Thursday, April 28, 2016

Possible Outcomes of the 2017 BC Election

In order of who likely I think the result is

  • Liberal Majority - at the moment I think this is the most likely outcome but the election is a year away and many things can happen in that year.   At this point I would say it is Christy Clark's election to lose.
  • NDP Majority - I pay closer attention to politics than the vast majority of people in BC and I can not tell you what the NDP would do as government other than not be the BC Liberals, whatever that means.   The NDP is not making a strong case for why they should be government.   The party is not resonating with the public in any significant way at the moment.
  • NDP Minority - For there to be a realistic chance of a minority government the Greens need to win more seats and just a couple more, but at least five to ten.    Each seat the Greens, or anyone else, wins, the higher the probability of a minority.   Because there is a bigger overlap between Green and Liberals and Greens and the NDP, the better the Greens do the more seats the Liberals will lose.   If the Greens can win 6 to 12 seats, which is not impossible, they will have drained off enough support from the Liberals for the NDP to win a bunch of seats and could leave us in a minority government situation.  The odds of the Greens winning more than four is not high at this time but the election is still a year away..
  • Liberal Minority -  Highly unlikely because it would require a very specific set of events to all happen and if it did I would expect it to be very close to a majority.  The result would be something like 42 Liberals, 41 NDP, 3 Greens and 1 independent.
  • Anything else - What else could there be you ask?   A completely new populist party - unlikely because I do not see the popular groundswell for this and with only a year left till the election there is not enough time left..   The Greens win a minority by winning 30 seats while the Liberals and NDP each win about 28 or 29 seats.
A this time my ball park of the odds
  1. Liberal Majority 70.00%
  2. NDP Majority 25.00%
  3. NDP Minority 4.80%
  4. Liberal Minority 0.15%
  5. Anything Else - 0.05%

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