2017 British Columbia election

[Hatman 🍁]

Oh good, Lotuslander is back. Didn't read his posts; Let me guess, he is predicting an 85-2 Liberal landslide?

[Hatman 🍁]

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.

Wow NDP and Greens are tied on Vancouver island!

The same thing happened in the federal election (according to our numbers), with about 2 weeks to go. Then the Green vote collapsed as people started voting strategically.

[Hatman 🍁]

The Mainstreet poll has fairly detailed demographic breakdowns, thanks to its big sample size.

http://wpmedia.vancouversun.com/2017/04/mainstreet-elxn-poll-ethnicity-religion.png

The NDP leads with Caucasians and Filipinos, while the Liberals lead with Chinese, South Asians, Koreans and others.

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).

[Hatman 🍁]

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.

Yes, I'm well aware. See Mainstreet's bombing of the Scarborough-Rouge River by-election, even while having Chinese and Tamil versions of their IVR survey available.

[Hatman 🍁]

The greens are surging across the province. Would love for them to prevent a majority for whoever gets reelected. We need a shakeup.

I guess social democracy and neoliberalism are all the same to you?

[Hatman 🍁]

The Mainstreet poll has fairly detailed demographic breakdowns, thanks to its big sample size.

http://wpmedia.vancouversun.com/2017/04/mainstreet-elxn-poll-ethnicity-religion.png

The NDP leads with Caucasians and Filipinos, while the Liberals lead with Chinese, South Asians, Koreans and others.

Very interesting. Usually this sort of stuff is "whites somewhat right, everyone else left".

Not the case in Canada at all. Visible minorities tend to vote Liberal (and increasingly Conservative). Since Canada is so overwhelmingly White, Whites tend to be close to the mean, but are less likely to vote Liberal, and more-so for the NDP & Conservatives.

[Hatman 🍁]

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.

I somewhat don't concur. I'm "first-generation" (but I was here since 6) and I answer polls..

While technically first generation, I don't think it really counts. If you immigrate in early childhood, you're going to be more similar to a 2nd generation person.

[Hatman 🍁]

I notice something interesting in the crosstabs of the Ipsos poll - they asked people who they voted for in the 2013 election:

54% say they voted Liberal (Libs actually took 44% in 2013)
37% say they voted NDP (NDP actually took 40% in 2013)
8% say they voted Green (same as 2013)
no numbers on reported past vote for BC Conservatives/Other.

So contrary to the theory that this online panel might over-represent New Democrats - if we look at reported past vote - the sample is actually wayyy more Liberal than it ought to be. I'm not questioning the overall findings, just pointing this out for people to interpret as they wish

Well, I remember how their panel over-represented the PCs in our last provincial election. So, take their polls with a grain of salt.

[Hatman 🍁]

The latest poll from Forum is pretty whacky

BC NDP  - 37%
Bc Liberals - 29%
BC Greens - 24%
BC Cons - 7% (says something about how incompetent and unprofessional Forum is that they would still be prompting for a party that is only running 10 candidates)
Other - 3%

Its very weird that Ipsos has the Greens at 14% and Forum at 24% - that is a huge gap even by BC polling standards.

From a seat point of view its actually not as good as it seems for the Greens. The only place where they stand to actually win any seats is on Vancouver Island and there the NDP leads with 39% with the Greens and Liberals at 28% and 27% respectively. A vote split like that would likely mean the Greens adding Saanich North and possibly nothing else!

Forum's seat projection model is also kinda bizarre - they say this popular vote split would mean NDP 47 seats, BC Libs 34 seats, Greens 4 seats and 2 "other".   where pray tell is there is a single solitary "Other" candidate with any chance at all of winning in BC??? Also, if (and very big IF), the NDP actually beat the Liberals by a 37-29 margin, I suspect the Liberals would do far worse than 34 seats. In 2013 the Libs took 44% of the popular vote. If that dropped to 29% that would mean a 15 point drop...that would mean A LOT of losses in terms of seats.

http://poll.forumresearch.com/post/2717/bc-final-week/

And if you look at their regional crosstabs, they only polled 78 people in the "Interior North" which I take to be everything outside the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, as those are the other 2 groups.  Now I don't know if they weighted by region or not, but either way they have oversampled the lower mainland and Vancouver Island which would boost the NDP numbers province wide, or if they did weight by region, they are weighting up this dubious sample of 78 people, of which the NDP has a lead of 6 points, but in reality is probably tied or trailing.

[Hatman 🍁]

For IVR, it depends on if cell sample is included, I think. No cell sample is going to unrepresented NDP support.

Of course, I don't know what our dear friend Lo'Ler is rambling on about these days, I have him on ignore.

[Hatman 🍁]

Weaver says he'd prefer working with Clark in a minority situation.

Well, the NDP can only win when there's a vote split on the right

[Hatman 🍁]

I am seeing a big range between pollsters. Is there a reason for this?

No one knows how to poll BC. What this all means is we're probably heading for a repeat of the last three elections in which the Liberals win by 3-5%.

