2017 British Columbia election

[DL]

It should be noted that last year "Lotuslander" posted an endless posting about why there was absolutely no chance whatsoever that the BC NDP could win the byelection in Coquitlam Burke Mountain. The NDP won the byelection. He also went on ad nauseous in the last federal election about how the NDP was doomed DOOMED to be reduced to just six seats in BC. They won 14 seats even as they did worse than expected in the country as a whole.

Caveat emptor

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There is an obvious key difference on Kinder Morgan in 2013 compared to today. in 2013 Alberta was ruled by a rabidly rightwing government that was denying that climate change existed and boasted about doing absolutely NOTHING to reduce GHG emissions and the federal Harper government at the time was singing from the same songbook. Today Alberta is in the forefront of the most aggressive measures to combat climate change in Canada.

Its interesting to speculate on what would have happened if the even more climate-change denying Wildrose Party had won the 2015 Alberta election on a platform of defiantly doing NOTHING and wanting to build smokestacks to the moon - Ayn Rand style. Does anyone think there is any chance that the Trudeau government would even consider approving pipelines from Alberta to sea if the province was led by climate change deniers?

[DL]

OK fair enough, but the PCs policies on climate change were very very very minimal and would never have been enough to give Trudeau the "fig leaf" he needed to be able to approve KM...unless of course you think that had Prentice won the 2015 as expected he would have pulled an "only Nixon could go to China" move and introduced an aggressive climate change plan himself that would have been much like what the Alberta NDP ended up doing. i have my doubts.

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People may vote for their "self-interest" - but the fact is for the about 98% of British Columbians it will make no difference to their self-interest whether Kinder Morgan is expanded or not. There is clearly segment of people in the Lower Mainland who feels it could be damaging to their self-interest if the volume of tankers carrying bitumen by their homes increases seven-fold. On the pro-KM side, who cares? There are people for whom having the pipeline built is in their self-interest - they are called Albertans. If you live in Alberta there is clearly every reason to want a pipeline to tidewater from which to export bitumen. If you live in suburban Vancouver - why would you give a damn if the pipeline is built? Its not going to create any jobs for anyone living in Surrey and the economic returns (if any) will all go to Alberta. There may be a small number of temporary jobs in BC on the construction of the expansion...otherwise, its a  big nothing. IMHO, people who strongly oppose the pipeline are vastly more likely to see it as a vote determining issues than people who passively go along with the expansion. There are very very few people in BC who are enthusiastcally pro-pipeline who are going to jump up and down with placards chanting "go pipeline"...why should they - its all about taking Alberta's oil to port and BC is just being crossed over - there is little in it for BC.

If we want to talk about people voting in their self-interest, the BC Liberals have vastly increasing monthly MSP premiums (and BC is now the only province left in Canada with a regressive flat tax to pay for health care) - every single BCer pays that premium and its skyrocketing. If I'm the average BC voters in suburban Vancouver - I probably don't actually give a damn whether a pipeline from Alberta crosses the territory of my province or not - but i sure do give a damn about skyrocketing MSP premiums and the really low quality public services that BC is notorious for.

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blah blah blah blah blah from Lotuslander who suffers from "NDP derangement syndrome"... Do you have some special padded cell in your house that is all orange and lined with pictures of everyone from Tommy Douglas to Dave Barrett to Jack Layton to Mike Harcourt where you can go in and do some primal screaming and bang your fists against the wall? What's the deal with you? Did your mother leave your father for an NDP politician when you were a little boy? Were you in love with someone who was an NDP supporter who rejected you? If the BC NDP actually did win the May 2017 election would we have to put you on suicide watch?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and to be an amateur pundit, but this is the same person who wrote a 5,000 word essay on this site last year about how the NDP was 100% GUARANTEED to lose Victoria to the Green Party...the NDP incumbent won it by a large margin. This is the same person who wrote endless pseudo-scientific analysis of Coquitlam Burke Mountain where supposedly a BC Liberal win in the byelection was absolutely totally 100% guaranteed...the NDP won the seat by 7% (he also hinted the the Greens could even win Vancouver-Mount Pleasant - the NDP blew them out of the water by a 45% margin). This is the same person who swore that the federal NDP would be reduced to no more than 5 or 6 seats in BC federally and that the Green party would win several seats on Vancouver island...lo and behold wrong again, the NDP won 14 seats in BC.

