The Day of Decision/Destruction/Disaster has finally arrived. Longtime political columnist Vaughn Palmer reviews the election campaign. BC political pundit Alex Tsakumis has published his detailed predictions. Yours truly was discussing the election with Charles Adler this afternoon.
Update: Post-election analysis request: Now that the election is over and the Liberals have won a majority, what conclusions do you feel can be drawn from the results? What policies of the Liberals and the NDP do you feel the average British Columbia voter supports and which ones do you feel they reject?
Stunned NDP supporters at their surprising loss:
h/t max
I love the best coast, but what is it that softens so many brains out here? I didn’t vote left or lefter, or nutty green or freaky dope smokers… that leaves not much in BC I guess. Better the loser Libs than the liar NDP (No Dix Please) but as i said it wasn’t for my vote.
The undecided voters went Liberal. IMO they could not vote for someone who forged a document and was a convicted fare cheat on Skytrain. Dix was a very bad choice for the NDP.
Like the Alberta election 🙁 But as an Albertan who owns property in BC, I sure am glad they were wrong this time.
As I’ve said before, two wrongs don’t make a right. Clark deserved to go, but the NDP are (and always will be) worse than the alternative. BC dodged a bullet.
And once again the pollsters were idiots.
Dwayne
Many government employees, retired givernment employees, and the welfare/victim class…they are the ones that we fight against.
BTW, I am a union member, PRIVATE sector, and abhor most union/commie dogma.
I know who butters my bread!
Robert wrote:
Vancouver Point Grey … after falling behind somewhat, to the glee of certain commenters…
with 103 / 147 polling stations (precincts to Jim Miller) Christy Clark 5793 Eby 5707
I’d said earlier it was a likely Clark win, perhaps this is one of those ridings where the margin of victory will be less than spoiled ballots… couple of hours yet, in this last update of polling stations, Eby gained 100 votes on Clark’s lead.
43 / 85 ridings are said to be won by the Liberals.
Liberal win.
So Andrew Coyne is taking shots at the polsters, eh. They ‘got it wrong again!’
Well Andrew, have a peek at your journalism friends – talk about getting it wrong. We’ll see how things turn out with the new star in the Canadian heavens, Pierre’s pup. God help us if that creep is elected. Separation anyone???
Re: BC election. Conclusion. Pot destroys brain cells.
Photo source..
Oh the glorious sweet schadenfreude of commie tears!!
Great photo,a picture can be worth a thousand words.
Great one, Max!
max
that’s the poster child of union hags everywhere!
Wow. Finally picked my jaw up off the floor.
I guess the message is, don’t listen to the pollsters, listen to the people.
As for the pollsters, forget egg on their face. They’re buried under mounds of rotting eggs, just now realizing the yolk’s on them.
Two questions I have:
1. Is there some large trend here that’s rendering polling ineffective? For example, do people now lie about their intentions in large numbers?
2. With two elections that swung back to the undeserving incumbents, are we entering the age of scared, risk-averse voters? Will aging demographics inspire voters to vote scared and stick with incumbents no matter what?
May you live in interesting times. 🙂
Christie Clark is a near perfect reflection of the somewhat mindless and mushy middle of the electorate, not unlike Harper on a national scale. She has a better socialist disposition than the NDP socialists but not as hypocritical as the conservative progressives. The only principled party in BC are the Libertarians but they and their supporters couldn’t fill a large school bus. The animosity aimed at Christie Clark (she really just needs to be bent over my knee and spanked a little) should be aimed at the collective IQ of the electorate.
Absolutely this victory was in spite of Clark. But I don’t think the Liberals will ever learn.
antelope
I Lied, nobody’s business……pardon me, I misdirected!
Max, that it a great photo, and is how I like commies to look.
That said, the BC Liberals are not a whole lot better. The commies may have lost the election, but the BC voters have lost anyhow.
Jim, a scrutineer is a party appointed official who judges each voter and determines whether their entitlement to vote is valid.
Generally at each poll every major party (any party is eligible) will have one scrutineer.
I think most people in BC held their noses and voted Liberal. Better a mediocre government than a disastrous one. In my riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, it was a no-brainer – there wasn’t even a Conservative running.
The BC Conservatives aren’t ready for prime time. They need a younger, charismatic leader. Ezra Levant, come on down!
Once again , the polls got it laughably wrong. Why do these polls always seem to overestimate the left wing vote and underestimate the right wing vote?
The common thread amongst many pundits I’m reading and listening to is that if Christy Clark loses here seat then another Liberal MLA will step aside to let her run in that riding. I can only hope that she keeps losing riding after riding after riding until the powers at be in the Liberal Party read the writing on the wall!
Premier Clark is losing by 257 votes with 128 of 147 polls reporting. I think this is the best possible result BC could get, no NDP and a replacement for a terrible Premier.
