2013 British Columbia General Election Thread

[sj-roc]

I just did some number crunching of all the riding-by-riding results on the Elections BC website. Since the NDP finished 10 seats short of the 43 required for a majority, I had a look at the 10 closest ridings in which the NDP finished 2nd to whoever won the riding (in every case, this winner was the Liberals). All of these were decided by margins ranging from 105 to 1227 votes.

You wouldn't need to flip many of the votes in these 10 ridings from Liberal to NDP to yield an NDP majority. Out of nearly 1.63 million total valid votes recorded in the whole province, only 3,233 judiciously flipped ballots from Lib to NDP in these ridings, would have reversed the majority*.

So basically, one could argue from this post-hoc analysis that the election outcome turned on a critical subset of ballots representing just under 0.2% of all voters who casted valid votes.

*Another way of looking at it is that the NDP could have won a majority by getting just 2 x 3,233 = 6,466 (or an extra 0.4%) more voters to show up for them, judiciously distributed among these 10 ridings. Such a result is sort of what happened in 1996 but not this time!

Given the low turnout, it's not really all that inconceivable that say, around 1,800 would-be NDP supporters in each of these 10 ridings stayed home and cost them the election. In fact, had the NDP gotten just 1,800 more voters to show up for them in the 14 ridings with their best 2nd place showings — which is not particularly onerous since there are typically over 30,000 registered voters per riding — they would have won all 14 of these seats for a safe, stable majority of 47. With most ridings having typically 130 polls or so, you're only talking around 15 extra votes going into each of these ballot boxes.

All of this underscores just how crucial it is to "get the vote out." You can bet your bottom dollar that campaign strategists are very well aware of this swing riding effect, and they campaign accordingly. It's all about getting 50%+1 of the seats, and deploying your resources to that end. Everything else is a distraction.

[TheLionKing]

Interesting stats. I suspect that alot of NDP supporters didn't bother taking the time to cast their votes because they believe the pollsters that a NDP majority was in the bag.

[sj-roc]

A couple of things: all the NDP majority talk worked to the Liberals' advantage, because centre-left voters felt supremely confident the NDP already had the numbers to form government. Nobody talked about vote splitting on the left during the course of the election.

That's a very plausible scenario, James. In fact, I've already posted an analysis that shows that all else being equal, an average of only 15 extra NDP votes or so in each ballot box (polling division) in the 14 ridings where the NDP had their closest 2nd place finish would have given them a solid majority of 47 seats instead of the 33 they ended up with (one of which, Saanich North & Islands, was won by only 52 votes and will surely be recounted). As it turns out, Green/NDP vote splitting was a factor in 11 of the 50 Liberal wins (in fairness, Liberal/Conservative vote splitting was also a factor in 2 ridings that went NDP) but the no-shows could have overcome this by, well, showing up.

[sj-roc]

Interesting stats. I suspect that alot of NDP supporters didn't bother taking the time to cast their votes because they believe the pollsters that a NDP majority was in the bag.

You would think that they would have been jolted out of this illusion when the poll numbers began to close in the last week or so of the campaign. Or were they simply not paying attention?

[sj-roc]

Thanks for that video. I don't know how I missed all the ads. That one certainly goes after Dix, suggesting that he has no firm platform, vacillating with his perceptions of voters' preferences. Is it the fact that it is done dramatically via a video containing Dix himself that makes it an "attack ad"? What if the Liberals had simply put up an ad without Dix's physical presence in it suggesting that he is a weak leader because he doesn't evince a coherent plan for the future and changes his position in response to what he sees as the popular sentiment? Would that be an "attack ad"? Didn't the NDP attack Christy Clark? Did they do it in a seemingly more "fair-minded" way. So far, I can't see this excuse of "we took the high ground, and they used right-wing attack ads" as being the reason they lost. A lousy platform and fuzzy message seem to be the more likely determinants. Christy Clark and the Liberals had a well-focused message that they stayed with.

There was also this one that played on Dix's ill-advised attempt during the televised leaders' debate to dismiss his memogate controversy as the youthful indiscretion of a 35 year old. The Libs shot back by showcasing their own group of "I'm under 35 and I take responsibility" candidates contesting this election. This one is much longer, about 90 seconds, so I'm not sure if this was aired on TV or just web-only.

