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Corey
Non-Threatening Boy
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1972
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 Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 11:08 am Post subject: BC Election 2013 |
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| Jonathan Fowlie, in The Vancouver Sun, wrote: | The Ipsos Reid survey found 41-per-cent support for the B.C. Liberals, and 39 per cent for the New Democrats -a two-point gap that is inside the margin of error.
The poll is the first measure of B.C.'s political scene since the Liberals and New Democrats replaced their leaders, giving a first hint at how voters are reacting to the changes. [...]
The poll found that 10 per cent of voters support the B.C. Conservative Party, and eight per cent support the Green party.
The Conservative number represents a considerable jump for the party, which got just over two-per-cent support in the 2009 election. The party is expected to proclaim former MP John Cummins as its leader later this month.
There is no official connection between the B.C. Conservative Party and the Conservative Party of Canada, but Braid said people might have confused the two when responding.
"There's clearly going to be opportunities for the Liberals to look at that Conservative support and try to pull some of it back," he added, saying the same opportunity exists for the NDP gaining support from the Greens. |
B.C. Liberal Party and NDP in dead heat, poll suggests (Jonathan Fowlie, The Vancouver Sun, May 18, 2011) |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 1:51 am Post subject: |
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That poll is bad news for the Liberals. Number one, the incumbent Premier should be ahead of an Opposition Leader who is at this point not well known, and the polls bear that out. Number two, the right-wing vote in BC is wasted in the Interior, so in any contest where the right-wing and the NDP are tied at any level will favour the NDP. And that doesn't even consider that the Conservatives may bleed away Liberal votes and have NDPers come up the middle.
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 5:25 am Post subject: |
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John Cummins BC Conservative leader:
| Quote: | Cummins, who was the only candidate to run for the leadership of the B.C. Conservatives, was elected by delegates at a convention in Surrey on Saturday.
In a wide-ranging speech to a room of 300 supporters following the announcement, Cummins blasted the provincial Liberals and New Democrats.
He also made his first policy announcement — a promise to scrap the carbon tax.
"Gas will be cheaper," he said.
"It will cost less to drive your kids to school. That school will have more resources because they won't be paying the carbon tax. It will cost less to buy food and for the millions of British Columbians who live outside of the urban areas where public transit isn't an option, who disproportionately pay this tax, they will find relief." |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 4:42 am Post subject: |
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Provincial deficit drops:
| Quote: | The B.C. government finished the 2010-11 financial year with a much smaller deficit than it forecast, Finance Minister Kevin Falcon announced on Monday.
The province ended the fiscal year with a $309-million deficit — about $1.4 billion less than forecast last year — and Falcon said the province is on track to balance its budget in 2013-14.
The deficit is the amount the government is spending each year more than the revenue it takes in.
The total provincial debt increased by $3.3 billion to $45.2 billion when $1.9 billion in taxpayer supported debt to finance capital infrastructure projects and $1.4 billion in self-supporting debt is included. |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2011 4:13 am Post subject: |
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No Fall election:
| Quote: | Premier Christy Clark suggests her B.C. Liberal party would have won a fall election had she decided to call it, despite contrary views from the opposition.
After months of speculation about her intentions, Clark announced Wednesday night that she would not go the polls, but insisted it was not because her party would have been defeated.
"The B.C. Liberal party does do a lot of polling,” Clark said Thursday in Maple Ridge. “We've been doing quite a bit over the last while, and it suggested a favourable result if an election was called today." |
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Maestro
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Joined: 11 Apr 2006
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Location: Vancouver
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| Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2011 7:02 am Post subject: |
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Which begs the question 'so why don't you call one then?'
Oh I know, you're afraid of winning... 
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Maestro wrote: | Which begs the question 'so why don't you call one then?'
Oh I know, you're afraid of winning... |
How does she figure that calling an election later will help her chances, when that gives the BC Conservatives time to organize and chip away at her party's right flank?
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Maestro
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Location: Vancouver
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| Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 9:37 pm Post subject: |
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The BC Conservatives are not going to amount to much. They have neither the support of the business community, not the press. They may have some level of support amongst the electorate, but they haven't elected an MLA for sixty years.
Who would like to bet that by the time of the next election, Christy Clarke is ex-leader? I'd put $5 on it.
