As NDP's lead shrinks in some polls, how realistic is a Liberal comeback victory?
Christy Clark accepting the mantle of BC Liberal leader in Feb. 2011. Photo by Justin Langille.

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Polls point to a majority, but how large? First of three roadmaps to BC's election day.
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NDP leader won office making promises on smart meters, raw logs, women's equality and much more.
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Skeletons in closet add up for group behind heavy duty negative campaign.
- Read more: Politics, BC Politics, BC Election 2013
If the New Democratic Party's path to victory in British Columbia's May 14 election looks like a stroll down a Surrey sidewalk, the Liberals have been wandering around somewhere near the bottom of Mount Fairweather, lost in the fog.
Here's how Bernard von Schulmann, whose observations of provincial politics are available on the BC Iconoclast blog, put it in an interview: "It's really bad for them."
Since the 2009 election, won with what turned out to be an inaccurate budget and followed with the surprise introduction of an unpopular and now rejected harmonized sales tax, the Liberals have trailed the NDP in 23 of 26 Angus Reid Public Opinion Polls and in nine out of 11 polls taken by the Mustel Group.
Aggregating recent polls, Éric Grenier on his website ThreeHundredEight.com forecasts the Liberals as likely to win just 28 of the legislature's 85 seats. Von Schulmann puts the Liberals' likely count at 22.
"I can't see anything that can happen in B.C. politics that allows them to keep more than 25 seats," von Schulmann said. "I can't see what they can do that will change anything that anyone's going to believe."
Something extreme would have to happen to drive people away from the NDP, and that's unlikely, he said. "I can't even think of a plausible scenario."
Shrinking caucus
Recent polling results have been interpreted by some as showing a tightening race, but even the closest suggest the NDP will take at least 53 of the legislature's 85 seats.
To win, therefore, even under that rosiest scenario the Liberals need victories in at least 10 of the constituencies that they could reasonably be expected to lose.
Looked at another way, of the 49 seats the Liberals won in 2009, they can only afford to give up six.
And they've already lost four of them. Both Chilliwack-Hope and Port Moody-Coquitlam went to the NDP in byelections last year. And Boundary-Similkameen and Abbotsford South are now represented by independents, thanks to John Slater and John van Dongen leaving the party.
The Liberals could hope to win back three of those seats, though they won't have an easy time in any of them. They seem unlikely, however, to retrieve Port Moody from popular former mayor and business person Joe Trasolini.
That leaves just five others the Liberals can afford to lose. Their narrowest victories in 2009 were in Cariboo-Chilcotin, Maple Ridge-Mission, Saanich North and the Islands, Oak Bay-Gordon Head and Kamloops North. In the biggest of those wins, the Liberal candidate won by a margin of just 2.4 per cent.
With polls showing the NDP now up at least three per cent from their 2009 election result and the Liberals down at least 12 per cent, holding those seats will be difficult.
The two where they have the best shot are Oak Bay-Gordon Head and Saanich North and the Islands, where strong Green Party candidates Andrew Weaver and Adam Olsen change the electoral math, giving the Liberals a slightly better chance of winning than they otherwise would have.
Should the Liberals win those two long shots, they could afford to lose Burnaby North and Burnaby Lougheed, both of which they won in 2009 by less than four per cent.
But such a scenario would still mean they'd have to hold onto Boundary-Similkameen, Comox Valley, Vancouver-Fairview and Vancouver-Fraserview, none of which they won by more than a five per cent margin last time, as well as many, many more constituencies they look likely to lose.
Closing the gap
To get there the Liberals would have to significantly narrow the gap with the NDP, something observers say is unlikely to happen.
"It would be historic to see them overcome the deficit they're facing at this point," said Barb Justason, the principal researcher with Justason Market Intelligence. "I don't see the BC Liberals recovering, but a few stranger things have happened."
The company released a poll last week showing the NDP with 48 per cent of support from decided voters and the Liberals at 26 per cent. The survey included 600 B.C. adults, giving it a margin of error of plus or minus four per cent, with 95 per cent confidence.