Clark loses her seat, guaranteed leadership vote and she loses.
She wins, she wins.
Conservatives are too busy earning their daily bread to be answering polls. Who do the pollsters have the opportunity to ask but shutins with landlines and Leftwing lay-abouts.
Robert, that photo of the stunned supporters is classic.
Classic.
This win for the Libs is not nearly as impressive as it seems. Greens split the vote with the NDP in several ridings and *many* people who voted Lib absolutely cannot stand the party.
Unfortunately I doubt the Libs will learn their lesson. The game of Russian roulette is a risky one to play.
This election result is surprising but not for the reasons the pundits are saying. Lib support is not strong. Lib arrogance is strong and unfortunately will only get worse after this election.
Time will tell.
Margaret Atwood’s mom lives in Vancouver?
The choice was between a truly bad Liberal government and the freaky scary NDP. The voters preferred Truly Bad to Freaky Scary.
I don’t like Clark but compared to Dix she’s something I can still live with. I voted Conservative but in a tree hugging province like this I knew I was peeing into the wind. At least we won’t have a mass business exodus into Alberta in the foreseeable future. The stupid carbon tax still grates on my common sense nerves.
Voted Conservative in a very safe Liberal riding. Pleasantly surprised the orange commies did not win the election. Also happy the marxist Green leader lost her seat.
Now about those Liberal pinkos…
Update on Christy Clark’s riding (Vancouver Point-Gray):
With 139/147 polls reporting: Eby leads Clark by 360 votes, less than 1% margin.
If the result holds, BC voters will have kept the NDP from power and still sent a message to the Liberals. Hmmm….
I agree, peterj, that carbon tax is the dumbest thing ever. I would have happily (well maybe not that happily) voted Liberal if she had dumped that scheme. Doesn’t matter anyway, Dix was too scary a chance to take for most voters. Problem is, the Libs assume we are all ok with the carbon tax because they get elected by default, not because they actually have any redeeming qualities…
Didn’t bother checking SDA out until now (was busy) but I have to ask: why does anyone take anything Alex says seriously? Why is he regarded as an expert on anything? Honestly, I’m gobsmacked at why he garners any attention. Ever.
I like most of the commentors here but once again their predictive powers have proven lacking-by a very wide margin. Nothing was learned by the Alberta election prediction fiasco. I decided to keep my yap closed this time around.
Anyway, for once I am happy with a BC election result, the populace seems to have really thought their vote through. Lieberals are not perfect but compared to the destruction of the Dippers who plunged this province into a “have-not” jurisdiction for a decade they are are economic geniuses.
Lets give thanks where it is due, thank you BC teachers, thank you union bosses and thank you Dogwood Initiative and the anti-Encorp loonies for being so noisy about your wishes to shut-down economic growth and make public services unaffordable.
And yes I did vote Lieberal, when the choice is between a glass of piss and a turd sandwich you go with the easily digestible.
How soon the lying starts, I mean continues. “I’m humbled” “I will govern for all British Columbians”. Please it was hard enough to stomach voting in a BC election will little real choice. Just shut up and let us come to terms with what just happened. I hope she loses her seat but unfortunately some poor backbencher will have to take the fall for her to run in a safe riding by-election.
mid island mike
Yep, the carbon tax drove me away from the Libs; though in my case the local Liberal rep had such an overwhelming lead and is basically a decent gal it made not a whit of difference.
I expect that the various pipelines will get the go ahead in due course after suitable safety and environmental reviews.
Somewhat amusing that Christy Clark is edged out by 500 votes at last tally, with 3 advance polls yet to be reckoned.
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Looking back, this was a most prophetic column: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/04/25/bc_election_ndp_may_face_more_trouble_than_polls_suggest_walkom.html
Christy Clark will reinvent herself now as a suburban soccer mom and some obliging nobody will resign or retire in a safe seat.
I think the only answer is probably partition, the eastern two thirds of the people (and nine tenths of the geography) clearly belongs with Alberta, as the culture is conservative, development-oriented and vaguely Mexican when you get out of town.
The coast and Island are pretty much Oregon north and belong with Seattle, Portland, San Fran and other basket case liberal areas with the slight redeeming qualities of good places to eat, fabulous scenery and the odd glimpse of the sun.
So I would say, phone up Obama and tell him he has a 51st and true blue state, and a chance to unite Alaska with the lower 48, give it away if necessary, and allow the more normal inland folk to create a New British Columbia that will give Alberta a friendly wedgie and get on with it like good Canadian boys a la Don Cherry.
If we lose Suzuki that would make it a perfect deal and I will slip away across the Port Mann so as to be on the right side of 176 Street when the wall goes up.
As for the pipeline, build it as close to Kitimat as the raging grannies will allow, then see if the Chinese want to send boats with very long hoses.
