2013 British Columbia General Election Thread

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Which party will you vote for in the 40th British Columbia general election?

Poll ended at Mon May 13, 2013 11:51 am

Liberal (Christy Clark)
7
54%
New Democratic (Adrian Dix)
2
15%
Conservative (John Cummins)
1
8%
Green (Jane Sterk)
3
23%
 
Total votes: 13
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sj-roc
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South Pender wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:I doubt Clark will ask Andrew Wilkinson to step in Vancouver Quilchena. He is one of the star candidate recruited by the Liberals.
There are at least 7-8 ridings in the lower mainland in which the Liberal candidate received twice the number of votes of the NDPer--and in which there is little or no Green support.

I wonder what kind of reward a candidate who's willing to step aside can expect. These folks all worked damn hard to get elected, and it would have to be a big disappointment to have to give it up.
The senate seat that Gerry St. Germain vacated last fall is stil available. Maybe CC can pull some strings with Mr. Harper and kill two birds with one stone?
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Do we really need another useless senator like Mike Dufus ? Another day another another explanation ?
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KnowItAll
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What impact does the senate have on our lives. I keep forgetting we even have senators.

what are they good for besides playing hockey
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notahomer
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KnowItAll wrote:What impact does the senate have on our lives. I keep forgetting we even have senators.

what are they good for besides playing hockey
Thankfully, we don't have provincial senators.... I think our senate is based on the concept of the House of Lords in England which, IMO, is just a way to slow down/hinder the elected body (house of commons). Our Senate has done some good things. For e.g. Senator Kirby recently led a mental health commission that funded research that is proving that giving mentally ill people homes/treatment is actually better than leaving them to be homeless. Apparently the outcomes in terms of mental and physical health are much better due to housing/treatment!?!?! Who knew? :wink:

My constant complaint with our government is something I learned in first year of political science. Things that were considered VITAL in 1867 were usually considered FEDERAL things to be overseen by Ottawa. Less important stuff like education and health (of course universal healthcare didn't exist in 1867) were left to the PROVINCES. So, in other words, Victoria is left on the hook for REALLY large expenses like schools and hospitals. Methods like transfer payments etc... help overcome these challenges. I have no doubt the United States probably has similar issues between its Federal/State levels of government.
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Sir Purrcival
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The Senate was supposed to be our version of a sober second thought. There is only 2 issues with that idea, one is that for the first 100 years, seldom were many that sober and 2, they seem almost incapable of generating an intelligent thought. I mean how else can you explain how supposedly bright, experienced people could continue to stumble and bumble their way through this most recent episode? At this stage of the game, you have to question how 3 senators could be capable of doing the job of senators when they apparently can't even figure out where they live?
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Toppy Vann
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sj-roc wrote:
South Pender wrote:
TheLionKing wrote:I doubt Clark will ask Andrew Wilkinson to step in Vancouver Quilchena. He is one of the star candidate recruited by the Liberals.
There are at least 7-8 ridings in the lower mainland in which the Liberal candidate received twice the number of votes of the NDPer--and in which there is little or no Green support.

I wonder what kind of reward a candidate who's willing to step aside can expect. These folks all worked damn hard to get elected, and it would have to be a big disappointment to have to give it up.
The senate seat that Gerry St. Germain vacated last fall is stil available. Maybe CC can pull some strings with Mr. Harper and kill two birds with one stone?
I very much doubt that PM Harper would do Premier Clark any favours and she needs a seat that is safe and not too far from her home base. West Van is a bit of a stretch but that would be pretty safe.


The Liberal Party could do what they did when their then new leader Gordon Campbell needed a seat and Art Cowie did the right thing and resigned his safe Vancouver Quilchena seat and got hired by the Liberal Party as he had a family to feed and now was out of work. Where he personally felt screwed was that after the 1993 by election Campbell moved to his home area of Point Grey in the '96 election and Cowie wanted his seat back - but Colin Hansen won the nomination. There was some Cowie bitterness that the Party Leader didn't step in and guarantee Cowie the nomination.

The Libs must do this with care given the laws which don't exempt politicians even in our system where this is done from the laws - they should though in cases of the party leaders.

http://www.ralphsultan.ca/about-ralph/ This Sultan WV riding is very safe but Ralph is 80 and working 9 to 5 might not be what he wants and he was a minister in the last gov't and might quite like that role.