Justason said she had expected to see the race getting closer, as other polling firms have recently reported, but that's not what the poll found. "They might have numbers similar to ours at this point," she said. "I'm putting it down to timing."
Aside from the Liberals' low numbers, polling companies have consistently found Clark personally has negative momentum scores, meaning for most people their opinion of her is worsening each month. One recent poll found the words most associated with her were "out of touch," "arrogant," "secretive," and "inefficient."
Clark has also trailed NDP leader Adrian Dix on the question of who would make the best premier, as well as on who would be best to deal with most issues, including the economy.
While Clark's efforts have failed to lift her own or the Liberals' numbers, attempts to dampen NDP support have to date also been unsuccessful. The Liberals "Risky Dix" and "Searching for Dix's Hidden Plan" campaigns seem to have had little effect.
But the group Concerned Citizens for B.C., headed by former BC Rail board member Jim Shepard, is claiming success for its $1 million ad campaign that makes negative allegations about Dix's time working for NDP Premier Glen Clark during the 1990s.
The campaign is unlikely to make a big enough difference to return the Liberals to power, but should the NDP numbers drop without the Liberals gaining, the door will be open a crack for a third possibility, an unexpected result that could radically change the nature of the legislature.
Tomorrow: NDP tanks, Liberals surge... and they tie. How that long-shot scenario could place British Columbia's political power in the hands of a few independent MLAs. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png)
Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee's legislative bureau chief in Victoria. Find him on Twitter or reach him here.
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Hakuin
18 weeks ago
Rove's looking for a job
All she needs is electronic voting machines.
mission impossible
18 weeks ago
Yea right, and they still haven`t found Christy Clark`s Brain
After all the sins, scandals, thefts and moral lapses of this BC Liberal party, if we voted them in then there would be no stopping the corruption.
Sometimes the thieves and crooks need to be removed.
http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2012/06/search-for-christy-clarks-brain.html
mission impossible
18 weeks ago
Surrogate Sluts
Any chances the floundering Christy Clark had vanished when she started taking election advice from..
Jim Shepard, Bob Plecas and Brad Zubyck.
http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2013/01/christy-clarks-not-so-secret-election.html
Those angry white men are Carl Rove clones, their drool and spittle is ineffective in today electronic era of knowledge..
Three Stooges trying to elect an intellectual moron! Trying to elect an habitual cheater, three stooges trying to elect a school drop-out.
Even S-F-U`s student body could spot a cheater and a fake person, no wonder Christy Clark quit S-F-U.
A cheater caught, a cheater exposed.
Christy Clark is still cheating, and still an idiot!
http://www.robbinssceresearch.com/polls/poll_781.html
mission impossible
18 weeks ago
Christy Clark failed at faking authenticity
Another poll predicting a BC Liberal collapse and NDP super majority.
http://www.robbinssceresearch.com/polls/poll_953.html
Fiat lux
18 weeks ago
We live in, what will be
We live in, what will be known if there's any future history, as the Age of Abysmal Stupidity and Gullibility.
If the "Harper government", could maintain its numbers, in spite of all the evidence of its total corruption, a Christy win is quite possible.
Unless the powers decide to permit an NDP government so they can use it as an excuse to destroy the BC economy and blame Dix for it.
Ed Deak.
ron wilton
18 weeks ago
Try being honest with the electorate
She might win if...
She said NO to Enbridge, No to Site C, NO to hydraulic fracturing, NO to LNG, NO to RoR Ipp's, NO to Fish Farms, NO to raw log exports, No to harper, NO to Morgan, NO to Kinsella, NO more Coleman.
Lawrence
18 weeks ago
The problem is...
She could say no to all that.
These people have been know to misrepresent the truth before elections.
