Tories rise as Liberals fall

The Daily Twigg  Vol. 1 No. 36  April 3, 2012

B.C. Politics Trendwatch
Clark Liberals fall into a low tie
with surging B.C. Conservatives

By John Twigg

The mainstream media have already covered the story of the latest B.C. opinion poll in some detail so I won't repeat the basic numbers here but in some ways that coverage has become the main story anyway, though a few of the more subtle key stats still tell big stories too.

The media coverage being the main message became apparent when Angus Reid on Monday morning posted the results of their latest poll and news of the new party rankings spread like wildfire through social media and topped most mainstream media newscasts right through to the evening TV news.

It wasn't that the New Democrats were the big story because their support was up only 1% to 43% among decided voters and was very similar to recent findings by all other pollsters.

No, the big story was the steep declines in support for the B.C. Liberal Party in general, down 5 points to only 23%, and for Premier Christy Clark in particular, whose approval rating fell 8 points to only 32% and whose preferred-premier score fell 5 points to a lowly 17%, which probably signals the end of her career in B.C. politics and may portend the end of the B.C. Liberal Party too.

That was the lowest showing for the Liberals since July 2010 after former premier Gordon Campbell had forced in the hated Harmonized Sales Tax, which led to his resignation, a divisive leadership contest and then Clark's succession in March last year.

Pollster sees humongous collapse

"This is humongous . . . one of the biggest collapses we've ever seen," said Angus Reid pollster Mario Canseco, citing factors such as only 15% of women voters now supporting Clark even though she has been pushing a so-called families-first policy agenda.

"You have to wonder whether voters have just tuned the Liberals out," said Global TV's Keith Baldrey, who over decades has specialized in analyzing polls and noted the latest numbers would produce "a cakewalk for the NDP in the next election."

And it wasn't only how the Liberals fell but also that the upstart B.C. Conservative Party gained too - all the way into a tie with the Liberals at 23%! That was up 4 points from the previous poll in January and also was in line with most other polls except the recent Mustel Group poll which had the Liberals still within striking distance of the NDP and clearly above the Conservatives. [And BTW that confirms my previous analysis of the Mustel findings, namely that they were a bit old and had the Liberals too high and the Tories too low.]

Furthermore the Conservatives under leader John Cummins have even moved into first place in the B.C. Interior, with 32%, followed by the NDP at 30% and only 26% for the Liberals in what was once their stronghold.

"I'm convinced that by the time the next election rolls around it will be a close two-way race between the B.C. Conservative Party and the NDP," Cummins told CKNW while apparently on his way to a party meeting in Vernon, echoing his previous claims that he intends to make them the main free-enterprise alternative to the NDP in the next provincial election (scheduled for May 14, 2013).

Elley surprised by rapid success

"I think the universe is unfolding as it should," added party president Reed Elley in a statement exclusively for The Daily Twigg. "We always thought that there would be a time when we would overtake the Liberals in the opinion polls. What is startling is that it has happened so soon."

"If this keeps up by the time the election rolls around, we will be in a solid position to be the only party which could prevent the NDP from forming government," he said, echoing comments by Cummins last Monday (March 26) after Liberal backbencher John van Dongen not only resigned from caucus but shocked everyone by instantly joining the B.C. Conservative Party too.

"What a difference a year makes," said Elley, apparently referring to when a group of former federal Conservative politicians took over the party (apparently from a group involving Bill Vander Zalm and Chris Delaney), installed Cummins as leader and began getting serious about building an organization from scratch.

Interestingly Canseco's posted analysis also took a year-long view: "Over the past 12 months, the New Democrats have slowly but steadily gained five points, and have seen (leader Adrian) Dix become both the preferred premier and the leader with the highest approval rating. In the same period, the BC Liberals have seen their support among decided voters drop by 20 points - going from first place to a tie for second - while the BC Conservatives have improved their standing by 18 points."

Liberals facing a leadership crisis

"The Liberals are losing half their votes from the last election," Canseco told one outlet, suggesting it could create a leadership crisis in the Liberal party, which of course they already have had at least since van Dongen left with a flame of vitriol against the Liberals' record in general and at Clark's performance in particular; he thus became the Conservatives' first sitting MLA though technically he sits as an Independent until the party can get three more members to achieve official party status.

Scuttlebutt such as comments to an Abbotsford paper by former MP Randy White suggest that more defections from the Liberal caucus are already planned to happen later this year and logic suggests they will happen well in time to give the party official status in the Legislature next spring and thus a seat in the televised leaders debate prior to voting day.

Van Dongen's jump was a pivotal move that shocked many people and it apparently also affected the results of the poll, which was an online sampling of 800 people done on March 29 and 30 carrying a variance of 3.5%.

Also influential on the poll would have been the ugly ways that Liberal House leader Rich Coleman reacted to the switch, with cheap character assassinations of van Dongen that van Dongen in a call-in to CKNW said were obviously intended to intimidate other backbenchers reportedly thinking similar thoughts of leaving caucus.

And the disingenuous ways that Clark responded the next day to van Dongen's move probably further alienated many people, because she repeatedly insisted that B.C. voters still had only two choices, free enterprise with the Liberals or socialism under the NDP, when as the new poll showed they already had decided to have three choices (and more if smaller parties are included, as they should be, notably the B.C. Green Party, which came in at 8%).

