Continue reading »]]> 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.

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Continue reading »]]> 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.

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Continue reading »]]> One of the losers this election (other than being my own election prediction credibility) has been those of pollsters that were predicting the NDP winning a plurality of votes.

Recall the polls leading up to the 2013 election date:

BC Election Polling - 7 days or less to Election Day

The following is the absolute error of pollsters, in rank order:

Pollsters - Error from May 14, 2013 initial count

It is clear the top ranking pollster in the 2013 BC Election was Forum Research. Although they predicted an NDP plurality, they got closest, by far, compared to the other polling agencies.

Permalink | 3 comments | Twitter: @SachaPeter | Filed under category Polls.

Continue reading »]]> The three tightest races, based off of initial count:

Saanich North and the Islands, a 52 vote difference in favour of the BC NDP;
Coquitlam-Maillardville, roughly a 105 vote difference in favour of the BC Liberals;
Surrey-Fleetwood, a 265 vote difference in faovur of the BC Liberals.

Currently, 22 seats have the combined BC Liberal and BC NDP vote being greater than 90%.

Preliminary seat count:
BC Liberal – 50
BC NDP – 33
BC Green – 1
Independent – 1

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Continue reading »]]> 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

Permalink | 14 comments | Twitter: @SachaPeter | Filed under category Predictions.

Continue reading »]]> I am going to highlight three people from the two main parties and an independent. If I lived in any of their electoral districts, I would vote for them.

BC Liberals – Gabby Kalaw (Vancouver-Kensington) – Nearly winning a seat as an NPA Park Commissioner candidate in the previous Vancouver civic election, he is running in an interesting contest of two ethnic Filipino candidates – NDP incumbent Mabel Elmore is his chief rival. Although I do not believe Gabby Kalaw has much chance given the fortunes of the BC Liberal party at present, I do believe he will be back into elected politics in some form in the future and he will be successful. He is infinitely more charismatic than I can ever be, looks ten years younger than myself even though we’re nearly the same age, speaks well, has insane amounts of energy, and is a genuine people person. Plus, I have owed him a couple beers from a long time back and haven’t had the opportunity to repay this debt – considering he hasn’t sent collection agencies after me for this speaks to his high character. Give him a vote if you can.

BC NDP – Matt Toner (Vancouver-False Creek) – Matt Toner has a resume of somebody that is not of the typical breed that goes into Victoria – an actual candidate with entrepreneurial skills and in the technology industry to boot (and for the NDP!). These are the type of people that should bring some desperately needed first-hand experience and vision of the province relying on something other than natural resource extraction for BC’s economic future. Running up against former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan is not going to be easy, and indeed, I am projecting Toner to narrowly miss winning the seat, but his innovative methods of campaigning in a riding that is dominated by highrise condominiums is going to give Sullivan a challenge beyond what the 2009 election results would suggest. Finally, to get the nomination, Toner had to beat the Vision Vancouver machine by defeating Vancouver park board commissioner Constance Barnes for the position – clearly there is organizational structure in his campaign, a good sign that there would be some semblance of effectiveness if he got elected. Give him a vote if you can.

Independent – John van Dongen (Abbotsford South) – I am obviously biased with this pick (disclosure: I am the financial agent for his campaign), but out of all of the elected people I have come to know over the brief period I have been involved in politics, John van Dongen provides his constituents with the absolute best treatment because he genuinely cares about providing effective representation. He’s honest. He’ll tell you what he thinks, even if it is not what you want to hear. More importantly, he is effective at taking action which has brought results and this did not depend whether he was an independent or in a party. There has been nobody more profound at highlighting government inefficiency, waste and corruption than this man over the past year. Need I say BC Rail or the BC Place naming rights? BC will be served much better with John van Dongen inside the legislature than outside of it. Give him a vote if you can.

Permalink | One comment | Twitter: @SachaPeter | Filed under category Commentary.

Continue reading »]]> 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

Permalink | 8 comments | Twitter: @SachaPeter | Filed under category Predictions.

Continue reading »]]> In what will very likely be the last public poll done before the May 14, 2013 election, an Angus Reid Poll (their copy, local copy), polling 803 people between May 12-13, 2013 had the following voter intentions. I have also included the Angus Reid polls conducted in 2013 for comparison purposes:

Angus Reid Poll May 12-13, 2013 Results

Angus Reid - May 12-13, 2013 Regional Split

Analysis

This poll is functionally identical to their previous May 9-10, 2013 survey. The previous analysis stands.

The only number that really jumps out at me is Jane Sterk‘s approval/disapproval rating, which is now 42/28, her all-time best in the election.

I will be issuing a seat-by-seat projection later this evening.

Permalink | 2 comments | Twitter: @SachaPeter | Filed under category Polls.

Continue reading »]]> Advanced voting closed last Saturday.

Bernard Schulmann did a fairly good job summarizing the statistics. However, he used absolute value of voters.

When comparing 2009 vs. 2013 as a function of registered voters, we have the top 5 ridings in terms of change of registered voters:

Victoria-Beacon Hill 4.92%
North Vancouver-Lonsdale 4.80%
Chilliwack-Hope 4.75%
Abbotsford South 4.64%
Parksville-Qualicum 4.17%

2013 Advanced Voting Turnout

Permalink | Add a comment | Twitter: @SachaPeter | Filed under category Commentary.

Continue reading »]]> An EKOS Politics poll (their copy, local copy), surveying 861 people (780 decided) between May 10-12, 2013, using IVR technology had the following voter intentions, after projecting them across a “likely voter” model:

EKOS Poll May 10-12, 2013 Likely Voter Model

Analysis

The EKOS poll confirms the race tightening between the NDP and BC Liberals, but if a 6% differential continues for Election Day, it would still result in a majority government for the NDP.

I am also wondering whether these polls account properly for the impact of the less than 85 candidates that are running for the BC Greens and BC Conservatives – given the type of sample polled, I very much doubt it.

The “raw” sample also had 38% BC NDP, 33.4% BC Liberal, 16.2% BC Green, 10% BC Conservative, and 2.3% others.

I do not have much other further comment on these last-day polls. The final election prediction will be coming tonight.

Permalink | 2 comments | Twitter: @SachaPeter | Filed under category Polls.