Congratulations to the BC Liberals

Congratulations to the BC Liberals on a completely unexpected victory. The polls had it wrong and the closest to being correct was Forum Research which was showing a 2 point NDP lead. Despite what polls registered as high disapproval ratings for Christy Clark, the NDP vote went down three points from 2009 and they lost a lot of suburban and interior ridings with NDP incumbents to the Liberals. The only place the NDP improved its vote was in inner Metro Vancouver. The NDP vote dropped on Vancouver Island, mainly at Green Party expense, and the Greens picked up a seat and the Liberals retained two seats on the Island. It could take pages to analyse why the polls got it so wrong but one factor I believed cause the NDP vote to drop was centrist voters who in 2009 voted NDP because Gordon Campbell, despite himself being a Liberal and despite Campbell having done the left-of-centre step of implementing a carbon tax, was nevertheless too right wing for them on certain policies but felt able to support Christy Clark who on economic and social policies is often more centrist than her predecessor Campbell.
However, Clark also lost her own seat of Vancouver—Point Grey to the NDP. Vancouver – Point Grey I expect will now be the highest income NDP riding in all of BC. It was an odd result for the high income riding. However, for the two previous elections when the same riding was Gordon Campbell’s riding, the NDP also showed surprising strength for such a high income riding – receiving 37% of the vote in 2005 and 40% of the vote in 2009. But it seems odd that in an election that actually swung away from the NDP that the NDP vote went up to 47% in Vancouver—Point Grey. I never expected Clark to lose her seat on the off chance that she managed to win the general election. Yet the off chance of her winning the general election went from being an off chance to being a reality and yet she still lost her seat. This is odd. Don’t know how she plans to get some MLA who just won election in a safe seat to step aside for her to run in a by-election. As they said on CBC on election night, the BC Liberals would be crazy to dump Christy Clark after she won a miracle comeback for her party just because she lost her seat.

I think the NDP ran a terrible campaign and the Liberals ran a mostly perfect campaign. The Liberals’ economic message really resonated. The Liberal warnings of stalled economic growth because of the NDP’s policies of blocking pipelines in just about any circumstances resonated as well. The NDP leader Adrian Dix warned of oil tanker traffic in the Vancouver Harbour increasing by 9 times if the Kinder Morgan pipeline were approved. If that were true I wouldn’t want oil tanker traffic in the Vancouver Harbour increasing by 9 times but I think that was a gross exaggeration. I was starting to think that the warnings of the Liberals and the newspapers of a BC NDP government stalling economic growth with their policies was true.
I read in the news that the Ontario Liberals are buoyed by the BC Liberal victory. This makes sense for many reasons. Firstly, I think the Ontario Liberals are establishing closer ties to the BC Liberals than under Clark’s predecessor Campbell because of Clark’s more centrist policies. Secondly, I’m sure the Ontario Liberals like seeing a model of a strong female leader like Clark or in the case of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, fighting the competition and winning. Congratulations again to the BC Liberals but I’m still scratching my head about the Vancouver—Point Grey result.