BC Election 2013

Sean Holman of the Public Eye Online reports the following (and apologies to Sean for just ripping the entire article off, but I will try to add some value):

A union-commissioned poll shows provincial Conservative support has surged into double digit territory, Public Eye has exclusively learned. The poll, which surveyed 1,000 British Columbians between August 16 and 31, puts the Conservatives at 15.8 percent – just two percentage points below the governing Liberals. By comparison, the New Democrats are at 34.0 percent, the Greens are at 12.1 percent and the undecideds are at 13.1 percent. That leaves 7.2 percent of survey respondents who refused to say who they’d vote for, won’t vote or would cast their ballot for another party. With the undecideds factored out, the New Democrats are at 42 percent, the Liberals at 23 percent, the Conservatives at 21 percent and the Greens at 15 percent.

There is no mention of methodology (although the two-week period suggests telephone polling) and geographical spread, and questions asked. So this cannot be used as a standardized poll, but rather a good point of gossip. The rest of the discussion assumes the poll is completely valid.

A 1,000 person sample has a standardized error (normal distribution), assuming you exclude the 7.2%, of +/- 3.2%. Excluding the undecideds and “others”, you have an error of 3.5% at 95% confidence.

Sean Holman did get the normalization of the polling numbers slightly incorrect in his last sentence – assuming the undecideds/others intended on voting in proportion to the four main parties, we would have the following result:

NDP – 42.7%
BC Liberal – 22.3%
BC Conservative – 19.8%
Greens – 15.2%

If this was indeed the case, this would be an excellent performance by the NDP – conceivably you would see the BC Conservatives splitting votes in BC Liberal dominated ridings, and you could see the NDP pick up seats in areas that were not otherwise to be considered. Very informally (still working on the seat model), I’d estimate the BC Liberals would be left with roughly 10 seats, and the Conservatives would likely pick up a few. The NDP would sweep with roughly 70-75 seats. The Greens would have an outside shot of one or two, but I still project zero – they would be close with 16%, but not quite there.

A Mustel Poll (their link, local link), conducted August 26, 2010 to September 7, 2010, surveying 502 people (13% undecided, thus 437 responding) has the following voter intention:

NDP – 42%
BC Liberal – 33%
Green – 12%
Conservative – 11%

I am not going to dive into this result simply because the sample size is smaller than my liking. If I was going to guess what the “true” numbers would be in an election, it would likely be closer to Angus Reid‘s prior poll rather than Mustel’s.

Also, the poll indicated that Premier Gordon Campbell‘s approval went from 28% to 34%, and his disapproval went from 61% to 57% from the prior (May 2010) poll, so this is likely a sign of the roll of the dice that was received when you have a 437-person sample responding in a poll (i.e. I do not think public sentiment for the premier right now is more favourable than it was back in May 2010).

Thanks to BJ for bringing this to my attention. The guy has his brain hard-wired to the internet looking for poll releases!

A poll released by Angus Reid / Vision Critical, conducted from September 8 to September 9 sampled 805 people. (Their link, local link).

Voter support:

NDP – 48%
BC Liberal – 25%
Greens – 13%
Conservatives – 8%
Others – 6%

There is nothing too different with these numbers compared to previous months. The BC Liberals have pretty much eroded to core support, and it would be a good question to see how strong that support actually is. Just as a barometer, the NDP in 2001 (whom the entire province wanted to kick out of office at the election) earned 21.6% of the vote.

The regional split:

Lower Mainland: NDP 43 / BCL 29 / GRN 13 / CON 7
Vancouver Island: NDP 63 / BCL 16 / GRN 10 / CON 4
Interior: NDP 41 / BCL 25 / GRN 18 / CON 12
North: NDP 48 / BCL 19 / GRN 12 / CON 11

Extrapolating all of this data into a seat count, I would estimate the NDP would win likely over 65 seats in the election. I have contacted the pollster to see if I can get more information on the regional split numbers. I am working on a slightly more sophisticated seat model, so I do not want to give exact projections since my previous projections were still aligned in the 2009 election world, which may not translate accurately into 2013.

That said, sample sizes for the regional split (other than the seat-rich Lower Mainland, where you can assume half the sample was taken) should be taken with large error bars. The noticeable data point is 18% support for the Greens in the Interior, which if true puts them in seat striking range if they can arrange an amenable four-way split in a riding (e.g. Vernon-Monashee would be ripe for this, especially given the 2009 result).

HST Questions

62% said they would want the HST repeal sent to a referendum, while 24% would want it in the legislature for a vote of the MLAs. I do not think most people are aware that the result of a winning referendum is that the bill gets sent to the legislature for potentially a vote of the MLAs (government house leader must call it up for debate in order for there to be a vote on the matter). Without this background information, the result of the poll would likely be different. I would not put too much weight on this.

If there is a referendum, not surprisingly, 70% would vote to abolish the HST, 18% would keep it, and 12% are undecided. If you get rid of the 12% and just extrapolate the “abolish the HST” voters (70%/(70%+18%)) you get 79.5% in support of abolishing the HST, while 20.5% would be against it. Intuitively this sounds about right (although I’d suspect the actual result would be contingent upon ballot questions and other conditions in September 2011).