The B.C. government has now admitted that its budget is way off-target, and has blamed a significant part of the problem on falling natural gas revenues.

Back in March, it was clear at the time that their new provincial budget exaggerated natural gas royalties. And gas commodity prices are no lower now than they were back then (if anything, they have been up a little). Natural gas production began dropping months earlier, because supplies of fracked gas are glutted and the wellhead price fell way below the cost of extraction. None of this was news to the gas sector.

At the time, I speculated that they were hoping to open a window of opportunity for an autumn election.  Why over-state revenues and risk missing your budget targets by a mile if you are not going to the polls until AFTER the final numbers come in?

I still think that they had a fall-vote contingency plan in their back pocket.  All they needed was a way to gain a good bolt of momentum and call a quick vote — they might lose but not be humiliated at the polls.

If they had found a way to gain some traction and pull themselves up in the polls I think we would have seen an election call.  But the Teachers Federation settled its collective agreement over the summer, robbing the Liberals of a pretext for an emergency session of the legislature and a snap election call.

Pundits are claiming to see momentum for the Liberals in a recent poll where the governing party’s gain (3 per cent) is less than the margin of error (3.5 per cent) — in other words, their statistical gain is zero.

Nothing is working for Premier Clark. Most of her first-string Cabinet members have jumped ship.  Time is running out. The closer she gets to the May 2013 “fixed” election date, the less the political feasibility of a different polling day. There are strong reasons why ruling politicians like the freedom to decide when to call elections. A fixed date places them at the mercy of events — and makes it easy for foes to time leaks and blockbuster revelations to inflict the maximum damage.

All Clark can do now is hang in and hope for a miracle between now and next May. But miracles have been in short supply over the past couple of thousand years.