Lessons from the BC Election - Beyond the Media Spin

Before the Ralph Klein era, then-premier Don Getty lost his Edmonton riding.

He went on to win a byelection in Stettler, which was rewarded when a regional office of the Western Canada Lottery Corporation was opened there.

Wonder who will give up their seat for Christy?

Mmmm...if you added the Green votes with the NDP in each riding, I wonder if we would be having a different conversation today.
I hope the Greens keep their independant spirit intact!

Is there any chance that no one will give up his seat for Clark to run?

What does it say of the electorate that 3 out of 4 leaders of parties could not even gain their own seat?

Only Comrade Dix managed to hold his own seat; though his position is tenuous as he was electorally crushed; given the polls were mirror reversed on election day.

I suspect it might be a case of "A pox on all their houses"...as voters didn't want to go back to the heyday of Glen Clark's 'sundeck in the rainforest' economy.

Perhaps voters want a growing economy with some light at the end of the tunnel, not to be hit by another train...but they are not particularly thrilled with those shoveling coal from the tender into the firebox.

Cheers

Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”

I hereby proclaim this as the Tweedledee & Tweedledum election...

To quit an MLA is going to want a position involving minimal work with a no cut/no trade contract and a generous pension. Don Getty, in Alberta, was worthless but I don't think he had the level of distrust of Clark. With the province safely out of the reach of the Commies, it would be a perfect opportunity to sent Clark a message.

Spot on, Robert.
As an add-on to what you wrote, I can't help but wonder how many workers in the Union camp simply thought "Screw you!" to their Union masters, and voted Lib. anyway. Jobs trump ideology any day.

" Sittin' on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon...
Goin' to the candidates debate,
Laugh about it: shout about it...when you gotta choose.
Everyway you look at it you lose.

Paul Simon,(Mrs Robinson)1967

If the NDP had a relatively sane leader like Carol James and/or the BCCP were competent and/or the Greens weren't dumb enough to strike out on their and probably quarantine their own influence, the NDP probably would've won. Dodged a bullet.

Ugh...MLA Andrew Weaver. FTS

The article pretty much nails it. My wife and I held our noses and voted for the Libs because electing the NDP would have accelerated the decline and there were no practical alternatives.

Are any of the parties listening to voters, or just to pollsters? Not one of the current leaders has broad appeal.

Conservatives get less votes than the Greenie Weenies? Genius.

There's a provincial party that needs to get some freakin' work done.

Sometimes opposition parties chose not to run against a leader in a byelection. Is this possible in BC?

As I noted on Rutherford this AM, Justin Trudeau and T Mulcair should be very worried.

We live in extraordinarily uncertain times - particularly on the economic front. And most Canadians realize that they have been very fortunate indeed in avoiding much of the pain many in the industrialized world have suffered these last five years.

And while polls reflect a more anti-establishment sentiment, when confronted with the concrete prospect of casting a vote, Canadians are choosing to stay with the party the presents the most stable economic platform/prospects.

And clearly JT and TM are very much lacking in this aspect. It is hard to envision either party/leader offering a more economically safe option and platform than PMSH and the CPC. And as a result one can expect that they will be demolished in 2015.

The BC voter flip flop was not a matter of voter faith in Clarke, It was a round rejection of Dix and his prosperity-killing agenda. Even the softest urban lefty knows you need jobs and productivity to fund social programs - Dix was an ideologue who would destroy the BC economy with his utopian experiments. That much was clear for all to see (except the most parasitic left).

The fact Clark lost her own seat as her party prospered was an indication the voters held their nose and voted for the lesser of two evils. This turn around WAS discovered in 1 or 2 late polls. The Leftwing media with their "surprise" over the upset have their nose out of joint because the general public still reject utopian leftist leadership, even if it is force fed to them in predictive partisan polling and media spin - they are more pragmatic than the radial socialist gatekeepers.

Yesterday, as it was recently in Alberta and in the last federal election, the silent majority was indeed silent. So silent nobody heard it coming. And stronger than ever. Coyne is correct when he says that media no longer works hard enough to find the truth, and if the media are deaf and blind then so are their political masters.

I take great satisfaction from the fact that we are still in control, no matter how hard the media tries to make us think otherwise. Eventually they will catch on that we are no longer listening to them.

If a party can't carry the Lower Mainland ridings, it can't win the Premiership. Considering what people where willing to vote FOR to keep the NDP's style of socialism OUT, it suggests to me that there has been an enduring sea change in voter preference there.

For the NDP, it's either purge or purgatory, that is, unless they reinvent themselves as a suburban friendly party, they will have to hope the Liberals will self-destruct again.