I've been wrong in my political predictions in my life, but at least i have the humility to acknowledge that i could be wrong to own up to it when I am wrong. I don't make myself out to be His Holiness the Pope making EX CATHEDRA projections and pronouncements

[DL]

The BC Liberal candidate in North Island in 2009 was heavily hyped Kwakiutl First Nations chief Marion Wright...she didnt even come close and lost quite a bit of ground compared to what the BC Libs got in that riding in 2005 - even though she massively outspent the NDP incumbent.

The danger for the BC Liberals in running candidates who are First Nation is that much of the BC Liberal base outside of Vancouver is composed of extreme rightwing federal Tory/ex-Reform Party types who tend to be racist against First Nations. If the BC Liberal candidate is an "Indian" (sic.) the racists whose votes the BC Liberals depend on may feel uninspired and stay home on election day.

[DL]

I'm not so sure Weaver will "fly" with voters. The former Green leader Jane Sterk was a kind of lovable old raging Granny Clampett type who was a classic "earth mother" and appealed to granola bars and treehuggers. In contrast Andrew Weaver comes across as a stuffy, condescending upper class twit with posh British accent and an inability to pronounce the letter "r". as in "I should like a gwass of cwawet with my dinnah tonight"...people thinking of voting Green will likely drop him like a hot potato the moment they see him in action.

[DL]

I'm not sure what the issue is. Of course people in different regions of the province have different perspectives on any number of issues. Tell me something i didnt already know. in fact on this site we all endlessly pontificate about the views of people in the City of Vancouver or the island or the interior or the Fraser valley etc... When people go berserk hyperventilating about a politician committing a "gaffe" it almost always means the politician said something that everyone knows is true.

On a similar note a while ago Christy Clark said that she hated all people in Victoria because people who live there are not "real people", now THAT is a true gaffe!

[DL]

In the lead up to the 2013 election the BC Liberals were the ones leaking like a sieve with daily brown Manila enevelopes being delivered to journalists with inside dirt on Charity Clark's corruption (remember "quick wins") and all the endless conspiracies to dump her as leader that were going on literally right up to Election Day. Remember that Christy Clark became leader of her party despite no caucus support whatsoever and many people hated her for it within her own party and wanted to sabotage her. It's disconcerting for parties to know that people inside the tent are leaking stuff, but it happens and almost never actually influences the results of the following election...unless something is leaked that leads to criminal charges

I wonder if Putin is behind these latest leaks. If he d'avoir Donald Trump, why wouldn't he also d'avoir Christy Clark

[DL]

Actually, IVR polls are quite accurate in BC...Forum's final poll on the eve of the 2013 BC election was almost dead-on...But almost all of the public domain polling in BC in the 2013 was online and not phone based at all.

Its clearly going to be a tossup in Bc in May, but what has to be encouraging for the BC NDP is that this poll has the Greens at 17% and in the past four elections in BC, the Greens ALWAYS poll in the mid-teens before the campaign begins and then drop to single digits by election day. According to this poll the Green vote is very very soft (only 32% are certain they will vote that way) and when Green voters are asked about who their second choice is - it is NDP over BC Liberals by a 5 to 1 margin.

I suppose BC Liberal supporters might take some solace from how this poll has the moribund BC Conservatives at 10%...but its interesting that when BC Conservatives are asked who their second choice is - they go NDP over Liberal 37 to 30. We saw a similar phenomenon in the last ontario election where Ontario PC voters hated Kathleen Wynne so much that they overwhelmingly said they would support the Ontario NDP before they would vote for the Ontario Liberals. I suspect that those BC Conservative supporters really dislike ardent federal Liberal Christy Clark and that most of them simply wont vote or will vote for various small "c" conservative independents

[DL]

The previous Mainstreet poll back in the fall had the NDP leading by 5 points so maybe the poll last week showing a tie was an anomaly and now we have a reversion to the mean. You have to feel sorry for poor Crooked Christy Clarke. She put her heart and soul into her budget and it clearly flopped in the eyes of the public. and to add insult to injury the Green party momentum and seems destined to fall back to their traditional 8%...and as the Green vote dropped for every one vote that goes to "Crooked Christy" the NDP picks up 5. According to the seat projection simulator on tooclosetocall, if this poll was the actual popular vote result the NDP would win 49 seats, the Liberals 36 and the Greens would get 2. 