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:11 am Post subject: |
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That may be the case Maestro. Right now, the BC Liberals are the incumbent right-wing government, so naturally the business community would be behind them. But there are several ways this could play itself out. Suppose the Liberal brand tanks severely. Would the business community jump ship for something more stable? If an NDP victory was all but certain, would the business community back the Conservatives as a project for long-term rebuilding? If the NDP wins in a landslide, might the business community ditch the Liberal brand and go with something else?
I take your point that the Conservatives haven't elected anyone in a while, but the BC Liberal party also had a long stretch in the wilderness before Gordon Campbell brought them to power.
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Maestro
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Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 2359
Location: Vancouver
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| Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 4:38 am Post subject: |
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Remember the BC Liberal party is not really a Liberal party. It is just the old Socred coalition under a different banner. Bill Van Der Zalm who recently led the anti-HST was a former Socred premier, but started his political life as the leader of the BC Liberals.
The connections between the provincial Liberal Party and the Federal Liberal party are more or less non-existent. Gordon Campbell was certainly more comfortable with the federal Conservatives than the federal Liberals.
BC politics are a strange brew, with a lot of strange characters. Not least of which is an old premier who named himself Amor De Cosmos. BC has never really recovered from that.
Here's another character - Gordon Wilson - courtesy of Wikipedia:
| Quote: | In 1987, Wilson took over as leader of the BC Liberal Party, a moribund party that had not elected a member in over a decade. In the 1991 general election, Wilson's profile skyrocketed after his highly successful performance in the campaign's televised leaders debate. During a nasty squabble between Social Credit party leader Rita Johnston and BC NDP leader Mike Harcourt, Wilson famously pointed out that "here's a classic example of why nothing ever gets done in the province of British Columbia". It would become the campaign's most successful sound bite.
As a consequence, he led the Liberal Party to win 17 seats, its highest total since 1949. They became the Official Opposition in the legislature, relegating the ruling Social Credit Party to a distant third with seven seats. Wilson won his own seat in Powell River-Sunshine Coast.
In 1993, Wilson's leadership of the Liberals was challenged after it came to light that he was having an extramarital affair with fellow Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji, whom he had recently named as the party's House Leader. In a Liberal Party leadership review that had been called soon afterward, Wilson was defeated by Vancouver mayor Gordon Campbell. Within weeks, he and Tyabji left the Liberal caucus and formed a new party, the Progressive Democratic Alliance (PDA).
In the 1996 provincial election, Wilson retained his seat, while Tyabji, whom he later married, lost hers.
In 1997, Wilson shocked many in his party, by crossing the floor to join the governing New Democratic Party to serve in Premier Glen Clark's cabinet as Minister of Finance and Minister of Employment, Investment and International Trade. He subsequently folded his party, the PDA.
He ran for the NDP's party leadership at a convention in February 2000, but pulled out of the race shortly before the voting began. He threw his support to candidate Corky Evans, who in turn lost to Ujjal Dosanjh. In the 2001 provincial election, he lost his seat to BC Liberal candidate Harold Long, the Social Credit MLA he himself had defeated in 1991 when running for the BC Liberals.
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Almost all of the weirdness of BC politics are encapsulated in that little squib.
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 2:33 pm Post subject: |
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BC Liberals feeling the heat:
| Quote: | B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix says the provincial Liberals’ latest attack on him shows the governing party is desperate and short of ideas.
Dix is the target of a new website, cantafforddix.ca, which features several pictures of the NDP leader and headlines like, “The Real Adrian Dix,” Dix’s Uncomfortable Tax Record” and “Nineties Credit Ratings Downgrades.” |
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 2:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Maestro wrote: | | The BC Conservatives are not going to amount to much. They have neither the support of the business community, not the press. They may have some level of support amongst the electorate, but they haven't elected an MLA for sixty years. |
The Liberals have gone after Cummins as well
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 1:11 am Post subject: |
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BC's right coalition continues to implode
But at least people still trust the Liberals more than the NDP on the economy?
| Quote: | | Dix is also seen as an increasingly credible leader by B.C. voters on wide range of issues, tied with Clark as the best person to deal with the economy and crime, and leading the premier on health care, education and the environment. |
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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Maestro
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 2359
Location: Vancouver
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:27 am Post subject: |
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Two byelections, both won by the NDP. Not much of a shock in Port Coquitlam, NDP candidate former Liberal, former Mayor.
