Greens the Big Losers in By-Election

The Surrey-Panorama Ridge by-election was a must-win for British Columbia's New Democrats. And win the NDP did, with its candidate Jagrup Brar ending up with more than 50 per cent of the popular vote and a clear lead over high-profile Liberal Mary Polak.

Thus the NDP can rightly claim a significant victory from Thursday's vote. All the same, though, the New Democrats' supporters should not delude themselves into believing that the win automatically portends a huge switch in voting patterns, come the general election next May.

Historically in British Columbia, by-elections have not been kind to governing parties. It has been, as was often noted during the campaign, 23 years since the candidate for a governing party won a byelection. (That was Claude Richmond, who in 1981 was running for Bill Bennett's Social Credit government, but now serves as the Speaker in the current Liberal government.)

That well-known history made it all the more important for the New Democrats, under new leader Carole James, to win on Thursday. The party was devastated so completely by the results of the 2001 general election that many British Columbians doubted whether it could recover to play a significant role in B.C. politics for years to come. Might it not be the case that the NDP would go the way of Social Credit after its devastating defeats in the aftermath of Bill Vander Zalm's scandals, and end up having to be replaced by some other left-of-centre party?

The uncertainty remained after the election of Carole James as party leader. While James had a good reputation through her work with the B.C. School Trustees Association, she could not be considered a star candidate, or even an especially high-profile one.

NDP wins a must-win

The Surrey-Panorama Ridge by-election was the first opportunity for the New Democrats to confront those public doubts head-on. It was the chance to show that, despite having only two seats in the Legislature, the NDP was the only legitimate opposition political party to Gordon Campbell's Liberals. Had the party not managed a victory, the doubts would have been reinforced, perhaps to the point where it would have been difficult for the NDP to have continued as a credible alternative leading up to the May vote.

That challenge the New Democrats met successfully. In 2001, the NDP candidate gained just 20 per cent of the popular vote. In the by-election it was 53.5 per cent. The voters of Surrey-Panorama Ridge made it clear they considered the NDP the reasonable and credible alternative when they wish to express their disapproval of actions taken by the Liberal government. This should stand the NDP in good stead on several grounds in the next several months.

For one thing, the win should discourage those individuals who were considering the possibilities of setting up other left-of-centre parties in the hope that alternatives would actually be seen by voters as being more credible than the NDP. For years in B.C., it was the right-of-centre vote that was often split between more than one party; in some election years, such as 1972, that was the only reason for an NDP victory. But in more recent years, it's been the left-of-centre vote that has been plagued more by vote-splitting, and that would almost surely have become worse, had it been seen that the NDP were not capable of defeating the Liberals.

Greens vote declines

Perhaps even more important for the NDP is that the election results are likely to discourage voters from casting their ballots for the Green Party which had probably had the greatest potential to serve as spoilers for the New Democrats. Although Green Party leader Adriane Carr insists that the Greens also take Liberal votes, the vast proportion of likely Green voters come from the left side of the political spectrum.

The Green Party might well be considered to be the big loser in Thursday night's by-election. Adriane Carr herself ran, and the Greens appeared to be running as high a profile campaign as they could muster.

Yet the party still managed to garner only 8.4 per cent of the vote, an actual decrease from the 8.9 per cent they got in the riding in the 2001 general election.

There's certainly some argument to be made in favour of the idea of the Greens devoting more of their energy towards passage of the referendum on a new more proportional voting system than towards actually trying to win seats in the upcoming election. Even though Carr has said the Greens don't like the Single Transferable Ballot system proposed by the Citizens Assembly nearly as much as they like their own Mixed Proportional Voting model, the Greens would still stand a far greater chance of actually getting an MLA or two in the legislature than they do under the current first-past-the-post system.

Liberals invested big

But if the NDP was the big winner and the Greens the big loser, the Liberals themselves cannot be said to have either won or lost to such a degree. Had they been able to pull off a victory (or even a very narrow defeat), they would certainly have been seen as huge winners, and probably unstoppable come May. And they certainly put more effort and money (including taxpayers' money) into trying than governments often do in the likely-to-lose situation of a by-election.

Indeed Finance Minister Gary Collins went so far as to lower the sales tax half a percentage point less than two weeks before voting day – a move he insisted was only a coincidence, but was historically unheard-of in the history of B.C. by-elections. The candidate they nominated, Mary Polak, was certainly much more high-profile than the NDP's Brar (although some of that profile came from controversies that might not always be vote-getters for her).

Gordon Campbell and the rest of the caucus should be at least a little worried about dropping from 59 per cent of the vote in 2001 to just 33 per cent this time around.

But what can give the Liberals hope is simply the fact that it was a by-election. Every voter knew that the result was going to have no effect whatsoever on the government; indeed it still wouldn't be enough to give the NDP the status of Official Opposition. In many voters' minds, there is likely to be a great deal of difference between voting for an opposition candidate to show you're not happy with everything a government is done, and casting a vote that might deliver that Opposition into Government.

Take nothing for granted

That sentiment can also be shown by the relatively low voter turnout in Surrey-Panorama Ridge – only a little over half the numbers that turned out in 2001. The Liberals could rightly argue that those opposed to the government are much more likely to get out and vote in a by-election, in a spirit of "teaching those folks a lesson," than are those who support the government but realize that nothing in particular will be gained by its having yet one more seat in the House.

Perhaps the best lesson to be learned by both parties is that nothing should be taken for granted as the time for the general election rolls around.

Barbara McLintock is the Victoria-based contributing editor to The Tyee.