I have compiled the results for Club 85. If the results were close, I would have waited until final count (which is two weeks from now) to be concluded. However, the results are not even close.

There is one clear and unambiguous winner who is ahead by a mile. That is: Stephen Walker. He was the second person to send in his Club 85 Contest prediction and he nailed the seat tally for the BC Liberals and NDP nearly exactly (50 and 34 guessed, respectively) with 1 independent (albeit, predicting John van Dongen winning in Abbotsford South – tragically I wish he was right!).

He also sent a seat-by-seat tally and got 74 out of 85 of them correct.

Even if you make some adverse assumptions on the final count of the ballots, there is no way that second place finisher Jordan Bateman could fully catch up.

Interestingly, nobody guessed two of the three closest contests (although this may change after final count) – currently those are Saanich North and the Islands (2 guessed this), and nobody guessed Coquitlam-Maillardville and Surrey-Fleetwood.

Let me be blunt – Stephen Walker called the election better than anybody else. He is very deserving of the award of his choice: a $10 gift card, or a brunch with me (although I highly suspect such a brunch would be more for my benefit than his while I pick his brains on how to actually predict elections!).

Congratulations Stephen – your predictions were amazing.

Club 85 Contest - Score Card (based off of May 14, 2013 Initial Count)

Club 85 Contest - Correct Answers (based off of May 14, 2013 Initial Count)

You can view the Club 85 Contest entries by clicking here.

The winner, in terms of projection by seat, goes to Eric Grenier of ThreeHundredEight.com who predicted 69 out of 85 outcomes. Pundit predictions were posted here.

I came in dead last!

How did the pundits do? (From May 14, 2013 Initial Count)

Since there is little use in listening to my commentary anymore, we will let the data speak for itself. Of course, if you wish to read further, there will be more updates coming ahead.

The following is a table of what the pundits have predicted, seat-by-seat. These were taken from their respective websites late on May 13 or early May 14. Please add to the comments below if you see any inconsistencies.

Alex G. Tsakumis – Predictions
Bernard Schulmann – Predictions
Bryan Breguet – Predictions
Chad Moats – Predictions
Éric Grenier – Predictions
Milton Chan – Predictions
Sacha Peter – Predictions
Teddy (Nick) Boragina – Predictions
The Tyee – Predictions

BC 2013 Election Predictions - Seat-by-seat - Pundits

My final election prediction is the following:

Seats:
BC NDP – 59
BC Liberal – 21
BC Conservative – 1
Independent – 4

Popular Vote:
BC NDP – 45%
BC Liberal – 35%
BC Green – 10%
BC Conservative – 7%
Others – 3%

Thoughts

Both major party leaders are not popular, for wildly different reasons. Christy Clark is unpopular, having accumulated significant amounts of damage since the honeymoon period of her leadership victory faded. Adrian Dix is not hated, but his standing took a hit after the negative campaign the BC Liberals employed, and a lacklustre (mostly forgettable) performance in the debates. However, this was the case in the 2009 election, where both Gordon Campbell and Carole James were relatively unpopular.

What we have seen between the 2009 election and 2013 is an erosion of BC Liberal support, triggered with the start of the HST debacle, but also punctuated by scandal after scandal of the Christy Clark administration. The BC NDP are going to be positive recipients of a declining voter turnout, with BC Liberal voters likely to not vote, coupled with some vote bleeding to the other parties. The BC Liberals would have bled about 1 out of every 5 of their supporters, leaving them with about 35% of the popular vote.

The BC NDP strategy appears to have been about preserving the majority rather than going for the most number of seats possible, and it looks like this strategy is going to work. They also took a turn during the campaign to trying to stem the BC Green party upswelling, commencing from their pipeline announcement.

Jane Sterk did a good job this election campaign improving her profile and getting credible candidates on the slate, but I believe in the areas where they are concentrating (southern Vancouver Island) they will fall just short of the NDP. There is a quantity of soft NDP support that will be disappointed at the “old guard” and will vote Green, but I do not know if they are there in sufficient quantity. A good chunk of the BC Liberal support in those Green-strong areas will likely vote strategically to the Greens in order to foul up the NDP.

I believe the BC Greens will have four second-place finishes.

I also believe the best opportunity for the BC Greens to win the seat will be in Victoria-Beacon Hill – if they win, it will be there, and not Oak Bay-Gordon Head.

The BC Conservatives will only get within striking distance in one electoral district: Peace River South. A good deal of the policy manual (pro oil-and-gas being a significant one) is geared toward this region, coupled with a candidate that was nominated early in the year, and also an incredibly low voter turnout in the previous election suggests they would have a better chance here than anywhere else.

Look at the 2009 turnout – only 7,600 people voted in the previous election with 44% turnout. This creates a very volatile situation where a relatively small number of votes can win a seat. The seat was won with 4,801 votes and this is 0.3% provincially – it would not register on any poll.

I believe the BC Conservatives will have one second-place finish.

I see polarization toward the two major parties weakening somewhat, and estimate that 25 of the electoral districts will have a combined BC Liberal-NDP vote of greater than 90%.

This will also be a very unusual election in that multiple independents will have credible opportunities to win seats. I predict four of them, which is very contrary to what history would suggest with respect to what the chances of such candidates are.

For the following table, a “tight” margin of victory refers to less than 7.5%, while a “safe” margin of victory refers to greater than 7.5%. There were 20 electoral districts with less than a 7.5% margin of victory in the 2009 election.

Final Election Prediction - By Seat