2017 BC General Election Prediction thread

[136or142]

If the Green Party get 20% of the vote (or so) in the provincial election, they would easily gain Saanich North and the Islands.  After that though, things get a bit harder to predict where they could gain.

Were it not for the NDP incumbents in the other urban areas of Southern Vancouver Island, I think the Greens would easily gain the two Victoria ridings and Saanich South, as it is, I would guess in descending order the most vulnerable New Democrats are Lana Popham, Rob Fleming and Carole James.

Given the Green Party performance in Cowichan Valley in 2013, I would also consider this riding to be a top tier opportunity for them.

The rest of Vancouver Island I gather is a bit trickier because the ridings are mostly a combination of tourist industry communities where the Green Party will likely do very well and resource industry communities where they will probably do less well.

In the rest of the province, the areas I would look at for the Greens are areas where the Federal Liberals traditionally do well but where the Federal NDP don't.  These are ridings where a lot of Federal Liberals who might not be all that disposed to the Christy Clark led B.C Liberals wouldn't necessarily look to voting NDP to vote their displeasure a the  B.C Liberal government.  These handful of ridings are even more so the case for the Greens where there are tourism related communities or environmentalists in general.

In these cases I would look at the North Shore ridings of North Vancouver-Seymour, West Vancouver-Sea to Sky and West Vancouver-Capilano.

In Vancouver the two ridings there are Vancouver-Quilchena and Vancouver-False Creek.  Quilchena could be interesting because the Liberal MLA, Andrew Wilkinson, is very similar to former Conservative M.P Chris Alexander, a person with a great resume but a major disappointment in elected politics and whose attack dog comments seem to regularly embarrass his constituents (to be sure, I doubt most British Columbians outside of Quilchena know who Wilkinson is, so, in that sense, he is much lower profile than Chris Alexander was, so the embarrassment level would be much lower.)

Vancouver-False Creek is interesting because the Green Party has definitely been making a play for votes from people in the technology sector.  I can't see the Liberal M.L.A Sam Sullivan losing here though.

Finally, there is Vancouver-Langara where the Greens are running high profile former Vancouver School Trustee Janet Fraser, however, this riding doesn't strike me as a good fit for the Green Party.  
I used to think that the main community in this riding, Marpole, was once a suburb of Vancouver (I'm pretty sure, for instance, Point Grey used to be a separate city) but I can't find any detail on that.

However, Marpole definitely has a suburban feel with a lot of single detached homes and strip malls, and the Green Party isn't that strong in most suburban Vancouver ridings. (Given this, it's also not a surprise the federal riding that Vancouver-Langara is in, Vancouver South, is the strongest riding for the Federal Conservative Party in the city of Vancouver.)

The Green Party is less strong in all of the suburbs of Vancouver other than on the North Shore and the only riding in the Interior and North they've traditionally been strong in is Nelson-Creston, but I think the NDP incumbent Michelle Mungall is too popular to lose there.

So, to sum up, I think the Green Party should win Saanich North and the Islands and probably Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, then the rest is more difficult for them.

And, I think they have a shot at winning three North Shore ridings and Vancouver-Quilchena and possibly (but not likely)  Vancouver-False Creek.

Other than that, I can see the Green Party getting 10-15% or so in a lot of Interior ridings, up to 25% in a lot of ridings in Vancouver, the Vancouver Suburbs and the Fraser Valley and up to 30% in the rest of Vancouver Island. So, a few 'close but just short' and a lot of 'moral victories' but very few actual wins.  Of course, that's what tends to happen when support is relatively evenly spread out with first past the post.

Edit: Marpole was a separate town at one time.
From Wiki: Non-natives began to inhabit the area in the 1860s, calling it Eburne Station. The small town was separated from the city by miles of forest.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Vancouver Lulu Island Railway of the British Columbia Electric Railway interurban train were constructed, which triggered the development of sawmills, shingle mills and gravel companies in the region. The area was renamed after Richard Marpole in 1916, and by the time it joined Vancouver in 1929, it had become one of the area's major industrial centres.