If the NDP wins in BC, I look forward to them banning all corporate and union donations to political parties - which of course would bankrupt the BC Liberals who can only survive off massive corporate donations...plus some judicial inquiries into all the corruption under Crooked Christy. She is the most dishonest corrupt politician in Canada and ought to be thrown in jail.

[DL]

The Ironworkers union represents a whopping 1,500 people. You can always find the odd fringe "company union" that is a shill for management. Some renegade miners union locals endorsed Trump too - even though he is virulently anti-labour.

In contrast CUPE BC has 80,000 members, BCGEU has 75,000 members, HEU 45,000 members, HSA BC 50,000 members, not to mention USW and Unifor  and BCTF each of which also have tens of thousands of members. I think if you added up the number of union members in BC that are from unions that support the NDP they would outnumber the puny Ironworkers by about 200 to 1.

[DL]

Here are the details from that new Mainstreet poll

http://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/ndp-lead-post-budget-undecided-still-high/

One thing i find particularly interesting are the numbers on leader approval. Needless to say John Horgan, not having been through an election campaign yet, is still relatively unknown:

Horgan -

Favourable 26%
Unfavourable 24%
Not sure 37%
Don't know him well enough 13%

But check out Christy Clark...what absolutely damning numbers! Good thing Kathleen Wynne is around to save her from being the most hated premier in Canada!

Clark -

Favourable 21%
Unfavourable 57%
Not sure 20%
Don't know him well enough 2%

[DL]

What is "doxing"?

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Aww...the poor BC Liberal party, just weeks away from the official start of the election campaign and now they are under investigation by Elections BC for their corrupt fundraising practices.

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/elections-bc-probes-liberal-party-fundraising/article34210991/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&

[DL]

Its fascinating how the "conventional wisdom' is that those voters who claim they would vote for the essentially defunct BC Conservatives will almost all end up voting for the BC Liberals. and yet, they have such an astonishingly high "rejection rate" for the BC Liberals with only 19% saying they would vote BC Liberal as a second choice...way behind the percentage who would vote NDP or even Green! and that pattern has been consistent in every wave of this survey.

What it suggests to me is the following:

1. There is a chunk of about 10% in BC who are wedded to the "conservative" name. These people tend to really really dislike Christy Clark who walks and talks like a federal Liberal. They are likely rural populists who see the BC Liberals as a "downtown business elite party" (which they are).

2. There is an anti-establishment, throw the bums out segment in BC that is "anyone but Liberal"

3. Clearly some of those BC Con people will end up voting BC Liberal...but perhaps no where as large a share of them as the BC Liberals need. I suspect that some will vote for what BC Conservatives candidates there on ballot, some will vote for the plethora of independents small 'c' conservative candidates who seem to be running quasi serious campaigns in various ridings. Some will cast an anti-Christy protest vote for the BC NDP or for the Greens and some will just stay home   

[DL]

Here is a brilliant ad from Better Government for BC that lays out the case for how Christy Clark is totally corrupt and has got to go.

https://youtu.be/zV-N9vlURuU

Its gonna be a nailbiter. Insight West has a kick off poll out today

http://www.insightswest.com/news/clark-drops-horgan-stable-weaver-surges-in-british-columbia/

NDP - 40%
BC Libs - 38%
Greens - 17%
BC Cons - 3%
Other - 2%

There is literally nothing left for the Bc Libs to draw from the defunct BC Conservatives - but the NDP could gain a lot of ground as people parked with the Greens start to vote strategically for the only part that can give "Crooked Christy" the boot. Note that the poll also shows that the vast majority want a change of government and even more disturbing to the Bc Liberals, when people are asked what the top election issue is 39% say "housing/poverty/homeless" (an NDP strong suit), 20% say health care (another NDP strong suit) and just 19% say the economy (the only Liberal strong suit)...oh yeah and only 7% say the environment is the top issue whihc doesnt bode well for the Greens in the long run

[DL]

Ipsos just released their first poll of the campaign using a mixed phone and online methodology

BC NDP - 44%
BC Liberals - 39%
Greens - 12%

http://linkis.com/www.cknw.com/2017/04/P28tV

[DL]

Its easy to dismiss IVR polls as "junk" but unlike online polls which are based on online panels that may or may not be representative of the electorate - IVR is based on random digit dialling of the the entire population...and in the last federal election as well as in just about all of the last few provincial elections - IVR polls have been pretty accurate in predicting the result - certainly no worse than old-fashioned live-interviewer phone polls.

