All the campaigns are pathetic

CFAX is doing a poll online at the moment, which party would you vote for. They have been running this since 9am this morning.

It is now 4:25pm and only 759 people have voted. The Liberals have a small lead over the NDP, given that this is Victoria, this should be the other way around.

Is there really no war rooms out there for the Liberals, NDP or Greens that can muster up supporters to stuff an online poll? No smart backroom person lets any chance for an online poll pass without trying to organize their side.

What this says to me is that none of the political parties have a lot of volunteers one the ground. I have sensed that anecdotally and this poll is only more example of how weak the campaigns are.

If I were running a campaign in this election, I would make sure that I had 500 volunteers. If you can not get the candidate and the campaign manager to push every contact they have to work on a campaign, you have a problem.

The 500 number is not that high at all, last election I personally mobilized about 300 friends and relatives to work on the Yes to BC STV campaign. If you can not find the volunteers, that is a strong indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with your campaign.

I am in more and more awe at how much better retaile political campaigning is done in the US, there is a lot we could learn from them for on the ground campaigns.

The Election No One Cared About

I am an election junkie, I can not help myself, I love watching and taking part in the game of politics, but this BC election is the most dead one I have been around in my life. No one seems to care about this one other than the terminally politically addicted and the hopelessly partisan.

I ask everyone I interact with about their opinions on the election. Servers, colleagues, people at kids events, people in line at Starbucks, people in the bar watching hockey, and anywhere else I can talk to people. The public I am talking to is not interested in this election and hates the two main choices in the election.

• There is no issue driving in this election
• There is no passion in the electorate
• The NDP campaign is a rambling amateurish ball of negativity
• The Greens have not moblized people on the ground
• The Liberals are competent as government but blandly visionless for the future

I having trouble finding interesting places for commentary on the election. There are a few good blogs, but they are not enough to satisfy my habit.

Last time around I was completely subsumed by the BC STV campaign. There was more of an on the ground buzz with electoral reform last time, this time people are just not that interested in coming out and learning more.

We have so few polls and they tell us less than ever that tea leaf reading is getting almost impossible.

What if the Angus Reid Strategy Numbers are right?

The spread in the poll is in the range of the popular vote in 1996, though the NDP was half a point higher in that election and the Liberals marginally lower.

Would we see a 1996 election result given the current polling numbers from ARS? I think that result would be highly unlikely.

Likely Outcome and Range of Outcomes

• Liberals - 46 (43-51)
• NDP - 38 (34 - 41)
• Ind - 1 (0-1)

If the Liberals were to lose all eight of the closest races, they would still have a bare majority, but the probability of such an outcome is remote. But why could it happen in 1996 and not now?

The 1996 election was fought under boundaries based on population data from 1986, so ten years of population shifts had occurred and this made a wrong winner situation easier to achieve.The 2009 election is being fought under a new set of boundaries that are based on population data not quite three years old.

Even if the NDP and Liberals were to get the exact same popular vote as in 1996, there is no realistic senario that would replicate the 1996 election result. For the NDP to win in this election, they will need to surpass the Liberals in popular vote.

If you want to play around with the numbers and assumptions and see where you get to, I highly recommend the UBC ESM Voter Migration Matrix.

Polling in this Election

I am trying to make sense of the Angus Reid poll and it does not fit the other data out there. Something is not right. I am also amazed that for Angus Reid the first two weeks of the campaign had no significant impact on the numbers.

I have still not see the full numbers and details so it is still hard to comment more fully.

I am going to work with all the polls and weight them based on how reasonable they are as representations of public opinion. Polls will be adjusted for size and time. This is how Nate does it over at Fivethirtyeight does it.

My weighting of the companies

• Ipsos - 2.0
• Mustel - 1.5
• Angus Reid - 1.0
• De Dutch 'Burger Poll' - 0.4
• Robbins Research - 0.2

I am also using the Ipsos poll from last week that measured some aspects of the campaign, I am giving that one a weight of 0.6 before time discounting.

I am weighting Angus Reid low because they obviously have a huge response error problem because the amounts they are getting for other parties other than the three main parties is 100% higher than an optimistic result would have them get.

I am including De Dutch for the moment because they have reasonable spread of restaurants, they attract a reasonable cross section of the general public, and it is the only thing we have that is close to tracking poll. By weighting it at 0.4, it has a very limited impact on the calculations. I would raise this number if I knew more details about sales of burgers each day and how the sales are tracking each day.