By the way, I was fascinated by the earlier commentary, Christy Clark has policies? I hadn’t noticed.
Partition?
Whatever.
3km. Walk.
Alex Tsakumis should start a new political party in BC.
The “Head Stuck my Arse” party would be a combination of clueless NDP policies motivated by a high bile count insane hatred of Christy Clarke.
He is such a clueless fool. His knowledge of BC politics would fill at least two tablespoons.
Many of you are wrong. The party leader getting dumped here is Adrian Dix. It’s pretty obvious now that his radical turn to environmental extremism scared a lot of voters into doing just what tranio said, held their noses and voted Liberal.
Second, this has cemented Christy Clark’s hold over the BC Liberal party. This was a massive election upset, perhaps the biggest and most unexpected surprise in any Canadian election in several decades. And she and her election machine produced this result. The party owes her bigtime, and they know it. She inherited a lot of baggage from the previous administration and still pulled out a huge, huge win.
You may not like it, and you may not like her. But this is leadership. Like it or not, Clark’s win is going to be cited in the history books in the same breath as Truman vs. Dewey.
As for Dix, he’s toast. Completely and utterly baked. He took a huge lead into the election and blew it to dust-bunnies. If he doesn’t resign outright and immediately, the labour wing of the Dippers is going to overthrow him. And he ran a shite campaign. He was bleeding support fairly early on. And his panicked “no pipelines” stuff simply accelerated the bleeding.
There’s a third loser here, the CBC in particular. Evan Soloman has been beating the drum for months about how unpopular Northern Gateway is and how this was a key driver in the election. Seems that BC voters don’t have quite the same antipathy towards pipeline and other industrial and mining development the way the Toronto Annex commmunists thought they did.
And I’ll make one final prediction. At some point in the near future, there’s going to be a big pow-wow between Clark and Redford. They’ve both got fresh mandates which means that they will talk energy policy, and they will come to terms over Northern Gateway. And Clark will score another big win with the voters because of it.
So this guy goes into a polling booth to choose between a pig, a weasel and a toad….
Hmmmm. The elderly socialists, the gay hipsters and the UFO’s that infest BC just elected a gov’t of leftist fools? My question is this: who better to represent them? The Land Of Froots And Nuts is no place for conservative, critical thought! Never has been either.
You hit the nail on the head Jim..
The NDP lost so that must mean that the election was rigged right?
http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/05/14/Clark-Comeback/
Check out the comment section to the above link, all the Commies are crying that the election was rigged.
Once again the mainstream polling firms have had their predictions blow up in their faces. Yet no one in the MSM is wondering if anything is seriously screwy with modern polling methodology. Now I’m starting to wonder if Justin Trudeau’s alleged vast polling lead over Harper is just another example of wonky methodology.
When I made the prediction BC voters would vote in another irresponsible, malfeasant socialist regime, it was a win-win proposition for me – there was only a choice of 3 malefic socialist parties who represented only their own narrow interests. Once again, Canadians were forced to the polls to vote for the political junta which will damage them and steal from them the least – the lesser of all evils scenario AGAIN.
This will continue until Canadians of all political stripes form a grass roots movement to clean up politics and government and downsize the amount of damage the self-serving political class can do to us.
This was attempted 26 years ago – and was relatively effective in changing the public dialogue towards smaller, responsible, transparent constitutional government – but it was scuttled by the Laurentian elite and their media party as well as the Reform Party’s own executive/leadership. Lessons learned for the next political reform movement – go national, go provincial, build the movement first provincially and federally as a networked voting block and only form a party if established parties and media resist reform. Keep a grass roots control of that party and its leader/caucus. The current CPC is the sad product of the ruling class and their media minions neutering an effective people’s democratic reform movement. The creation of CPC was the death of grass roots politics and a return to top down ruling class statism – the very system which has been abusing the citizen/taxpayer/voter since the exponential growth of Canadian statism in the post war era.
I plugged my nose and voted Liebel as I simply could not spoil the ballot even tho this is a safe Dipper riding. A Dipper victory would have put BC back 10 years. At the end of the day I convinced myself that Clark would listen to rationale thought even if she is a Liebel.
Shipping Alberta crude off the west coast is a national imperative. Anything less is an abdication of national interests. BCers and all Canadians cannot leave tens of billions $ on the table by selling discounted oil to the USA. Every passing day Obama gurantees an inevitable economic collapse.
“Now that the election is over and the Liberals have won a majority, what conclusions do you feel can be drawn from the results?”
The defeat of the odious and crazed Dippers is good. The election of the equally odious but slightly less crazed Liberals is bad. Therefore I conclude that while the majority of citizens in Vancouver (because they control it all) are deluded and stupid, they are no longer completely suicidal.
Movement in the right direction, just not very much of it. Perhaps a nice famine will wake up the droves of suburbanite idiots, as Kate is fond of saying.