BC May 12, 2009 Election Discussion (Cont'd)

This is awfully presumptuous.

You can list off any riding where the NDP and Green votes combined exceed that of the BC Liberals and draw the same conclusion. But you haven't even come close to proving that these Green voters would have voted NDP had Carole James just supported a carbon tax.

Given that this was a worse result for the Greens than even the 2001 election, I'm willing to guess that the ~400-500 or so people in places like Cariboo-Chilcoltin who voted Green are pretty much dedicated to the cause.

Woops double-post!

Try living in the real world instead of some drug-infested swamp. This is about the most idiotic comment I have seen since the results started coming in. This election, for those who are capable of rational thought, is obviously an unmitigated disaster for the NDP. James is done like dinner, and so is the party until wholesale changes are made.

Give me a break. There is no upside - what part of this do you not understand? We will now have four more years of uninterrupted right-wing government, to add to the eight previous years. Please give your head a shake.

With 117 of 117 polls in, Wally Oppal declared elected in Delta South by 2 votes (9619-9617) over the independent. In Maple Ridge-Mission the NDP leads the Liberals by 4 votes with 2 polls remaining (7727-7723)

1 poll came in and now Bocking is down by 200. 1 poll left.

Seems weird unless it was a huge advanced poll.

With one poll to come the Liberals are now 200 votes up in Maple Ridge - Mission

This is a surprise to me as I had the Maple Ridge - Pitt Meadows riding in my possible Liberal win column.

Also with all the polls except the Absentee Oppal is losing in Delta-South by some 60 + votes.

So does that put it back to 48 - 37 if so that was my prediction.

melovesproloes,

"Do you have a link for that?  Looking at Elections BC, granted all the polls haven't been counted, it looks like the NDP's overall vote will be lower than 2005."

Nope, last election in 2005 the NDP got 41.52% of the vote.

According to the CBC website the NDP right now has 42.05% of the vote.  So like I said, they gained overall.

Wow, you predicted what the pollsters said. You're my hero. What do you want, a medal!

Which is correct in Delta South

This:http://results.elections.bc.ca/GE-2009-05-12_Party.html

or this:http://results.elections.bc.ca/GE-2009-05-12_Party.html

There seems to be a different result on the home page which has Vicki winning vs the internal page which has Wally ahead by two votes.

Wonder how many absentee ballots there are.

This is one of the few, ideology related, analyses that I agree with. The NDP's ideology isn't in question; it's the least of their problems. Even though it looks like the NDP SHARE of the vote went up, they still lost an election that I think, had they been an effective opposition, they could've won. The last couple weeks of the campaign were better, but two weeks alone, cannot make up for four years of ineffectiveness. Erik the Red said he wanted to call Carole James, accidentally on purpose, Kerry James. I think that was apt. The problem with the NDP, and it has been a problem since the last election, is how they present themselves. I'm not going to say they need to become more centrist, or more leftist. They just need to not look like Liberal lite, but then criticize the Liberals for being Liberals. People, who are in between voting NDP or Liberal, look at it and then say "gee, the NDP doesn't like the Liberals - but it's not as if they're offering a whole lot else, so why don't we just stick with the devil we know?" It's not as if Gordon Campbell is universally loved. He isn't as loathed as he once was, partially because they weren't so extreme in their second term, but partially because the NDP has handled him with kid gloves during the last parliament.

Therefore, the hardcore partisans, when looking back at this election can blame the Greens, but whether we lefties like it or not, they're going to keep getting 5-10% of the BC vote. We can be thankful Sterk was so ineffective, but there are always going to be some people who don't want to vote for the big two parties, and in any case it would be more effective to defeat the Liberals by taking "Liberal" votes and making them "NDP" ones next election.