With Ms. Clark in charge, it's a real possibility, and with the prize of a long term dominance of the Lower Mainland ridings in the balance, my prediction is this: Three years from today, we will know Ms.Clark to be an ex-Premier, victim of a putsch.

Well said Robert & Stuart.

The Liberal win does not equate to a high job approval for Christy Clark. It equates, in my opinion, to the voters' desire for the lesser of two evils. It is a self interest vote to protect the province's financial stability. The voters cut off their nose to spite their face once to send a message (rescinding the HST) but the stakes were too high this time to send the Liberals packing just to send a message. So they held their nose, voted for a liberal candidate to protect the province's economy NOT as an endorsement of Christy and her minions.

She may be a tough campaigner but she that doesn't mean voters think she's a good leader or premier. Just my opinion of course.

Ballot box fear. It's easy enough to say "screw Christy Clark" but it's harder to actually mark that ballot knowing any other vote means an NDP government. The ads, the campaign, all that had little effect, and the polls probably were accurate for what they were worth. But, when faced with the actual choice, I bet a lot of people had a last minute conversion.

Sorry, Robert, you're dead wrong on this one. Clark and her people ran a tough effective campaign in a seemingly hopeless situation. That's called leadership, big guy. Turn-arounds like this don't happen by accident or sheer voter disgust. The Liberals still had to make themselves sufficiently acceptable for folks to vote for them, and to make the Dippers sufficiently unacceptable that theirs would stay home.

I'll say it again for you, seeing as you have the same difficulty as the weeping socialists have this morning. Elections matter. And elections are driven first and foremost by leadership.

To imagine that this happened DESPITE the leader is simply delusional. You'd better start crediting Clark with her political skills or she's going to drive all over your amateur punditry with big Mac truck tires again. I don't care whether you like her or not, it's irrelevant. She followed the first rule in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the rule that most leaders fail.

"When in difficulty, DON'T PANIC."

A couple of observations:

1. If you telephone me and I don't recognize your name and number I don't answer. So, how many others did the same when the polling folks telephoned? Where and from whom did the pollsters get their data?

2. I suspect the media and pollster only believe themselves, not the voting public. Your opinion doesn't count according to them. So, no matter what, they'd come up with bogus information.

3. I listened to one or two elected folks this morning on the radio and they think THEY won the election. The don't believe the No Discernible Prospect (thank you John Morgan--I love that description) lost the election. It's not what the voters did, but the opinion of the media and pollsters which is important.

4. I've observed that, should a qualified, intelligent, honest person put their name forward for any party it doesn't take long for everyone to be against them. We keep asking where are all the "good" politicians and when one shows up we vote against him because we don't like some small part of his agenda.

We can only hope that no one will step aside for Ms Clark and they can find a real leader within their ranks.

Is this just me shouting at the trees? Probably.

LAS: you are quite wrong. The bclp has long been seen as the conservative option in BC. It's ranks are full of cpc members (including chick strahl) the federal LP is on the outside looking in when it comes to the BCLP.

Cgh: you are also quite wrong. The leader has consistently polled worse than the party. She has and still is seen as a negative and that she lost her own riding is further proof.

I suspect she will make the same mistake as Redford in believing that they were the winning factor and make bad decisions as a result. Redfords position as leader is in jeopardy as a result. The same will happen in BC perhaps...

You nailed it, Robert!!

We voted out of fear of the NDP, which Dix unwisely confirmed as being fear-worthy at several points throughout the campaign. I don't like the idea of Christy governing as if she is their reason for getting government.

(I say, "we", although I uselessly voted Conservative, as I despise Jane Thornthwaite, the BC Lib candidate in North Van).

Robert, I don't agree that the media was in the tank for the Liberals. I believe that it was their fawning over the NDP that skewed the polling. The average BC resident more or less senses that the BC Liberals are the worst party in BC next to their only electable alternative. I'm with cgh on this.

Love the map. It clearly shows the Left Coast and the Kootenays, both prime habitat for watermelons.

BC needs a generation of Sun News to nurture enough actual "conservatives' to justify a party of its own.

... they loathed and distrusted Christy Clark but were simply voting that way because they were legitimately frightened about the pro-wacky-environmental / anti-business rhetoric of Comrade Dix of the NDP.

Which probably accounts for the low turnout.

There is a side benefit that no one has mentioned yet, and that is that George Soros, Tides Canada, et al wasted a lot of money trying to get their man in.

My kids in Chilliwack told me they voted Green as a protest against Clark. I said, "Yuk".