So what numbers do I come up with at the moment?

• Liberals - 48%
• NDP - 36%
• Greens - 13%
• Others - 3%

I know many of you will disagree, there is not much I can do about that, I am trying to work on a model here that reflects what is going on.

A new Ipsos poll will have the biggest impact on these numbers.

New Angus Reid Poll Out

I have not seen the details, but it is 800 person online survey with 42% Liberal, 39% NDP and 13% Green. This is a marginal shift from their March 25th numbers.

I do not know the dates, I do not know other relevant details especially systemic errors.

When I know more, I will work it into my projections, I have a concert to go to at Shoreline in a few minutes so I can not do anything soon.

The headline number leaves 6% for other parties, this is a VERY high number given that there very few candidates outside of the three main parties. This number is roughly 100% than is realistic. The fact they came up with this high a number for other parties makes me want to read through the details of the poll to see what they think is happening. They had others at 7% in March, with the Conservatives specifically at 4%.

The BC Conservatives in Boundary Similkameen

I have wondered what effect the BC Conservatives would have on the election, but after trying to find out how well Joe Cardoso is going in Boundary Similkameen and seeing there is not much of a campaign there, it would seem that the impact of the BC Conservative party will be basically not relevant to the election outcome.

Jow Cardoso's website is old style and seems to have very little traffic. The discussion forum is not getting any traffic.

I figure Joe will take 10-15% of the vote, but I see him getting mainly this vote from people that did not vote last time. I also see him picking up rural populists that vote NDP. The votes he will take from the Liberals will be a lot less than most pundits think it will be.

This video is an embarrassing amateur work.

The NDP and First Nations

The opposition to green power projects on the coast of BC is pushing more and more aboriginal leaders to be either be opposed to the NDP or actively in favour of the Liberals. Lately Eppa(Gerrard Peters) of the In-SHUCK-ch and Judith Sayers of the Hupacasath First Nation both condemned the NDP stance on IPPs. Gerrard was strong supporter of the NDP in the past. Judith Sayers was the public face of the campaign against the Liberal referendum on the Treaty process.

They are not the first, we have seen Sechelt and Klahoose, among others, come out in favour of IPPs.

First Nations in rural BC are looking for ways to diversify their economic options and green power is clearly one of the ways they see getting long term jobs, revenues for their governments and reduce dependency on forestry or fishing.

Salmon farming is also important to many aboriginal people on the coast.

The NDP is very reliant on the First Nation voters on the west coast to elect their MLAs in the more rural areas. The lose of these voters, and a portion of the environmentalists, will cause some real surprises on May 12th in areas people think are safe for the NDP. North Island, North Coast and Skeena are all in danger if the aboriginal people do not vote for the NDP.

Women in the next legislature

Looking at the women running, there are 90 out of the 255 candidates for the three main parties that are women, most of them will not be elected.

My estimate is that there will be 20 women elected on May 12th, 10 Liberals and 10 New Democrats. This means we will see a small increase in the number of female MLAs in Victoria. In 2005 17 were elected. This would be a small increase in the percentage from 21.5% to 23.5%.

When looking at the two biggest parties, they are running 64 women and 106 men. About 31.3% of the major party female candidates will win versus 61.3% of the male candidates.

The NDP is running a large number of women and could end up with a caucus that is close to gender balanced on election day. This is an improvement from the 2005 election when the NDP elected seven women that represented 21% of the caucus.

The Liberals will retain roughly the same number of female MLAs, but as a percentage of the caucus they will be lower, going from 21% of the caucus to about 15 to 19%.

If, as some of numbers I have been crunching, the NDP really does badly in the election with the Liberals winning 65 seats, as few as six male Liberal candidates out of 61 may end up losing on election day.

The most likely people to get elected that are not either a Liberal or New Democrat are both women, Green leader Jane Sterk and independent candidate Vicki Huntington.

Without better tea leaves to read....

we must look at the hamurger poll - De Dutch is running one chain wide. The results are:

Chain Wide Results
as of 11:59pm April 26th, 2009

• Campbell Burger 42%
• James Burger 27%
• Sterk Burger 13%
• Other Burger 18%

Factor the 'other' and you get:

• Liberals at 51%
• NDP at 33%
• Greens at 16%

Sort of reinforces the direction of my thinking. I take this one a bit more seriously because it is chain wide and not just one location. It is not a scientific poll, but that does not mean it is not a reasonable reflection of public opinion. My sense is that the NDP is down in the mid 30s.