Shocker in Chilliwack. That's been small 'c' conservative territory for as long as I can remember, and that's a while. I was born there many years ago. At one time my father was approached to run for the Social Credit Party, back in the old WAC Bennett days. He didn't, but was, like most around there, a lifelong supporter of that brand of conservative/populist politics.
What happened was the new Conservative Party of British Columbia siphoned off enough vote to allow the NDP candidate to achieve the largest number of votes.
By the way, though I don't live there any more, I still have many relatives in Chilliwack. My aunt has been on the school board there for over twenty years, starting her political career when she was 64 years old.
NDP wins 2 B.C. byelections
| Quote: | Vote-splitting in one riding and a popular candidate in the other gave the B.C. NDP two big byelection victories in former Liberal strongholds.
The New Democrat's Gwen O'Mahony, who has run twice unsuccessfully, came up the middle in Chilliwack-Hope with about 41 per cent of the popular vote Thursday night.
Laurie Throness from the Liberals and John Martin of the B.C. Conservative Party shared about 58 per cent, fulfilling Clark's warning about splitting the "free enterprise" vote.
In Port Moody-Coquitlam, the NDP's Joe Trasolini captured about 54 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the Liberals' Dennis Marsden with 30 per cent and the Conservatives' Christine Clarke with 15 per cent.
...Both NDP victories came in ridings that the Liberals won easily in the last three provincial elections.
"It gives credence to Adrian Dix's claim that he's regarding all seats as winnable," said Michael Prince, a political scientist and social policy professor at the University of Victoria.
"He was heightening and raising expectations, while premier was all about lowering expectations," said Prince.
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 1:47 am Post subject: |
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What's even better is that the BC Conservatives don't look like they're gaining as much traction as they should. From a strict numerical perspective it would be advantageous to the NDP for the Cons to peel off right-wing votes, there's the long-term political danger of the Cons gaining momentum, as we saw federally with Reform and are seeing across the Rockies in Alberta. Much better for the NDP to be able to win on its own momentum and gain respect and staying power that way.
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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Maestro
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 2359
Location: Vancouver
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:43 pm Post subject: |
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Here's a guy I had never heard of, but was pretty high up the ladder of Conservative and conservative minions:
B.C. premier's chief of staff dismissed
| Quote: | B.C. Premier Christy Clark has dismissed her chief of staff, Ken Boessenkool, following an undisclosed incident, she announced Monday.
Clark said she learned of the incident about two weeks ago and made a decision to replace Boessenkool immediately after an investigation was completed.
...What is known is that about two weeks ago Boessenkool took part in a golf tournament along with a large number of MLAs, government staffers and media.
There was a lot of alcohol consumed at the tournament and a number of government staffers were out late at a Victoria bar following the event.
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Why do I suspect everyone involved was hoping whatever happened would just go away, but somehow word leaked out, making it impossible to keep said incident quiet.
One wonders how many of the media (as pointed to in the story) tried their best to ignore said goings on...
BTW, read up on Boessenkool. He was close to Harper as well.
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 8:49 pm Post subject: |
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BC NDP proposes raising taxes:
| Quote: | NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston and former leader Carole James laid out the details of the party's bottom line, and said an NDP government would increase corporate tax, reinstate the capital tax for financial institutions, raise personal income tax for high earners and expand the carbon tax.
NDP Finance Critic Bruce Ralston says the NDP's fiscal plan is all about boosting revenues and spending.
"We're being upfront about the way in which we are going to pay for what we regard as important public programs," he said. |
 What a bold move, to finally put that idea on the table. We can argue about whether or not it is enough, but what this announcement does is shift the focus onto the fact that the 1% need to pay more taxes. I only wish the Manitoba NDP was that bold.
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 8:51 pm Post subject: |
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Is vote-splitting the only way the NDP can win?
| Quote: | As we shall see, B.C's alleged free enterprise coalition has waxed and waned, shifted and scattered over the years. Sometimes the shifts have meant an NDP victory; usually they haven't. And such shifts also happen on the other side of the spectrum. In an odd mirror image, you will hear New Democrats complaining about "their" voters splitting off to the Green party, foiling the NDP's bid for power.
"I think it's a vanity the major parties have that the voters for third parties really belong to them," Ruff, professor emeritus at the University of Victoria, said in an interview.