Elections are about percentages, you can fool about %25 of the people all of the time and %25 of the people much of the time.
tedcamp
18 weeks ago
The May B.C. Election - It ain't over 'til its over
Without taking sides. I've been close to B.C. politics since my Dad was a staunch C.C.F. member who voted for Leo Nimsick & my Mom was the first Socred Secretary in the East Kootenays. I watched W.A.C. go down in flames by sitting in the back seat of his black Cadillac limo & refuse to work the magic spell. Supporters stayed home "Socreds win every time - I don't have time to vote" Dave Barrett mopped the floor with him. Dix is in trouble, he's peaked early & we're 3 months from voting day. Early electioneering can be fatal, everyone makes tiny little mistakes that are captured one-by-one 'til a molehill looks like a mountain. We live in an era of 10 second sound-bites. Anyone who thinks the Liberals are dead in the water should watch for that red machine come up to speed the last week of April. We'll be in touch. Teeder
G West
18 weeks ago
It isn't Dix who's in trouble!
Facts must be faced. Opposition parties don't win elections - incumbents lose them - and that's especially true in British Columbia.
Must have been a interesting household to grow up in Ted.
Frank Lee
18 weeks ago
Christy Could have Won
I take the long view. It would be wonderful if a Dix government could be avoided, and in my view it would be worth extending the Liberals' term in office just for a chance of replacing Dix by 2017.
But people don't take the long view.
Christy Clark could have successfully sold herself as "the Change" simply by cancelling the HST and the referendum and taking credit for doing so. This would have raised difficult revenue problems and internal political problems, but those problems have arisen anyways.
But that didn't happen, and she looks like the shallow and vacillating leader of an exhausted ruling party.
As much as I dislike the thought, Dix can't lose. He won't stumble like Barrett and Harcourt have done--he has too much moxy and experience. WHich is why Tieleman and Scott and Kwan and McPhail backed him in the first place, despite his obvious character flaws.
Vox.Pop
18 weeks ago
A Mulroney Double
Let's hope Princess Chrissy repeats Brian Mulroney's last claim to fame - wiping out his own party as his last hurrah; if the BC Liberals are reduced to TWO MLAs it will be poetic justice.
Fiat lux
18 weeks ago
Mulroney was way down in the
Mulroney was way down in the polls in '88, then, in the last days big business and the banks made a huge effort with newspapers, leaflets, radio etc. to brainwash people and Mulroney won with 43%
Which still beats Harper's 39%, but was enough to force the FTA racket on us and start the demolition of Canada.
Elections and generally politics are the game of applied psychology and the rulers of the world know how to pay for it and use it.
Ed Deak.
mary jane
18 weeks ago
JUST SAY BO!!
NO more corporate welfare..
the surveys could be / often are rigged to miss lead voters
As a woman I am ashamed of CC letting KIDS or anyone go hungry or homeless
Do reasonable / good people make disabled people go hungry or with out medical needs The FIbs do A poverty advocate for many years says the suffering has increased
mary jane
18 weeks ago
Oh - Oh
I see A University education doesn't help if you don't watch what you are doing Is that how the Fibs do it
I now think greed is a mental health problem Its an idea JUST SAT NO to fibs
Molly Maguire
18 weeks ago
Punitive Politics
I agree with Ed Deak's notion that you can never underestimate the persuasive powers of the corporate overlords when it comes to buying elections. Having said that, there is another inexorable force at play in the constituency that is British Columbia. That, of course, is the BC electorate's historic thirst for retribution when they feel they've been screwed over by the incumbent government.
I'm of the opinion that when these two worlds collide this spring, British Columbians will see the robo-calls and attack ads for what they are and once again exact their pound of flesh.
Buster Burwash
G West
18 weeks ago
Frank Lee?
And what precisely would those character flaws be?
And let us not pretend that back dating a memo is evidence of a character flaw or that the memo was a FORGERY.
It wasn't a forgery as Tsakumis has clearly demonstrated for anyone who'll take the time to look for it at alexgtsakumisdotcom and read the articles dated Jan 31 & Feb 1.