[video][/video]

[TheLionKing]

I don't see Christy losing a by-election. The NDP will no doubt field a strong candidate. While it is true the NDP will bring every resources to defeat Clark, the Liberals will do the same. This time Clark will not be an absent candidate in her own riding. One key is the constituents. Would they be better served with a Premier as their representative or an Opposition member ?

[sj-roc]

I'm willing to bet that Clark loses the by-election, whenever it is called.

Hey James, do you really think that she'd run in a riding in which she could possibly lose? There are lots of completely safe Liberal ridings, some in the greater Vancouver area. Why would the voters in such a riding all of a sudden vote NDP, when yesterday they mostly voted Liberal? In addition, the fact that she was the most significant factor in orchestrating the big Liberal win should make her even more popular in a basically-Liberal riding, shouldn't it?

Well she already has, hasn't she?
.... [snip] .....

James, you might be overlooking the fact that Point Grey in the last two decades has never really been a Liberal stronghold, in terms of victory margin, even when it was held by Gordon Campbell before Clark. In fact, it was even held by the NDP during Harcourt's premiership. You have to remember, PG includes UBC campus and a lot of its students who skew orange. It's true that Campbell won it four times in a row but only when the NDP wipeout came in 2001 did he score what you could fairly call a solid win (like pretty much every Liberal in that election, so it wasn't an especially impressive feat considering the era's political climate). Have a look at the numbers dating back through 1991 and try to tell me (aside from 2001) the NDP haven't been competitive there all this time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver-Point_Grey

It's not that difficult to see that any other Liberal candidate, particularly one without Campbell's high profile, might be in tough in PG. Indeed, no Liberal who wasn't also party leader or premier has ever held it and even those two haven't had a cakewalk of it. The main reason Clark ended up there in the first place was simply because Campbell vacated it upon his resignation.

As for possible Clark landing spots, I can't speak for other ridings but I can't see how she would lose Vancouver-Quilchena, right next door to PG, if she chose to run here (not sure how likely that would be; newly-minted MLA Andrew Wilkinson would probably step aside into a plum patronage job). Until this election it was the riding of former Finance Minister Colin Hansen and is widely recognised as one of if not the safest Liberal seat in the entire province dating back several elections now. He won the seat four times in a row by five digit margins every time out, never garnering less than 67% of the vote. On at least one of these four occasions (and possibly others) he won every last polling division in the riding. That's domination. There has never been a significant level of NDP support in this riding. Even at the federal level — Quilchena lies entirely within the federal Quadra riding — you can see the same lack of NDP support dating back many decades; Quadra has been Liberal since former PM John Turner took it in 1984 and fairly solidly so until recent years with the broader decline of the federal Liberals, but the great bulk of that lost support has bled off to the Conservatives with little gain for the NDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver-Quilchena

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Quadra

The provincial voting history of Quilchena is just too overwhelmingly Liberal in my view to allow any other party, even running by itself as the lone consensus vote-splitting safeguard candidate among the anybody-but-Liberal forces, any chance of knocking them off. I just can't see it unless the Liberals fail to get out their vote. But that's exactly what they did this week across pretty much the whole province! With just one riding where the stakes are so high, it would be child's play.

[South Pender]

I'm willing to bet that Clark loses the by-election, whenever it is called.

Hey James, do you really think that she'd run in a riding in which she could possibly lose? There are lots of completely safe Liberal ridings, some in the greater Vancouver area. Why would the voters in such a riding all of a sudden vote NDP, when yesterday they mostly voted Liberal? In addition, the fact that she was the most significant factor in orchestrating the big Liberal win should make her even more popular in a basically-Liberal riding, shouldn't it?

Well she already has, hasn't she?

No. She ran in a very tough riding--the one in which she almost lost in the by-election (to the same candidate) to get her into the legislature two years ago. This was never a safe Liberal riding, and there were fears that she would have difficulty this time around too, given that she had almost no time to campaign there. I was describing a safe Liberal riding, which I would define as one which (a) has traditionally voted Liberal and (b) the winner this time won by a very wide margin. I can't agree with the rest of your analysis. I think she'll win any by-election in a walk. Her stock has never been higher, and any quibbles the electorate had with her before will, in my opinion, be drowned out by her spectacular performance in the campaign. Even the dippers are saying that she ran a terrific campaign. As for your scenario of the opposition pulling out all the stops to get her defeated in the by-election, this has normally not been the case in Canadian politics. There have been by-elections in Canada in which the main opposing party hasn't even run a candidate.