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In 1991, Brown was an official with the campaign of the governing Social Credit party. On Election Day, the Socred vote went way down, the Liberal party vote went way up and the NDP formed government. Pundits and Socreds called it proof of the old argument against vote-splitting.
Except, Brown said, the Liberals took votes away from the NDP.
"If that had just been a two-way race between the Socreds and the NDP, you probably would have seen the NDP pushing 60 per cent -- 55 to 60 per cent," he said.
"The NDP's universe is much, much larger than most people assume it is. And the Socreds knew this and so do the Liberals today." |
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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anne cameron
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
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Location: tahsis, british columbia
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| Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:37 pm Post subject: |
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I have NO idea who is going to "win" the election next week, but I know who is going to lose...the tax payers. Christy keeps saying Dix hasn't declared openly how he's going to pay for this or that or the next... and for whatever reason, Dix is being such a super-nice guy he's not coming out very forcefully or attacking much of anything, and he's certainly not saying it's impossible to say anything at all about money because gawd alone knows what the Fiberals have done with it, their book-keeping seems to be completely iffy, their estimates come from fantasy land and we all know the entire world is struggling to stave off a total economic collapse. Whoever wins, the workers are in for an ass-kicking, and the poor bloody environment isn't going to get any breaks, either. I find it uncommonly strange that neither major party has come out with any kind of policy regarding the fish feed lots even though it's one of the major topics of conversation. we hear pipelines yes and pipelines no and a lot of bumph about liquified natural gas and that bumph sounds mostly like hot air.
The pollsters, whoever and whatever they may be, are saying the Fiberals are catching up to the NDP in the opinion polls.
Look, up in the air, is it a bird, is it a plane, no it's a squadron of pretty little pink piggies, all of them playing trombones.... |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 3:01 am Post subject: |
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Polls have now closed. Stay tuned.
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 4:39 am Post subject: |
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CBC calls Liberal government, not sure majority or minority.
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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Cartman
Beyond cuddly
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 8642
Location: OMG! They killed Jason Kenney!
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 4:54 am Post subject: |
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| Enjoy your Liberal government. |
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cco
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 04 May 2006
Posts: 718
Location: love of one's country is a terrible thing
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 5:08 am Post subject: |
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| What the hell, folks? Adrian Dix is the Toronto Maple Leafs of politics. |
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Cartman
Beyond cuddly
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 8642
Location: OMG! They killed Jason Kenney!
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 5:24 am Post subject: |
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| cco wrote: | | What the hell, folks? Adrian Dix is the Toronto Maple Leafs of politics. |
Ha!  |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 5:50 am Post subject: |
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Andrew Weaver made history by becoming the first elected Green MLA in BC.
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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cco
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Location: love of one's country is a terrible thing
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 5:57 am Post subject: |
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| "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken |
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Tehanu
More or less, more or less
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
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Location: Seceded from the Ford Nation
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 11:53 am Post subject: |
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| Brutal. Like when Mike Harris was re-elected in Ontario. |
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voice of the damned
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Location: slandered, libeled
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 2:04 pm Post subject: |
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Lots of speculation and debate over on babble(and everywhere else I'm sure) about what just happened in BC. But when all is said and done, I think it was probably quite simple: The Conservative vote moved en masse over to the Liberals in order to block the NDP.
Same thing happened in Alberta this time last year, but in the opposite direction. Liberals flocked over to the PCs to block Wildrose. There were early rumours that Stephen Carter, Redford's campaign manager, was working for the BC Liberals. These were officially refuted, but some of the Liberal tactics in BC were quite similar to what Redford's gang had done in Alberta, especially the mining of internet sites for damaging opposition quotes. Though I think "chinkasorous" played less of a role in BC than "lake of fire" did in Alberta.
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Cartman
Beyond cuddly
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Location: OMG! They killed Jason Kenney!
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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| I think the NDP lost because they played it too safe. It worked for Obama, but not Dix. |
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cco
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Location: love of one's country is a terrible thing
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Someone needs to tell Canadian lefties what I told Brian Topp last year: this is politics. You play by Chicago rules, or you might as well go home. Nobody votes for "positive". |
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DSquared
aka Aristotleded24
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 5570
Location: Winnipeg
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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| cco wrote: | | Someone needs to tell Canadian lefties what I told Brian Topp last year: this is politics. You play by Chicago rules, or you might as well go home. Nobody votes for "positive". |
Yup. And as much as I can't stand the man, I think Thomas Mulcair at least has the street-fighting instincts that will be necessary to take down the Conservative government.