In fact, I'm sick and tired of the same old Liberal lies - You want character deficits? Have a look at the Liberal caucus and stop beating a dead horse!
mission impossible
18 weeks ago
Mr. G West...
These Liberals have splashed around, yelled from the legislative chairs, on web sites, on radio, on TV, all over the internet, everywhere..
Dix`s memo-gate is a dead issue, the public doesn`t care, Dix has been elected twice, 2005--2009..
Every opponent, every party running against Dix have used the memo-gate card, they all lost..G West..While these BC Liberals waste precious electioneering time hoping and praying memo-gate grows legs the NDP will be laying out a vision, a modest vision, BC Liberals left BC`s cupboards threadbare...
Cleaning up the fiscal and moral mess these outgoing Liberals made is an aggressive agenda on its own.
What does the NDP do, tend to those provincial areas that are bleeding profusely or rush to those areas that have stopped breathing altogether!
http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2013/02/fireplace-memories-and-trembling-hands.html
Frank
18 weeks ago
Frank Lee
Its worth the Libs getting another 4 years just to replace Dix in 2017?
Who exactly would be this great leader that would make another 4 years of Liberal rule worthwhile?
hunter
18 weeks ago
F Lee
"But that didn't happen, and she looks like the shallow and vacillating leader of an exhausted ruling party."
Was that an attempt at rewriting history? She IS the shallow and vacillating Leader....
She has the depth of a bird bath and will apparently stoop to any photo op . She still thinks she's on a "show" with her finger on the button that will turn off those who disagree. No reset Christy.
RickW
18 weeks ago
Ed
Bullshit Baffles Brains. It's worked before - and it will work again. Dix wants to take the high road, while the CC4BC hammers away at that memo. Which one sticks in a voter's mind, even as they are waiting for the commecials to end to get back to their CSI?
freewilly
18 weeks ago
Who will win?
I think it also depends on the faithful Liberal foot soldiers, if they beleive Christy can win, the busy little bees will work harder than. Its still too early to call it a win for the NDP. Never underestimate the infantry.
If the liberals come up with a good campaign and retell the same lie or catchy phrase adnauseum, it will become the truth. Money and sleazy marketing will prevail. Its worked before.
Like Ed said "Unless the powers decide to permit an NDP government so they can use it as an excuse to destroy the BC economy and blame Dix for it."
How Cynical Ed is, but if BC history is any indicator of what is to come. Business will be crying the 'sky is falling' .
If the NDP does form the next government they have the opportunity to change BC's business climate through incentives and make it progressive, green, sustainable? Environmental issues and propaganda may decide this election. Rafe Mair may be correct.
Bob Watts
18 weeks ago
How about
How about doubling my disability pension, which would then be equal to Alberta's rates.
No that would still not make me vote BC Liberal/conservative.
Clark does know she gave BC jobs to China, she is really a caracter from the Wizard of Oz, looking for a Brain, nope she hasn't figured that out either.
Dave50
18 weeks ago
we want a simple honest goverment
Premier Christy Clark leaked B.C. Rail information to a lobbyist acting for one of the bidders.The B.C. Liberal government's order to destroy the premier's and his cabinet's e-mails appears to violate the liberal government’s own policies.the auditor general of BC the Liberals don't want the dirty laundry aired and the defendants don't want to be convicted of fraud. including the premier Clark..Considering the number of blunders, bad business decisions, preoccupation with dealing with past corruption charges, crisis status in major ministries, and the lack of leadership and vision from an unelected under qualified leader such as Clark, does it not seem that an election is not only desirable but absolutely necessary if we hope to salvage any future for our province and our children.Perhaps Crusty Campbell Clark was misquoted when she said "Families first" Your motto "Families First" was so meaningless unless you meant "Chinese families first". The BC liberal government is quick to help out thousands of immigrant legal and illegal immigrants that has not put a nickel into our economy .The BC liberal Temporary Foreign Worker program is increasingly little more than a government-sanctioned way for big business foreign owned BC liberal supporting corporation to by-pass Canadian workers and substitute with cheap foreign labor and you know it and support it.. pilfering profits (taxpayer money) from Hydro and ICBC to cover up your screwed up under estimated budgets. You have refused to listen and now its too late! The chickens are coming home to roost. So be as hard nosed as you wish Miss Premier Unelected and suggest you will lead your party into the next election. Go ahead you'll be toast then for sure. The latest by elections are just a taste of whats to come for you and your corrupt party!you out we are fed up with lies deceit and corruption at every turn! The people of BC will take you out. All I'm waiting to hear from Dix is the announcement of an inquiry into B.C. Rail sale fraud scandal. with subpoena's, and an inquiry into the Basi.Virk payolla, with more subpoena's. That should put Captain Crusty Campbell Clark on a one way ticket to a non extradition treaty country, to avoid jail time.
