. This would be a month and a fortnight before the next scheduled election.

The federal government has already issued a statement saying it wants its money back. 1.6 billion was given to BC over three years as an incentive for adopting the HST, but not anymore.

I declare myself the oracle!!

BTW: Unbelievable as it may seem, I hear that Christy "Dumb as a post" Clark is still all set to call a fall election. She is so arrogant and full of herself that's she is absolutely convinced that people will vote for her because she's pretty.

Map!

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Haha, fairly clear class patterns there then. No surprise given the sort of tax this is...

The only wealthy ridings to vote Yes to extinguishing the HST are the three Richmond seats and Vancouver-Langara - all with heavy Chinese populations.

beat me to it :(

I guess I wont post mine here then.

Why not? The more maps the better.

Well, you can see it on my blog: http://canadianelectionatlas.blogspot.com/2011/08/referendum-to-abolish-hst-fails-in-bc.html

Not too big a surprise, although to be frank, I thought the yes side would win with a much bigger margin than it did.

thank you

() (http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y29/pellaken/?action=view&current=earlsmap.png)

I added dots to represent the ridings that voted BC Liberal but voted against their own party. The more dots the stronger the vote for the party.

It's quite clear that Richmond defeated the HST, with help from parts of Surrey. The other only other areas to vote incorrectly, outside the NDP ridings, were along the Alberta border, and I can't really blame them for being so close to something so evil when it comes to taxes.

I noted that in my blog; Richmond and the Peace River seem to be the populist parts of BC.

Victory! Hugs all around.

The decision to decrease the HST to 10% by 2014 must have swayed people in the upper-middle class, who see they might actually be taxed less. This could explain the margins for NO in the Fraser Valley.

I will bet, though, that if you only counted the white vote* the results will either be razor-thin (>1% for YES) or 1-2% for NO. On the other hand South Asians would vote 55-57% YES, followed by East Asians at around 60%.

*A non-PC term to describe most British Columbians born in the province, less those born in a heavily Asian ancestry.


Richmond is by no means populist; it is filled with Chinese who will oppose a tax hike on restaurants, hair salons and other services that was once PST exempt. They like to spend so they can save their efforts, and the HST might as well be punishing them. They will return to passivity on other issues.

I know less about the North, but I thought the primary resource industry up there will be the least damaged by the HST removal. Discontent over a Liberal government who did not visibly improve their living may also be a factor.

What is evident is the NO camp was supported by whites from the middle class upwards, while the YES camp was supported by the lower classes as well as the nouveau riche. The latter coalition would be more unstable.

What's the deal with the one northern no riding?

That's hard to believe:

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It looks like the BC Conservatives may do well in the northern and eastern parts of BC, since these are areas where the NDP doesn't do well, but there is clear discontent with the Liberals.

Nechako Lakes is contiguous with the regional district of Bulkley-Nechako, an area dependent on primary industries and trying to expand tourism. The mining industry quite supported the HST, and eliminating the tax will be a hit to all service industries. I imagine one of the big population centres - Smithers or Vanderhoof - voted 55% NO to flip the riding.

Compared to the rest of the North, that riding also had a lower percentage of people who signed the petition to issue a referendum in the first place.

Earl, I'd been wondering about BC Conservative potential in those ridings and agree with your conclusions. I realise that last election, they did quite well in the Okanagen, but those ridings voted No, so they may hold their noses and still vote BC Liberal, as did the other area I thought the BC Conservatives could focus their resources - around Abbotsford. Since those ridings also voted against the referendum, it may be hard for them to break into those ridings.

Foucalf, if the numbers of signatures per riding are available, any possibility of maps?

I just hope the Conservatives in BC pull off a half decent campaign. The marriage between the centre right and the far right in BC has to end at some point.  The only reason it exists is to keep the NDP out of power.  Luckily, Christy Clark is a federal Liberal and is sure to alienate the right wing of the party.

Unfortunately though, there are more divisions in the NDP than the Liberals. Hopefully Dix is able to keep the party together. I saw him at the convention, and he seems to be very competent. He's also bilingual, which is unusual in BC. (although I can name at least 2 other BC NDP politicians who are bilingual... and I dont mean in Mandarin)

The areas in the Northeast BC are more Albertan than British Columbian in their politics.  In fact I believe there was even a secessionist movement at one point to join Alberta.  It is also the only area in BC in Mountain Time and east of Continental Divide as well as looks a lot like the prairies.  In fact these two ridings both voted for the BC Reform Party in 1996 are were the only two in that election.

Seems like easy Conservative pickups if you ask me!

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I hope you don't mind me using your base map?

Stats from here (http://fighthst.com/numbers/), although there was controversy about duplicate signatures being included in this first tally.

The base maps are there to be used.

I find it surprising how few petition signatures were from Vancouver. Is there any reason for that?

Great work on that, by the way!

Once again, the easy answer is "immigrants". Newly naturalised citizens either do so for ulterior motives, or does not care enough for electoral politics. Add this to the fact that the petition is not publicised like an election is and the immigrants know next to nothing. There would also be less volunteers, so those who want to sign the petition don't know where to sign it.

I'd hesitate to speculate further. I will say that people in the more remote ridings live in cities anyways, so distance was never a big issue.


Here's the Globe's BC columnist talking about why a fall election is still a good idea. (http://tgam.ca/Cqnv) I do agree with him, if only that things will only get worse for the Liberals. They've lost the Chinese, they've really lost the Punjabis and the HST debacle has electrified politics to the point such discussion goes beyond the latest government policy. Nor has the NDP solidified support among the middle class, given how the margins against the HST has only gone down.

But it's wrong to assign so much meaning to Clark. She was voted in for being an image people trust, not by the apparatchiks had her back. These are still the most fluid times for BC politics in the past decade, and she is only now moving from stopgap to leader. It is true her presence brought Liberal support from the abyss, but whether that means she can solidify that in an election is another matter. Maybe she will have 100% support from a caucus after an election - a caucus half the size.

The Punjabis will vote NDP, but I don't see the Chinese doing so. Maybe they will vote Conservative, but I doubt it.

Now is a bad time to be the government of BC. There's a good chance if there is a fall election, and if the NDP wins (and they probably would) that it would be a single-term government, and that the NDP would not be returned to government in BC for quite some time to come.

To sign the petition you had to be on the voters list in the last election and still be at the same address. it is much easier to find people like that in rural areas than in cities where people are much more transient...and also where you have apartment buildings that are hard to access.

That seems to be common in BC...

I made this
http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y29/pellaken/?action=view&current=HST.gif
since most people don't know what the heck the HST truly is.

Well yeah, that's why Horwath and Hudak aren't campaigning to get rid of the tax. Just exempt it on some services.

Getting rid of it is stupid, even though I would have voted to do so in BC (to stick it to the Liberals).

Oh!
That is why people are hating it, in English Canada.

To be honest, your picture is false in Quebec.
We have two different taxes, but they all go to Quebec, which give its part to Canada.

My pic does show this, one taxman.