[Hatman 🍁]

I am seeing a big range between pollsters. Is there a reason for this?

No one knows how to poll BC. What this all means is we're probably heading for a repeat of the last three elections in which the Liberals win by 3-5%.

But why does no one know how to poll BC? High level of immigrants?

Is the NDP here doing the most NDP thing ever by squandering their healthy lead as the election approaches?

The B.C NDP likely never had a healthy lead.  Just one outlier poll that gave the NDP a 10% lead.

In any other province, I think a hopeless Premier like Christy Clark would be thrown out with barely a better result than the NDP here received in 2001.   

Only in British Columbia can the B.C Liberals get reelected.

BC reminds me of what Stephen Harper was trying to set up federally. The NDP are too left wing for too many people, and without a Trudeau style liberal party to vote for, they are forced to hold their nose for the BC Liberals/Socreds.

One of the axioms of BC elections is that the NDP can only win with a divided right. Also, the province is very polarized: the last 3 elections have produced pretty much the exact same result.

The fact that the Greens are polling well is throwing a bit of a wrench into matters, but they don't appear to be hurting the NDP that much. Quite a lot of their vote is coming from people who don't like either of the two main parties.

As for why polling in BC sucks, I suspect due to the polarization of the province, if your data is skewed toward one demographic or another, it will likely amplify your overall numbers. 

[Hatman 🍁]

Green vote collapsing as expected. However, it seems to be helping the Liberals. Perhaps the NDP can only win when the centre and centre-right are divided? Green voters are as a whole not in the centre, but perhaps their softest supporters are in the centre.

Much of the talk is that even if the NDP wins the popular vote by a point or two, they will still lose because of inefficient vote distribution. But, that's assuming a uniform swing from the last election, so it's foolish to bet on that entirely. Remember in 1996 the opposite scenario happened.

[Hatman 🍁]

Green vote collapsing as expected. However, it seems to be helping the Liberals. Perhaps the NDP can only win when the centre and centre-right are divided? Green voters are as a whole not in the centre, but perhaps their softest supporters are in the centre.

The only poll that shows the Green vote "collapsing" is Forum and I'm sceptical they were ever as high as 245 in the first place. I suspcet that there is relatively little Green-Liberal movement. I think that there is movement of the vestigial BC Conservative vote to the Liberals and some Liberal gains from undecideds, counterbalanced by the NDP picking up last minute tactical votes from Greens who don't want to split the vote and re-elect the Liberals

I am almost certain the Greens will not actually get what they're polling at. Close elections have a tendency to depress third party turnout.

[Hatman 🍁]

Just voted Green! Meh, it's in a safe LIB riding anywho. If the NDP loses to the Liberals again they are going to be a dead party. This is a pretty winnable election for them.

*shakes head*

[Hatman 🍁]

Just voted Green but if the NDP loses then they suck

Maybe because they're having trouble winning over Green voters.

[Hatman 🍁]

The NDP is pretty far behind in the popular vote. If we are looking at a close race in the popular vote, then a lot of the NDP areas aren't in yet.

[Hatman 🍁]

The CON vote collapse should seem like a bad sign for NDP.  

LOL they're a non-factor; running in just 10 seats

[Hatman 🍁]

NDP is doing reasonably well in most of the marginals, which is good news. Lots of talk about the huge advance polls. Wonder how they will lean?

[Hatman 🍁]

NDP picks up their first swing seat! Surrey-Fleetwood

[Hatman 🍁]

I can't begin to fathom why 15% of the voters would cast a useless vote for the Greens when NDP is an available alternative. Canada is just weird sometimes.

I agree. You might want to ask the couple of posters here who did just that.

Looks like the Greens will in fact cost the NDP a victory. Good job, guys.

[Hatman 🍁]

So, one thing to remember: Lots of advance votes still left to count. They wont be counted for a while (days?) because Elections BC is understaffed. This election probably wont be called tonight.

[Hatman 🍁]

Even if the Liberals do end up winning Courtenay-Comox, they have to pick a speaker, and then it's boom, back to a minority. Unless they convince one of the Greens to be speaker, which I wouldn't rule out because I wouldn't put it past Weaver to stick it to the NDP one more time.

[Hatman 🍁]

I think  a few ridings are so close the advances might matter;

Courtney-Comox (9 votes, NDP)
Maple Ridge - Mission (120 votes, NDP)
Coquitlam - Burke Mountain (170 votes, BCL)
Richmond - Queensborough (263 votes, BCL)
Vancouver-False Creek (560 votes, BCL)

So... if advances change these ridings and swing NDP they have 44, Swing BCL they have 45. Both could then govern alone no?

I think most other were now around the 1000 vote range difference so might not be in play.

Only absentee ballots are left, advance ballots are already counted. Typically there are only a few hundred absentee ballots per riding so only Comox realistically could flip - but note the NDP won absentees there in 2013.

NDP won absentees, yes (despite losing the riding), but also redistribution made the riding more Liberal.