I would love to see the NDP support whatever the LIBS did to reward someone if it is not a bad thing such as putting a bozo into a President of a crown corp. role but Chair is different if they have the smarts such as it seems Sultan might.
"Ability without character will lose." - Marv Levy
TheLionKing
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Sir Purrcival wrote:The Senate was supposed to be our version of a sober second thought. There is only 2 issues with that idea, one is that for the first 100 years, seldom were many that sober and 2, they seem almost incapable of generating an intelligent thought. I mean how else can you explain how supposedly bright, experienced people could continue to stumble and bumble their way through this most recent episode? At this stage of the game, you have to question how 3 senators could be capable of doing the job of senators when they apparently can't even figure out where they live?
Key word is "supposed" In reality, the Senate is a reward for party hacks. Waste of taxpayers' money IMO
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sj-roc
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Oops! Looks like I derailed the discussion with my Senate reference. That comment was meant somewhat tongue in cheek — I didn't count on it spawning a whole different discussion. But have at it if you like! I'm going to attempt to steer things back on track here.
South Pender wrote:That's an interesting analysis, sj-roc. However, let me point out a couple of things.
Thanks, SP. There's absolutely nothing wrong with anything you've presented, I think we're just at cross purposes. Let me see if I can address your points below.
1. Your analysis seems to suggest that the NDP lost this election because of low voter turnout--or, more correctly, a lower percentage of NDP-leaning voters actually casting their ballots than Liberal-leaning voters casting theirs. What evidence do we have that this is the case? If this is not the case (and I see no reason that it should be), then the inferences drawn from the analysis are hard to understand. For example, if just 106 more NDP-leaning voters in one of your ridings who didn't vote had voted, then the NDP would have won that riding. However, if the same factors that kept some NDP-leaning voters from actually voting similarly affected the Liberal-leaning voters the same way, we could make the same argument that had that factor not had the effect it did, the Liberals would have had another 106 votes in that riding too. We simply don't know that a lower show-up-to-vote rate among NDP-leaning people had anything to do with the outcome. It's possible that an even higher percentage of Liberal-leaning people didn't vote simply because they thought that the NDP was headed for victory. I think that this argument advanced by many NDP pundits is simply a way of saying that the majority (or a plurality) of the population of BC really wanted the NDP, but not enough turned up to vote. To me, this is more of an attempt at face-saving than a reflection of any empirically-verifiable reality. If we try to use the pre-election poll data to make the argument, it could just as convincingly be argued that many early (at the beginning of the campaign) NDP-leaning people simply changed their minds when they saw Christy Clark and Adrian Dix in action.
To be honest, your points here, while certainly valid, exceed the scope of my aim. I was simply interested in a post-hoc determination, with all else being equal, of what would have been the smallest amount of extra NDP votes, judiciously casted in the ten closest ridings, that would have won them a majority. That answer is about 6,500 (basically the sum of victory margins in the 10 closest ridings that went Lib > NDP). Whether it was possible that the Libs could have also gotten out more of their vote concurrently with those 6,500 is a very valid point to consider in the broader scheme but one I was explicitly not entertaining as it wasn't germane to my ends. It seems rather astonishing that a mere 6,500 judiciously cast extra NDP votes, added to the nearly 1.63M total (i.e., only a 0.4% increase) would have fully reversed the result from a Lib majority to an NDP majority. In these two scenarios, the one that actually happened, and the other one I constructed by adding 6,500 extra votes in 10 swing ridings, would have given almost identical results for each party's share of the popular vote, and scientifically conducted pre-election polls of these two "universes" would have been very similar in spite of the two completely different outcomes. So I think this shows that projecting outcomes from their polling data is not a straightforward task: the result can be very sensitive to the details. It's not that tough to get things wrong and we saw that loud and clear. It must be tough to project seat counts from polls when the parties are sufficiently close (within about 5% as was the case in this election) in their support levels. You'd need polling data at the individual riding level and it's far from obvious to me that the pollsters actually collected such data.

Another way of interpreting my analysis is to consider the Liberals' success in how they got out their vote. There were 6,500 Liberal voters in these ten ridings who were absolutely crucial in delivering the Liberal majority. All else being equal, if those 6,500 Liberal voters had stayed home Tuesday we'd be talking about Premier Dix and *his* majority. Keep in mind the Liberals won six individual ridings by more than 6,500 votes each and absolutely NOTHING would have changed in the riding-by-riding results if as many as 47,000 Liberal voters in these ridings stayed home. Anomalies like this are sometimes presented to argue for reform of our first-past-the-post system. My position, incidentally, is that such reforms are unnecessary because going into an election, all parties understand (or ought to understand) the rules of the game. They've been this way forever. Complaints of "not fair! that other party that I happen to dislike got a majority with only 38/42/whatever% of the popular vote! boo! hiss!" make it sound as if there were initially a rule requiring some higher threshold, perhaps 50, 55, or even 60% and that someone from on high made a unilateral decision after the fact to lower it.