The partisans can also blame the media, but big media is always against progressive change. Besides, Can West is probably going to go bankrupt soon anyways. I'd say the NDP's media strategy was a complete failure for other reasons too, namely their failure to use the internet as a tool. I mean jeez, Canadians, and British Columbians in particular are some of the most wired people in the world - but that's a rant for another day. Back to the MSM though, and why blaming it is a cop-out, you have to admit that plenty of other left(ish) governments have been elected in more hostile media environments. While some think the media was friendly to Obama during the election campaign, I'd dispute that, seeing as they kept repeating the rumours about him being a secret muslim (often ‘confused’ for Osama) who was going to introduce socialism and destroy the free enterprise system. Not to mention the old-fashioned racism that he had to face. But if you want to look a little closer to home, and a little left-leaning, look at the last Vancouver Municipal election, which had the results been transferred to the provincial scene, we would've seen the NDP win Point Grey, Fairview, False Creek and probably Fraserview too. During that election, Gregor Robertson was presented as a granola-eating hippie who snuck on the Sky Train and wouldn't pay his ticket and would have a terrible relationship with the provincial and federal government. The two consistent things between both of those, WINNING, elections is that the left(ish) parties had appealing leaders who offered a clear, concise message of change, which was very different to their right-wing opponents - as opposed to Carole James wasn't that appealing, nor would I argue, all that much of a change from Campbell-term-2. While the NDP tried to offer a clear, concisce message of change with platitudes (because everyone matters), or irrelevant issues (the threat of privatization - which nobody really cares about right now - unless you tie it to the average person's pocket book), they never tried to challenge the Liberals on their strongest issues (the economy and compotence to govern during the recession). And they kept trying to out-flank them on the right on other high-profile issues (ie. crime and the environment).

While I suppose it's true that the Liberals haven't had any super-controversies, ala Glen Clark pacing in his kitchen while the police searched his house and the media recorded it, do you actually think the media will manufacture them like they did for the NDP in the 90's? Heck, no - they never do for right-wing fuck-ups. Or at least they never harp on it for as long. The left always has to take matters into their own hands and point out right-wing fuck-ups. So I hope, but am not confident, that the NDP will learn this lesson for their next term in opposition. I hope that they ditch their "new tone" and realize that they're the opposition - so "working with" Gordon Campbell is a load of crap that they shouldn't bother to put any real effort into. It's a platitude to fool naive people. The Westminster system is not designed to encourage "bi-partisanship" outside of the normal bureaucratic functions, rights and responsibilities the government has to all MLA's - so that the average person can access government. There is a government and one or more opposition parties who are supposed to criticize and critique the government. Therefore, while the NDP can't be sanctimonious and hysterical in opposition, they do need to be stridently critical and contrasting of Liberal policy, so that next time there’s an election it the NDP’s vision is well known.

Frankly, the only thing that was completely out of the NDP's control in this election, which helped the Liberals, was that the provincial Conservatives could only muster 20-or-so candidates. Had they ran a full slate they probably would've rivalled the Greens in popular vote, and probably would "steal" more Liberal votes than NDP ones. But political parties need to remember that they don't "own" votes, and people won't just vote "against" something - they want to vote "for" something too. So I'm not convinced that had the Conservatives ran a full slate, the result would've been completely different. For all we know they would've received their highest vote totals in conservative Liberal ridings, not swing seats.

Edit: Typos that could've been very confusing in the third paragraph.

James increased the seat count. Who gives a sweet fuck about that! In politics either you win or you lose. In 2009 James lost and brought the NDP to another suffocating defeat. I know it is difficult to grasp, and some folks don't get it quite yet, but her time as leader is over. She is a big time loser, and second place doesn't cut it, especially when you are one of only two main parties running in the election. 

Axe the carbon tax - how dumb can one be.

Gregor Robertson would truly be an "unmitigated disaster".

"In looking at Delta South it appears that the NDP took about 13% of the vote - am trying to find our what they took in 2005 to see if the NDP threw there support to Vicki."

NDP had 24% last time.

http://www.cbc.ca/bcvotes2005/riding/018/