May 9th Ipsos-Reid Poll
Ipsos-Reid did an online poll on May 9th, which was exactly one year to the next election, to test the political climate in BC. It provided some interesting insights. Here are the results:
Province Wide Metro Vancouver Vancouver Island Interior
BC Liberal: 42%* 44% 32% 44%
NDP: 36% 39% 39% 28%
BC Conservative: 11%* 10% 4% 18%
Green: 10% 6% 25% 9%
Independents/Others: 1% 1% 0% 2%
These are very interesting results. First off, this is the first major poll since January of 2014 to show the BC Liberals with a lead over the NDP. Overall, the polls have been very close as they continue to be. Many observers of BC elections will remember how the NDP lead by a significant margin in every major poll for the two years leading up to the 2013 provincial election, only to squander it and allow BC Liberal leader Christy Clark to lead her party to another majority. Next, I'll analyze the results by party.
BC Liberals
Overall, these are excellent results for an incumbent government with a year left until re-election, particularly for one that has been in power for now 15 years, sometimes coming close to losing it. From the 2013 election, 42% would mean a loss of just 2%, which I don't think would be very damaging to the party's majority. As is normal in BC elections, Metro Vancouver is the battleground region. Still, a 5 point-lead is enough for the Liberals to take a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, Vancouver Island, where they won only 2 of the 14 seats in the last election, continues to present a challenge. Still, at just 7 points behind the NDP, this does present some opportunities to target weak NDP incumbents and potentially win additional seats. Next, in the Interior, the Liberals have a massive lead over the NDP, and this would likely result in them winning some seats that the NDP only closely held in 2013.
NDP
These are not great numbers for first-time NDP leader, John Horgan. In Metro Vancouver, the NDP has barely managed to catch up with the BC Liberals, and in order to win a majority government, it is very likely they will not only need to come in first here, but to do so my a fairly strong margin. On Vancouver Island, despite their lead, they are down from 2013, with most of their lost support clearly going to the Green Party. This is not an optimal situation, as it allows the Greens to surge forward on the more urban South Island, where they could pull up to four seats, and in the more rural North Island this gives the BC Liberals the opportunity to pick up seats from a split progressive vote. Meanwhile, in the Interior, the NDP is down significantly from 2013. This is likely due to the party's largely anti-development platform. Although the NDP doesn't hold many seats in the very rural Interior of the province, several of the few they do hold are quite marginal and easy targets for the much more pro-development BC Liberals.
BC Conservatives
These are surprisingly good results for the Conservatives, who are currently without a leader and are easily the least-organized of BC's four major parties. Although Vancouver Island (And to a lesser extent) the Lower Mainland are write-offs, the party obviously has some strength in the Interior, and if they pick a rural-based leader who can target a very small number of seats next year, their vote may be concentrated enough to have a chance at one or two seats.
Greens
Like the Conservatives, it is obvious that the Greens need to concentrate their efforts in their best region, in this case, Vancouver Island. The party's leader, Andrew Weaver, holds the party's one seat in the province, the generally upper-income, Victoria-area suburban riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head (Also, coincidentally, the riding I reside in). This should give the Greens a shot at winning several neighboring seats.
Theoretical Seat Count:
What would an election potentially look like with these results?
BC Liberals: 57 [+9]
NDP: 26 [-9]
Greens: 3 [+2]
Conservatives: 0 [=]
Independents: 1 [=] (Vicki Huntington in Delta South, if she decides to run for a third term)
"But hold on!" You say. The changes in the party seats don't add up. That is because, dear reader, the legislature will be adding two new seats, bringing the 85 MLAs in the last election to 87. These two, one each in the Vancouver suburban cities of Richmond and Surrey, should easily go to the BC Liberals. If the NDP was to win, the Surrey seat may swing to them, but the Richmond one should theoretically be safe with the Liberals.
*Note: On this blog I will always put the BC Liberal Party as "BC Liberal", so as to distinguish them from the Liberal Party of Canada (Party of PM Justin Trudeau). I do this because they are literally separate parties, but also to distinguish them ideologically. It is important to remember that the BC Liberals are not a "liberal" party in the sense that other Canadian Liberal parties are, but are instead a collection of federal Conservatives and some federal Liberals. The more specific reasons for this go back many years (I may cover them in a future blog post) but for readers from other parts of Canada, it is easier to imagine the BC Liberals as something more similar to what provincial Progressive Conservative parties are in other parts of the country. The same goes for the BC Conservatives, which although are ideologically linked to the federal Conservative Party of Canada, I distinguish them separately as many of the more "mainstream" supporters of the federal Conservatives in BC support the BC Liberals instead.