In the 2008 federal election, Harper came up just 12 seats short of a majority; at the time I undertook an analysis similar to the above to discover that, likewise, in the 12 closest ridings that they just missed out on capturing, there was only the tiniest fraction of voters (compared to the total number of voters in the country) who came into play in determining majority or minority. So they didn't need a very large across-the-board bump in their support to get a majority next time out and that's pretty much what happened in 2011.
2. I did a parallel analysis of 8 ridings in which the Liberal candidate fell short of the NDP winner by the same < 1227 votes that you used. In my analysis, the margins ran from 52 (in Saanich North and the Islands) to 1137 (Cowichan Valley). Couldn't we make the same argument for an additional 8 seats for the Liberals had Liberal-leaning turnout been higher in those ridings? If both arguments were true (10 more NDP seats in your analysis, 8 more Liberal seats in mine), we have a net +2 seats for the NDP--i.e., no practical change in the standings: 48-35 vs. 50-33.
All very true, but as I've mentioned, it was outside the scope of my aim in demonstrating that the NDP was actually not that far away from pulling off a very 1996-style majority, if only they could have gotten out a few thousand more voters in those 10 ridings.

I suppose one might question whether those 6,500 extra voters were actually there to be had for the NDP in the first place (i.e., did they exhaust every last vote from the electorate that could have been had). The fact that in 2009 they had a larger share of the pop vote from a smaller absolute turnout seems to suggest that this time around, they might have left some votes in the dressing room, so to speak. But then again voters can firmly change their loyalties from one election to another so it's quite possible that most of the subset of voters who went NDP in 2009 but not now (whether they voted for someone else or not at all) were a lost cause. Perhaps 2009 <-> 2013 comparisons of each of these ten ridings — which I have not undertaken — could provide some insights. If in each of these ridings the NDP got more votes now than in 2009 (against a background of lower overall support now than in 2009) then that would suggest they saturated their support levels in these swing ridings this time out — although it would be tougher to draw any conclusions under the opposite happenstance.

I'm wondering about that guy who nailed the US election last year (correctly predicted all 50 states as to red or blue), whether he would have fared any better than all the pollsters here who got it wrong.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Right, I got your point. Just wanted to present another way of seeing this. In my recollection, many general elections have outcomes like this, with wafer-thin margins of victory in a number of ridings. Sometimes in research, we have data outcomes that, had one or two subjects scored one or two points higher, the whole outcome (statistically significant or nonsignficant) would have changed--and resulted in a study being published as opposed to ending up sitting forever in the researcher's files.
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sj-roc
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South Pender wrote:Right, I got your point. Just wanted to present another way of seeing this. In my recollection, many general elections have outcomes like this, with wafer-thin margins of victory in a number of ridings. Sometimes in research, we have data outcomes that, had one or two subjects scored one or two points higher, the whole outcome (statistically significant or nonsignficant) would have changed--and resulted in a study being published as opposed to ending up sitting forever in the researcher's files.
Yeah, the thing is, this sort of analysis is always post-hoc. It's not like the NDP could have said on Monday, hey we don't have enough supporters in this riding, we need, like, 137 more, so let's make it happen.

One point about swing ridings that came out of the 2011 federal election was the Conservatives' uncanny ability to win them. I remember checking this out and don't recall the exact figures but they won a fair bit more of them that you would expect on chance alone. Ted Opitz was the poster boy for this. He won his Etobicoke Centre seat by a mere 26 votes, and in addition to Elections Canada's own recounts, there were two court cases. Initially the judge sided with plaintiff Borys Wrzesnewskyj (the riding incumbent) that based on voting irregularities, the slim election result should be tossed and a new by-election ordered. Opitz appealed this decision to the Supreme Court, who ruled that the irregularities weren't strong enough to warrant a by-election, thereby overturning the lower court's decision and allowing Opitz to retain the seat. I actually read several pages of that ruling at the time; IIRC the overall theme of it was that the problems uncovered by the court in the conduct of the election were regarded as more of a pattern of clerical errors by a small subset of ballot box workers in that riding who failed to fully document newly-registered voters not already on their voters' lists, as opposed to any discernible evidence of malicious attempts by ineligible voters to cast illegal ballots. There was never any question re: voter intent on any given ballot, only re: were there ineligible voters casting ballots and were there more of them than the narrow margin of victory. The lower court in their ruling had initially identified quite a few more than 26 voters that they regarded as ineligible but this stance did not survive appeal.