Just more evidence that if it isn't a Nanos poll, it ain't worth paying attention to. And no, I don't work for them.

Anyway: I can't believe that anyone outside the Liberal or Media camps would give any credit to Clark or the Liberals' campaign for this turnaround. If this wasn't an election AGAINST one party rather than FOR one, than no election is. Certainly the folks from BC I've been in touch with said their voting was influenced by trying to keep a faculty lounge lizard like Dix out no matter how much they disliked Clark.

Dudley - absolutely. This campaign was like watching the Leafs / Bruins series (even with a surprise ending): my only reaction was profound disappointment that one of them would win.

As noted above, Christy, being thick as two short planks, will take this as some sort of vindication of her campaigning ability, and a mandate for whatever bone-headed idea has struck her for the day - in this she would be decidedly wrong. We got the lesser of two evils - but only just.

Anyone else want to join me in supporting whoever runs against Clark in a by election? I'm serious here.

Robert:

Thanks for listening. I was surprised to hear Rutherford not calling her on he assertion that this was a big victory for Clark. It clearly wasn't.

The ND ran a dreadful campaign that only exacerbated the fears many in BC had about their competency at managing the BC economy and things like a frack moratorium promise late in the campaign truly did them in. The bclp won because they were the least worst option and they won in spite of a very weak/corrupt leader.

Robert, your analysis as absolutely spot on.

I notice that the NDP are already claiming that the low voter turnout contributed to their loss. If the voters were that angry with the Liberals don't you think they'd come out to vote against them?

The main reason for the NDP loss was Dix himself, I'm sure his advisers are already telling him, "you told the electorate too many of your indended plans, next time keep your mouth shut or lie like all good Socialists do." His plans not only sounded radical and dangerous, they were and the voters wisely chose to go with what they knew rather then jump off a cliff and hope the fall wasn't too great. The fact that Clarke lost her own riding proves how unpopular she personally is. I'd like to see her gone and replaced by a new leader who is a little more economically conservative but that is unlikely to happen. For Canada's sake, Clarke is the best we can expect of what could have been a very bad situation.

Most often I despise Warren Kinsella but in this discussion he has some interesting things to say. Especially during the last third of the video when he talks about pollsters and about political pundits being deaf to what's really going on amongst the citizenry.

Let's hope this spreads. BC prospers under anything from a right-wing government, see Bill van der Zalm, to a moderate leftist one. On the other hand, the NDP consistently sends the BC economy down the toilet whenever it gains power.

And now for the other end of the country. Down here in NL the NDP continues to do well simply by saying "We are listening to you"! That and making the usual leftist noises about any decrease in the amount of swill poured into the trough for the oinkers. And this even though the NDP leader has the charisma and some of the appearance of a large patch of mould.

It doesn't help at all that Kathy Dunderdale's government is almost honest (certainly by NL standards). She is straight, if not overly intelligent, and her rectitude is held against her. I should say, BTW, that while theft is considered an art form in St. John's there are parts of the island (Trinity, Port aux Basques) which are reasonably honest. Unfortunately the bulk of the population is on the Avalon Peninsula.

Robert has it right and cgh obviously hasn't talked to many BC voters. Clark is holding onto her title as the "Least Popular Premier in Canada" and the loss of her seat was poetic justice. Everyone I have spoken to voted Liberal not because of Clark but to prevent Dix from dicking up the province;; the BC Conservatives were collateral damage. The BC Libs should get the message and dump Clark and certainly not go through the charade of a by-election. So she ran a strong campaign - so did Obama and he couldn't lead a troop of girl guides into a candy store. Not a leader, either of them.

Sent from the lonely single Liberal seat on Vancouver Island. Congratulations Don MacRae.

I had no idea that I would be enjoying this day so much. Like many of you I was contemplating how my family and I would survive the socialist hordes for the next four years. I thought the Liberals made a huge blunder by choosing a squishy lefty like Clark to lead them.

At the end Clark campaigned on the economy and it got her elected. As David Coletto, pollster at Sun news related, the economy was the only polling advantage Clark had over Dix and her advantage closely matched the voting percentages.

I am happy that today, we have a premier who finally found that the winning strategy was to focus on the economy and she was elected for it. The voters have spoken and they want the economy to be strong(er than they want socialism at least). As a (c)onservative, there is not much more I can hope for than that.

Further watching Christi lose her seat was very entertaining, but does not mean much. Today she became a powerful politician because she delivered a majority for her party and will have no trouble with a bi-election.

But of course the best enjoyment was watching the glum faces at NDP HQ.