As for Cummins, I have little respect for these glory-seeking former politicians (or even non-former politicians) who attempt to start up their own party for their own aggrandizement. Had Cummins (who is a truly ineffectual politician) performed better, he would have helped elect a government diametrically opposed to his own views by splitting the vote on the right. Now that's hubris.

[sj-roc]

...the NDP could have won a majority by getting just 2 x 3,233 = 6,466 (or an extra 0.4%) more voters to show up for them, judiciously distributed among these 10 [swing] ridings. Such a result is sort of what happened in 1996 but not this time!

Ever since I posted this analysis I've been wondering why these 6500 or so voters never showed up. Perhaps they were too preoccupied with other activities such as

(1) Liking the BC NDP facebook page
(2) Updating their fb profile photos with the NDP logo
(3) Tweeting poll results
(4) Watching NDP campaign ads that were splashed all over youtube

I probably missed a few but none of these distractions were around when they won in 1996.

[sj-roc]

As for your scenario of the opposition pulling out all the stops to get her defeated in the by-election, this has normally not been the case in Canadian politics. There have been by-elections in Canada in which the main opposing party hasn't even run a candidate.

The only example I can think of where a party leader failed in such a scenario was — and perhaps it's appropriate I'm bringing up on these boards a man with a history in the CFL's head offices — John Tory. He was Ontario PC leader for the 2007 provincial vote that re-elected McGuinty's government, but Tory failed to win his seat (he had previously held a different seat at dissolution).

He remained as PC leader without a seat when a fellow PC MPP resigned in early 2009. In the subsequent by-election, Tory ran — but was narrowly defeated by the Liberal candidate — and then resigned the following day as party leader. Admittedly it's not quite an exact parallel to CC's situation since Tory was never premier at any time through this episode. It might also be noted that Tory had eight opponents (including a Liberal, Green and NDPer) in his final MPP bid so it wasn't necessarily a "pull out all the stops" effort by any means.

Incidentally, it turns out that the candidate who defeated him in 2007 is still the member for that riding: current Ont premier Kathleen Wynne.

[South Pender]

I just did some number crunching of all the riding-by-riding results on the Elections BC website. Since the NDP finished 10 seats short of the 43 required for a majority, I had a look at the 10 closest ridings in which the NDP finished 2nd to whoever won the riding (in every case, this winner was the Liberals). All of these were decided by margins ranging from 105 to 1227 votes.

You wouldn't need to flip many of the votes in these 10 ridings from Liberal to NDP to yield an NDP majority. Out of nearly 1.63 million total valid votes recorded in the whole province, only 3,233 judiciously flipped ballots from Lib to NDP in these ridings, would have reversed the majority*.

So basically, one could argue from this post-hoc analysis that the election outcome turned on a critical subset of ballots representing just under 0.2% of all voters who casted valid votes.

*Another way of looking at it is that the NDP could have won a majority by getting just 2 x 3,233 = 6,466 (or an extra 0.4%) more voters to show up for them, judiciously distributed among these 10 ridings. Such a result is sort of what happened in 1996 but not this time!

Given the low turnout, it's not really all that inconceivable that say, around 1,800 would-be NDP supporters in each of these 10 ridings stayed home and cost them the election. In fact, had the NDP gotten just 1,800 more voters to show up for them in the 14 ridings with their best 2nd place showings — which is not particularly onerous since there are typically over 30,000 registered voters per riding — they would have won all 14 of these seats for a safe, stable majority of 47. With most ridings having typically 130 polls or so, you're only talking around 15 extra votes going into each of these ballot boxes.

All of this underscores just how crucial it is to "get the vote out." You can bet your bottom dollar that campaign strategists are very well aware of this swing riding effect, and they campaign accordingly. It's all about getting 50%+1 of the seats, and deploying your resources to that end. Everything else is a distraction.

That's an interesting analysis, sj-roc. However, let me point out a couple of things.

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.

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.

[TheLionKing]

I doubt Clark will ask Andrew Wilkinson to step in Vancouver Quilchena. He is one of the star candidate recruited by the Liberals.

[South Pender]

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.

[KnowItAll]

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.

that candidate would be allowed to run in PG the next election