Pro BC STV ad

Krist Novoselic on BC STV

Krist is coming up from Washington state to talk about the importance of electoral reform. He is working towards change in the US and supports the BC STV campaign.

Date:	Friday, May 1, 2009
Time:	7:30pm - 9:00pm
Location:	UBC Robson Square
City/Town:	Vancouver, BC

Krist Novoselic is best known for being the bassist and co-founder of the grunge band Nirvana. He's also a political activist, an advocate for electoral reform and currently the Chair of Fair Vote USA.

Come out and learn more about BC-STV, why this referendum is important and how it can help fix our broken democracy.

Featuring:
Krist Novoselic (Nirvana, Fair Vote USA)
Shoni Field (BC Citizens Assembly)

Reading the few tea leaves I have to work with

Ipsos had a recent poll that measured who the public thought did the best job with the campaign so far, had their opinion of a party improved or worsened and who would make the best premier.

I am looking at the first and last questions as proxies for party support. Who has run the best campaign should closely reflect voting intention. In answering the question and factoring out the 34% that did not know or did not have answer, the parties would be at:

• Liberals - 61.5%
• NDP - 32.3%
• Greens - 6.2%

Clearly the Liberals are much too high, there is no realistic way they are going to get over 60% of the vote. The Greens are also too low, I would be very surprised if they got less than 12% in this election. The NDP number looks low, but not dramatically low.

How I read these numbers is that the NDP floor in the election is 32.3% and the Greens are at 6.2% as a floor. Clearly both parties have people that should be leaning towards them in support that thing the Liberals are doing a better job in the campaign.

Jumping now to the last question, who would make the best premier, once we factor out the 20% that did not state a preference, we are left with:

• Campbell and the Liberals - 55%
• James and the NDP - 37.5%
• Sterk and the Greens - 7.5%

These numbers are closer to realistic election results. I suspect the Green number is low because no one thinks Jane Sterk could be premier.

So what do I think these numbers indicate for party support? Here is my best estimate

• Liberals - 48% (45 - 51)
  
• NDP - 35% (33 - 37)
  
• Greens - 14% (12 - 16)
  
• Others - 3% (2-4)
  

Keep in mind this is only an estimate.

Using this estimate, where do we end up in seats?
Liberals - 66
NDP - 19
Greens - 0
Ind - 0

I was testing the mood in Delta South, my old stomping grounds, and the sails in the Vicki Huntingdon campaign are losing teh breeze. The move by Wally Oppal to run there has stemmed what looked like a loss to me, certainly I would have expected the Liberal Val Roddick to lose if she ran again against Vicki.

The Greens may set a new record in BC in this election. The highest popular vote anyone has ever managed in BC and not elect an MLA was the Greens in 2001 with 12.39% of the vote. In 1963 the Progressive Conservatives managed 11.27% but did not run a full slate, their candidates averaged 13.42%.

If the Greens do manage to get over 13% of the vote on election day, the odds that some of it will be concentrated enough to elect and MLA goes up. By the time that rises to 15%, I would not take a bet that the Greens will be shut out. Where do I think the Greens might elect someone? Here is my list of most likely ridings, though guessing where an unexpected breakthrough is going to come is mugs game:

• Esquimalt Royal Roads
• Vancouver West End
• Nanaimo North Cowichan
• Cowichan Valley
• Victoria Beacon Hill

Why am I chosing these? Demographically they all have strong communities that are interested in the evironment as an issue. The Greens are running active campaigns on the ground in these areas. There is either no sitting MLA or the MLA is either not well know or not very popular locally.

The impact of the Conservatives will not be dramatic on the election. I am estimating they will average about 10% in the ridings where they run with this being higher in the southern interior than elsewhere. The weakness of the NDP in most of the southern interior will not allow them to benefit from the vote split. Boundary Similkameen is one riding that may have an interesting result. I have no on the ground knowledge of what is going on there on the ground which makes it hard for me to judge.

The Conservatives could end up with some second place finishes in the Okanagan in this election which places the party in a good position to build itself into a serious contendor for seats in 2013, though that supposes they do not kill themselves with infighting.

I welcome comments.