If the pollsters were right, Christy Clark and her Liberals would be a note in political history for having been trampled by an NDP stampede in the May 14 provincial election.
But, as British Columbians learned, the pollsters were embarrassingly wrong in predicting the outcome of the big vote and were left to answer for it. And it’s one reason why the provincial election is among the candidates for the Courier’s Newsmaker of the Year.
“It’s the first time in 36 tries that I’ve done this that something went as dreadfully wrong as it did,” said Mario Canseco, who was working for the Angus Reid polling company during the election campaign.
Canseco, who spoke to the Courier earlier this year, is now employed as vice-president of public affairs for Insights West. He and other pollsters flummoxed by the Liberals winning 49 of the province’s 85 seats might have done well to listen to Colin Hansen.
The former Vancouver-Quilchena Liberal MLA, who was co-chair of the Liberals’ campaign, said in February that predictions from pollsters don’t always come true.
He noted elections across Canada where prognosticators were wrong in picking winners or, at least, landslides. He pointed to Jean Charest’s Liberal government in Quebec, which came within a few seats of being re-elected.
He said the ruling governments of Dalton McGuinty in Ontario, Alison Redford in Alberta and Greg Selinger in Manitoba were all supposed to be “annihilated” but were re-elected. That said, the fallout in Vancouver from the NDP-win-that-wasn’t didn’t change much on the city’s political landscape — except for one notable and dramatic result: David Eby toppled the premier in her own riding of Vancouver-Point Grey.
The NDP candidate’s victory came almost two years after he lost by a mere 564 votes to Clark in a 2011 byelection. In May, Eby ended up with 47.5 per cent of the final vote and won by a margin of 1,063.
Three months later, Clark ran in the riding of Westside-Kelowna in a byelection and handily beat her NDP challenger, Carole Gordon. Clark garnered more than 60 per cent of the vote.
History was against Eby winning the riding, a Liberal stronghold since then-Liberal leader and future premier Gordon Campbell won Point Grey in the 1996 election after defeating NDP candidate Jim Green. On election night, Eby didn’t have any answers why NDP leader Adrian Dix and his roster of candidates had such a poor showing across the province.
“It’s hard for me to understand,” he said, noting the low voter turnout of 52 per cent. “One of the big questions we’ll be asking as a party is how do we engage more people in the democratic process so that they just don’t only respond to poll questions but come out and vote.”
Eby’s win overshadowed the victories of former NPA civic politicians, Sam Sullivan (now Liberal MLA for Vancouver-False Creek) and Suzanne Anton (Liberal MLA for Vancouver-Fraserview and attorney general).
The Vancouver Courier’s Newsmaker of the Year will be announced Dec. 11. To participate in our Newsmaker of the Year Reader’s Choice vote, go to the web poll at vancourier.com, email us your vote at [email protected] or drop a letter to 1574 West Sixth Ave., Vancouver, V6J 1R2. You can also make your vote or view known through Twitter at #VanNewsmaker or on Facebook at The Vancouver Courier Newspaper.
