Impact of Greens and Conservatives on the election results

Since the Greens and Conservatives did not run full slates I thought it might be interesting to look at how the election went looking at where they did and did not run.

For the BC Conservatives I am including the four candidates that ran for them but were not listed as such on the ballot.  This means there are 60 Conservative candidates.

What is interesting in this analysis is that the Liberals do not seem to gain any benefit when there is no BCCP candidate and the NDP does not gain any benefit from the lack of a Green.  The idea of a vote split going on is false because the data simply does not bear it out.

Here are eight different breakdowns of the provincial election based on where the Greens and the Conservatives did or did not run candidates.

61 ridings where the Greens ran a candidate
Liberals  NDP    Greens  BCCP   Others
42.61%   40.77%  11.15%  4.14%  1.33%
The Liberals were weaker in areas where the Greens ran

24 rdings with no Green candidate
Liberals  NDP    BCCP   Others
48.29%   36.85%  7.06%  7.81%
Even though in these ridings the BCCP and independents did better than their provincial average so to did the Liberals and it was the NDP below average.

60 ridings where the BCCP ran a candidate
Liberals  NDP    Greens  BCCP   Others
47.32%   37.42%   6.52%  6.85%  1.89%

25 ridings with no BCCP candidate
Liberals  NDP    Greens  Other
34.95%   45.63%  12.28%  6.15%

41 ridings with both a Green and a BCCP candidate
Liberals  NDP    Greens  BCCP   Other
46.20%   37.04%   9.39%  6.03%   1.35%
In the 41 four way races it is the NDP that is weaker and other three parties stronger.   In the four way races the combined NDP and Green vote is only barely more than the Liberal vote alone.  

5 ridings with no Green or BCCP candidate
Liberal   NDP    Others
41.41%   30.68%  27.91%
One these five ridings, Kootenay East, only had a New Democrat and Liberal running.   When you factor that one out, the other four end up being really a three way split.

20 ridings with a Green but no BCCP
Liberals  NDP    Greens   Others
34.73%   48.98%  15.03%   1.27%
With no vote split on the right but one on the left, you would think the Liberals would have benefited, but that is not what the data tells us.

19 ridings with a BCCP candidate but no Green
Liberals  NDP    BCCP     Others
49.88%   38.29%   8.71%   3.13%
Now we have the right wing vote split but the NDP does not benefit.

When I get a chance I will compare these sets of ridings to the 2009 results to see what it shows.