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al-Qa'bong
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Posts: 6048
Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
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| Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 3:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Cartman wrote: | | cco wrote: | | What the hell, folks? Adrian Dix is the Toronto Maple Leafs of politics. |
Ha! :rotfl: |
Can't argue with that. While we're making sports analogies, that would make the Greens the Habs of BC politics, and the Flames...
...Social Credit?
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"The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl |
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Maestro
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Location: Vancouver
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| Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 11:35 pm Post subject: |
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Quoting myself from a letter to a friend:
| Quote: | ...one of the things you need if you want to win an election is a platform with discernible planks. In any case, looking back, one wonders whether Carole James would have done any worse? In fact it was those opposed to her leadership that devised the recent campaign. Probably the sorriest campaign ever mounted by the NDP in this province. Now they’ll be looking for another leader, as I suspect Adrian Dix’s days are numbered.
Happened to be reading another article about USA politics and the Super PACs. Very interesting quote from Sheldon Adelson. He spent nearly a hundred million of his own money to get a Republican into the president’s chair (and failed). His comment was (as quoted on Salon):
Politics, he told the Wall Street Journal in his first post-election interview, is like poker: “I don’t cry when I lose. There’s always a new hand coming up.”
This is the attitude of the right, and one that would be well emulated by the left. It emphasizes that the battle is never over, and while one wishes for success in the short run, one must also keep one eye on the future. If the NDP hadn’t been so ready to dump Carole James, they could be forming the government now.
As it is, they will probably go searching for a new leader (again) without a thought for the policy vacuum that got them into this sad state. They should remember that no matter how ‘liberal-like’ they are, they will never be acceptable to the political right. Far better to enunciate some progressive policies, and stick with them. |
I don't think it was so much a lack of negative advertising by the NDP that did them in, but a complete lack of positive platform. You could ask a thousand voters here to name a specific initiative of the NDP during the election, and I doubt a single person could give you an answer other than "I don't know."
Another problem was that Adrian Dix, with his falsifying of a document back when, was in no position to bring up the rank corruption of the Liberal government.
In any case, this won't change much. The battles over pipelines, forests and whatnot will continue. In a sense it's just as well not to have the NDP in power. When faced with such issues in the past they've always caved in, but in the meantime many who would have supported the various battles didn't do so because they feared damaging the NDP. At least that is no longer a problem.
Although I'm not a fan of the Green Party, I'm glad Andrew Weaver was elected. He has taken some very positive positions in the past, and dealt with the flack that's come his way. Unlike most Green Party types he actually has some credentials. It is a bit worrisome that he explicitly said he ' couldn't' run for the NDP, but I guess I'm willing to wait and see how he deals with legislative politics.
In the meantime NDP'ers might consider what could be on their platform next time around...
One last item. Given the fallibility of the polling during this election (and the prior Alberta election) does this signal the end of polling as we know it? I have yet to hear polling firms questioned about the reliability of their polls, though it certainly seems problematic. I'd like to know how they plan to rectify the apparently non-working process they currently use.
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voice of the damned
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| Posted: Fri May 17, 2013 8:56 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | One last item. Given the fallibility of the polling during this election (and the prior Alberta election) does this signal the end of polling as we know it? I have yet to hear polling firms questioned about the reliability of their polls, though it certainly seems problematic. |
From where I'm sitting, it's still too early to tell if this is a trend of polling SNAFUs or not. Obviously, we're going to hear about cases where the polls fuck up royally, but cases where they accurately predict results will go largely unnoticed.
Alberta and BC are not the first times that polls have been wrong. Remember the 1992 UK general election? Labour was widely predicted to win, but the election went to the Tories. I think what happened was previously unlikely-to-vote Tories got panicked(possibly by the polls themselves) at the idea of a Labour victory, and rallied back to the fold. The same general thing happened in Alberta(with left-leaning voters) and BC(with right-leaning voters).
That said, the BC results set a new bar for being so absolutely contra expectations. The Alberta election overturned only about three weeks of conventional wisdom. Before the campaign, and for a while after it got going, it was still regarded as a horserace and many pundits were predicting a Tory victory. But from what I remember of the last year or so, pretty much everyone besides the Liberals themselves were predicting that they would be swept from office in the forthcoming election.
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