Beyond the Pollsters’ Embarrassment

Beyond the Pollsters’ Embarrassment:

 Observations of the British Columbia Election

 

Understandably, most of the attention following the May 14^th British Columbia election was focused on  why the pollsters failed to correctly predict the re-election of the Liberal government. But a close examination of the final results released at the end of May reveals some other interesting features of the election which are also worthy of comment.

Good News for the Greens

While the Green Party share of the overall vote was down 0.1 percentage points from 2009, they

1)      Elected their first member in Oak Bay-Gordon Head on Vancouver Island;

2)      Came within 1.2 percentage points of winning the adjoining constituency of Saanich North and the Islands;

3)      Increased the number of constituencies where they won 15% or more of the vote from 5 to 9; and

4)      Doubled their share of the vote in the 11 constituencies on Vancouver Island where they ran candidates in both 2009 and 2013 from 10.9% to 21.8%.

 The explanation for their lower share of the overall vote was that they ran candidates in only 61 of the 85 constituencies in 2013 compared to a full slate of candidates in 2009. The conventional wisdom was that the absence of a Green candidate would help the NDP in the other 24 constituencies. However, the NDP share of the vote fell in 17 of these 24 constituencies and the Liberals gained a seat from the NDP in one of them (Cariboo North).

Good News for Women

The number of female candidates elected rose from 25 in 2009 to 30 in 2013 and will rise to 31 if Christy Clark wins her by-election in Westside-Kelowna. Women now account for 35.3% of the members of the British Columbia legislature- the highest share in any province. Quebec held the top position previously.

Good News for Citizen Engagement

Election night coverage indicated another fall in voter turnout from the dismal 54.8% of eligible voters who cast ballots in 2009. However, the final official results indicate that turnout in fact rose to 57.9% in 2013 (based on the estimated number of eligible voters as of April 23, 2013.)

Interestingly the only constituencies where voter turnout exceeded 70% were Oak Bay-Gordon Head (70.8%) and Saanich North and the Islands (70.3%) where the Green Party had their two best results. The constituency with the third highest turnout was Delta South (69.0%) where Independent MLA, Vicki Huntingdon won re-election with a substantially increased margin.  

The turnout increase suggests that the prospect of a majority NDP government brought out some soft Liberal voters to the polls who might otherwise have stayed home. There was a similar phenomenon in the recent Alberta provincial election where the prospect of a Wild Rose majority government brought enough soft PC voters to the polls outside rural southern Alberta to win a majority mandate for Allison Redford and her party.