The narrowest margin in this election was double that of Opitz so hopefully things won't get to that extreme this time.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc
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The Georgia Straight's political cartoonist offers up this commentary:

Image
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc
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The BC Liberals have released some of their own daily internal polling data that showed they were on track to win the election. Michael Smyth has an article about it in The Province but I'm linking straight to the source.



They focussed on the polling numbers in the swing ridings among women and 55+ voters to which the outcome was most sensitive. I've already demonstrated in this thread how small numbers of voters in these ridings can basically determine the outcome and this shows that they knew it, too. This is in stark contrast to Dix's decision to visit Liberal stronghold ridings in the opening days of the campaign. Another recent Smyth article notes:
The Liberals were dumbfounded by Dix’s early decision to campaign in Liberal fortresses like the Okanagan and the Fraser Valley.

“Why the hell is he going into our stronghold ridings?” a Liberal war-room worker confided.

“We can’t believe he’s not fighting in the suburban swing seats he really needs to win — in Coquitlam and Surrey and Maple Ridge.”

The reason Dix did it? Hubris. Brazen over-confidence. He believed the pollsters and his own press clippings, thought he could run the table and win a massive landslide victory.

It was all a fantasy. While Dix tilted at windmills on the home turf of unbeatable Liberal cabinet ministers, the NDP were setting themselves up for a disastrous fall in the suburbs of Metro Vancouver.

The NDP got creamed in the ’burbs Tuesday night.
Check out in the scribd document particularly how the Libs' numbers (I believe it's supposed to be a running 5-day average) climbed almost daily in the latter category of older voters, starting around the time of the televised debate on Apr 29. I think there's supposed to be a way to embed this document into this post but I haven't figured that out so the link will have to do.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc
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Counting of absentee ballots wrapped yesterday and confirmed the election night winners in all but one riding.

Coquitlam-Maillardville (perhaps some of you live there) was initially declared in favour of the Liberals' Steve Kim on election night, with a vote count of 9044 to 8939 for the NDP's Selina Mae Robinson.

This result was reversed, 9928 to 9893 in Robinson's favour, with the inclusion of 2044 further absentee ballots. But even this result isn't final since the winning 35 vote margin is less than the Elections BC-mandated 0.2% of the 21,714 total ballots cast, which triggers an automatic judicial recount.

No other election night results were overturned. In Point Grey, particularly, Christy Clark trailed David Eby on election night by 785 votes, so with 2682 further absentee ballots to be counted she had a shot (however slight) at surviving the challenge but this didn't happen; in fact with the absentees included, Eby grew his margin to 1063.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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notahomer
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I live in the City of Vancouver and there has been a strong desire by many (on the left for the most part) for us to switch from our current system of At-large to a Ward System. The Ward System is just a fancy way of saying we'll elect the Councillors under a similar system to the firstpastpost system used provincially/federally. The left in Vancouver seems to think they'll do better under a Ward system. Vision has done well because, IMO, they have filled the void inbetween the two long-term 'parties' (the NPA and COPE).

Sj-roc, your fine examination, IMO, of the recent election results show some of the flaws of this electoral system. WHY SHOULDN'T a candidate campaign in stronghold ridings. My response is that it doesn't make sense strategically but at the same time the Premier is supposed to represent the entire province. The 'easy' seats get ignored by both parties usually. Why campaign there, we got it in the bag or we don't stand a chance. Certainly happened in the US Presidential election too. So called swing states get a ton of money and appearances. It makes sense strategically.

I'd like the City of Vancouver and both the feds/Victoria switch to a combined system. Elect some representation via At-large and some via Wards/Ridings. Some representatives would have a focus on the system as a whole versus a particular area. I do think both types of representation are valuable. Of course change is not going to happen. We don't need to expand any of our levels of government more via more elected people to have to pay pensions for...........
TheLionKing
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Didn't we have a referendum on the ward system several years ago and it was rejected by the voters ?
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