JordanRoszmann
18 weeks ago
More advertising!
Last night every time I tried to catch up on my TV episodes, a Liberal ad came on first and froze at the point where Christy talks with a young boy.
It gave me lots of opportunity to reflect on how maternal she is, and how she is looking out for me and my family.
Also, how she got in the way of my secondary education, how she stopped the work of the Ministry of Children and Families, how her party doubled my post-secondary tuition and increased my housing expenses through the HST, and how now she won't even let me watch TV.
Maybe she should take out an ad explaining her part in the sale of BC rail and how much money we will all make when she declares BC Hydro insolvent and sells it too.
Hakuin
18 weeks ago
intermission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uup60b78w8U
mission impossible
18 weeks ago
BC Liberals in action
Bring on the gimp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Zg_hH0mUY
Okanagan Orchardist
17 weeks ago
Can't resist this, Mary Jane
A university education doesn't seem to have helped you. Check out both your entries above -- is that how they teach you to write nowadays? Perhaps too much maryjay?
Bob Watts
17 weeks ago
Why do you need to slam others?
Mary Jane is a friend. Happy Birthday Jane!
Jane is getting older, and has failing eyesight, as we found out this morning finding a best before date.
Jane is well educated, BSW and has been a free advocate, all her life, to the poor and disabled inculing countless children. She has never charged a dime for her services. I do proof read "stuff" for Jane. Spell check is a wonderful thing!
Jane should get the "Order of BC" for her works of kindness. Welfare has offered her a job a few times, she said only if she could help feed and house those in need, as you can guess she was never hired, LOL. I have been offered the same work 3 times, but I need to be able to sleep at night.
Never stop commenting Jane, not even you "O""O" nice pattern, LOL.
Bigpig
17 weeks ago
Never again
Krusty has done her best to rob this province blind, she is a criminal, BC rail was a fraud, she has committed felony fraud, then she has the hubris to spend $75 million of our money on her ads! unreal, please do not vote for this scum bag.
schultzy
17 weeks ago
win by leading!
Pipelines and oil tankers are here to stay--and we need the revenue,right? 1.So get Enbridge to smarten up by building public confidence.Get the Board of Directors to publicy state clearly their intention to treat system operations SAFETY as a priority--and show how they will do that!2.Get out of Douglas Channel and 3.Show the details of how they and their 'partners' will cover costs of oil spills.
Stop the silly ads and put their top people on the road to tell us at public gatherings how they will deal with public concerns.Maybe you and Alison and Stephen should pow wow and give Enbridge the message--and then the voters should welcome the leadership.
Frank
17 weeks ago
schultzy
Enbridge isn't going to agree to anything. That much should be obvious. They won't take responsibility, they just want to make a buck.
There's nothing in it for BC, we take a lot of risk and get diddly in return.
schultzy
17 weeks ago
Frank' comment
Thanks Frank for comments--there are 'good' pipeline operators and there are some we question;and in the case of Enbridge,for good reason.The politicians need public support and the public need the revenue.You're right--Enbridge won't agree to 'diddly'--but if TOLD ,by our senior leaders, to "do it right" or we'll find someone else to build the line..I suggest that even Enbridge are smart enough to get the message..