[136or142]

It's a cold and rainy morning here, and I've seen couple of bad polls this morning (dubious online non-probability based polls, but still), so I'm feeling down, and thus predicting doom and gloom:

Skeena- Liberal
Boundary-Similkameen - Liberal
Penticton- Liberal
Cariboo North- Liberal
Fraser-Nicola- Liberal
Kamloops-North Thompson- Liberal

Vancouver and Suburbs:
Maple Ridge-Mission- Liberal
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows- Liberal
Surrey-Fleetwood- Liberal
Surrey-Guildford- Liberal
Delta North- Liberal
Burnaby-Lougheed- NDP
Burnaby North- Liberal
Coquitlam-Burke Mountain- NDP
Coquitlam-Maillardville- NDP
Vancouver-Fraserview- NDP
North Vancouver-Lonsdale- Liberal

Vancouver Island:
Courtenay-Comox- Liberal
Cowichan Valley- Green
Saanich North and the Islands- Green
Victoria-Beacon Hill- NDP
Esquimalt-Metchosin- NDP

DL's suggestions:
Port Moody-Coquitlam - Liberal
Surrey-Panorama - Liberal

If this is the result, the B.C NDP needs to be dissolved.

[136or142]

Other predictions
Columbia River-Revelstoke goes Liberal.

I assume your prediction for Columbia River-Revelstoke is based on NDP candidate Gerry Taft being found guilty (in civil court) of defamation.  Gerry Taft strikes me as an extremely cynical political type.  At the age of 35 he has already been a municipal politician for 15 years and from what I read he sounds like the sort of politician that people who support term limits have in mind, and he hasn't even been elected to the legislature yet.

In regards to the substance of the case though, I suspect that defaming an extreme animal rights activist will probably, on balance, make Gerry Taft more popular in the riding and not less popular.

The Judge more or less said that Taft was more interested in using his time on the stand to make political statements than to defend his comments.  Had Taft been concerned about losing this case, I have no doubt he would have settled out of court.

[136or142]

If I have time to do a riding by riding look, I may change my prediction slightly, but for now

Liberal 46
NDP 39
Green 2

Should the NDP lose a fifth election in a row, I hope they finally realize that they need more wholesale changes than just changing the leader.

Mainstreet Research said the public was more responsive to the B.C Liberals economic message (such as it was) than the NDP campaign of affordability (as only partially believable as it was.)  That the NDP campaigned as they did is a clear implicit acknowledgement that they know they have no credibility on jobs and the economy.

If they know they can't win an election by campaigning on the issue that most people are most concerned about in most elections, what use are they as the opposition party?

I've already proposed what they should do:
1.Separate the B.C NDP from the Federal NDP (which would allow people, mainly Federal Liberals, who don't want to join the Federal NDP in order to join the B.C NDP.)

2.Separate the remaining connections with the unions.  I have nothing against the union movement personally (especially private sector unions) but it's hard to argue against "can you imagine how the NDP would react if the B.C Liberals had a place on their party executive for the B.C Chamber of Commerce?)

Should that finally occur (and I know there would be fierce resistance from many individual NDP members and the interest groups that make up the NDP) I would recommend North Vancouver Federal Liberal M.P and former Saskatchewan NDP Premier Roy Romanow advisor Jonathan Wilkinson as leader for this party (rename it the Democratic Party or something)

[136or142]

OK, who bumped a 4033 year old thread?

Wouldn't it be 4034 years old?  Isn't year 0 already accounted for?

[136or142]

EPP is changing Columbia River-Revelstoke and Skeena from NDP Marginal to Liberal Marginal.

I will not be following them. I think EPP is wrong here.

The election prediction project doesn't have the greatest track record from elections in other provinces and most of their B.C election predictions seem to be based on nothing more than a half a dozen comments, mostly from hyper partisans.

My prediction based on looking riding by riding is virtually unchanged, Liberal 45, NDP 39,  Green 3,  and my official prediction is Liberal 45 NDP 40 Green 2.  

Eric Grenier formerly of 308 also predicts Liberals 45, NDP 40, Green 2 (edit: he changed it today to 44 Liberals, 41 NDP, Green 2, so he predicts a very unstable majority.  If that is the case hopefully Christy Clark will realize she's in over her head and step down as Premier.)

My range of seat wins, possibly a better predictor than my possibly partisan predictions of close ridings:

Liberal 35-62
NDP 22-50
Green 1-9

The minimum Liberal total includes the two ridings currently held by independents.

[136or142]

2017 seat share:

BC Lib: 55 - 65
BC NDP: 20 - 25
BC Green: 1 - 5

Gloating time, folks.

Darn, you beat me too it.  I was going to write "let's all laugh at Lotuslander."  (Even if the B.C Liberals do end up with a very narrow majority)

He got the Greens right though!

[136or142]

I suspect Lotuslander is in a padded cell somewhere in a straight jacket throwing himself at the walls and doing some "primal screaming"

I don't know.  I'm not even 100% certain he actually is pro B.C Liberal, anti NDP.  I think it could be all performance art from him like that Quebecer (I think Quebec) who pretended to be a Conservative and won a Conservative Party nomination.