At least we are getting some phone based public domain polls this time. In 2013 literally ALL of the publicly released polls in BC were online polls...and there is a theory that in 2013 as a result of the anti-HST referendum that had happened a year earlier, the BC online panels got skdewed with too many people who were angry at the BC Liberals. FWIW in the 2009 BC election, we saw the reverse phenomenon, most of the polls released during the campaign were traditional phone polls and they all gave exaggerated leads to the BC Liberals of 8-13 points...the one and only online poll was done by Angus Reid and their final poll gave the BC Liberals a slender 44-42% lead...the final result was BC Liberals 45% and NDP 42%...so go figure.

Usually Forum does seat projections with their polls. They seem gun-shy about doing that with their latest BC poll...but its worth noting that in 1972 the NDP beat Social Credit 39% to 29%...and the seat count ended up being NDP 38 and Social Credit 10!

Of course a lot can and will happen over the next four weeks...but I don't doubt that the snapshot on the day the writ was dropped is a narrow NDP lead...whether it stays that way for four weeks is up in the air.  So far Christy Clark seems to be trying to replicate Stephen Harper's re-election campaign strategy from 2015...a blah platform that is conspicuous for how it has almost nothing in it...plus trying to replay tired old scare campaigns against the opposition. It could work, but sometimes parties try to recycle the same strategy one time too many

[DL]

Mainstreet has a new poll with big honking sample size of over 5,000!

http://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/liberals-ndp-gain-campaign-begins/

NDP 39% (up 3%)
BC Libs 35% (up 2%)
Greens -19% (unchanged)
Conservatives 7% (down 4%)

It must be very very very distressing to the BC Liberals that they are not benefiting from the inevitable collapse of the moribund BC Conservatives...but this is consistent with how previous polls showed that relatively few Conservative supporters had the Liberals as their second choice. Let's face it, its hard to imagine a BC Liberal leader who would be more repulsive to diehard small "c" conservatives than Christy Clark. She is gltzy, elitist, wears furs and is a dyed in the wool federal Liberal. If you are a rightwing populist federal Conservative type in the interior - you take one look at Christy and all you can think is "stinkeroo"!

It gets worse for the Liberals. The Green vote is very soft and if and when their vote declines as people start to vote "strategically" - for every one vote the Libs get, the NDP will get 4 or 5.

[DL]

The wheels are really coming off the BC Liberal campaign. Clark is being universally panned for running a dull uninspiring campaign and yesterday she even managed to make a fool of herself on Good Friday with bizarre comments about how "Good Friday shows us that hard work will be rewarded"...come again Christy, if I work hard I'll be nailed to a cross?.. anyways she has been ridiculed on social media and denounced as a know nothing by theologians. Back in 2013 she gave an interview she gave an interview to a fundamentalist Christian TV show where claimed that the Bible guided everything she did (lol)...well if she had ever actually read the Bible and wasn't faking it to get votes from the "Bible belt" she would not have said such weird things about the meaning of Good Friday. But if there is one thing Clark has always been it's a superficial phoney.

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/work-and-sacrifice-are-rewarded-b-c-premier-s-good-friday-tweet-causes-stir-1.2314278

Now top political columnists are comparing her campaign to Stephen Harper's I'll-fated reelection campaign in 2015!

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/clarks-uninspiring-battle-plan-reminiscent-of-harpers/article34714908/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&

[DL]

I think the NDP is more likely to win Kamloops North than either of the Cariboo seats

[DL]

The NDP came closer in Kamloops North last time than they did in Cariboo-Chilcotin and the popular Liberal incumbent is quitting

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At least all the polls finally have the moribund BC Conservatives in low single digits where they belong...it was a bit of a distraction having that "phantom vote" rattling around

[DL]

Wow, those are bad numbers for the NDP among South Asians. More hemorrhaging expected in the Surrey seats? Or perhaps this is just small sample size (more likely).

In my experience, if you think response rates to IVR surveys are low among the general public...its nothing compared to how low those response rates are among "New Canadians" (i.e. South Asians, Chinese etc...)...and the people from those ethnic communities who do take part in surveys are usually third generation people who are totally assimilated.