So the big message in the Angus Reid poll was that clearly there is now a three-way race in B.C. politics, but if Clark continues to cling to power in apparent denial of what's really going on around her then it could soon become a two-way race between the NDP and Conservatives, with her Liberals playing third fiddle much like how the corrupt and decaying Social Credit Party government fell to a pathetic third-place finish in the 1991 election (which for those who cannot remember that far back ended up 51 NDP, 17 Liberal and 7 Socred).

Some major media outlets no longer flatter Clark

Even more significant now is how some of the major media seem to be turning against Clark and her government too, though others are still treating her with some respect perhaps for the sake of the office she still holds.

Most notable was the Province newspaper which (at least in the online version Monday night) had a headline saying "B.C. Liberals collapse: Poll shows mass exodus to provincial Conservative party" and that was accompanied by a photo of Clark apparently taken last Tuesday that showed her scowling and with a cold sore clearly visible on her lower lip (which may explain why she was nowhere to be found on Monday after van Dongen jumped).

Similarly CTV Vancouver's newscasts at 5 and 6 p.m. featured video of Clark running through a downtown hotel's backroom corridors trying to evade questions about the latest poll, and when she was caught up to she not-credibly claimed she hadn't seen the poll numbers yet and so couldn't and wouldn't comment on them until she had seen them, which suggests she and all of her staff no longer have access to their handheld devices, or that she was lying.

In fairness it does require a bit of study time to analyze all of the poll numbers, but there's no degree required to understand the fall of the Liberals and the rise of the Conservatives. While the poll found the NDP holding on to 87% of its 2009 voters the Liberals have retained only 51% and roughly two-thirds of the departees are going to the Conservatives and one-third to the NDP.

Clark makes partisan appeal at business lunch

Interestingly Clark's lunchtime speech to about 800 people at an Urban Development Institute event was unusually partisan, perhaps even inappropriately so, and her direct appeal for support in order to save free enterprise made it obvious that Clark is in a panic about her political predicaments.

“I can't do it alone, my team can't do it alone. We need everyone in this room today,” she said, claiming an NDP government would increase the deficit and raise taxes.

Clark claimed she knew the job would be difficult and she admitted she has faced some challenges and will face more before the next election but she insisted it will still come down to a simple two-way fight.

“The choice is going to be between a government that looks after their money, that respects taxpayers, that decides it wants to support a thriving private sector ... or ... a government that will do the opposite,” she claimed, agreeing with the merits of shrinking the gap between rich and poor but that the way to do that is not by punishing those who are successful.

Though Clark reportedly did not mention the B.C. Conservative Party in her speech, the danger of vote-splitting was raised by prominent property marketer Bob Rennie who told the crowd that a vote for the Conservatives would be a vote for the NDP so "We have to get behind the Liberal party right now...".

Clark's appearance at the influential UDI meeting was part of what appears to be a deliberate strategy of news management related to propping up the party's image during the Port Moody and Chilliwack byelection campaigns, as if she realizes poor results for the Liberals in them could hasten her demise.

Clark's itinerary full of photo opps

Thus Clark's government last week appeared to rush an announcement of a go-ahead for the long-delayed Jumbo Glacier resort development near Invermere even though it is strongly opposed by local interests and yesterday morning she re-announced a number of components in the multi-billion-dollar Gateway transportation program initiated by Campbell, the details of which were obviously provided in advance to the Vancouver Sun which made it the main front-page story in Monday's paper.

Clark is thus still counting on using job creation as her main trump card in the next provincial election but as NDP transportation critic Harry Bains pointed out the announcements were so vague that it wasn't clear how much money if any was new or simply re-announcements of old commitments.
He said that while private-sector investments are welcome there has been no leadership from the government on direct job creation.

That jobs conundrum coincidentally was highlighted in the Province paper on Monday in a guest column by Ben Parfitt regarding the shortage of raw logs for local mills even will log exports have been allowed to soar, which can be viewed at
http://www.theprovince.com/Guest+column+strategy+stop+export+logs+jobs/6396108/story.html.

That issue popped up indirectly in the Angus Reid poll too, which showed that the economy is still by far the most important issue but at 24% it was down 3 points and health at 19% was down 2 points while leadership was up 5 points to 12% and education was up 5 points to 10% - all of which sort of reverbate of Clark's failures in office.

While Clark may talk a lot about job creation and follow an itinerary of photo opps that feature job-creation themes, what she is delivering now is a sort of worn-out screed that most B.C. voters just are not buying.

Since it is unlikely she will change her tunes and tones anytime soon, the next likelihood is she will be ousted, perhaps by a cabal of business leaders soon after the byelection results.


But another looming question is what kind of a platform the B.C. Conservative Party will put together for the election campaign, especially whether the right-wing social conservatives such as White will impose a sort of tough-on-crime get-a-job theme or whether populists such as Cummins and to some extent van Dongen will go for a more broad-based approach.

While the Cummins Conservatives have so far had success by being simply not the other guys, the time will soon arrive when they will have to do some policy advocacy too and that probably is when new polls will be really telling.


Links of note

Angus Reid poll results
http://www.angus-reid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/2012.04.02_Politics_BC.pdf

Blogger Ian Reid raises BC Rail questions
http://therealstory.ca/2012-03-28/bc-liberals/are-van-dongens-bc-rail-questions-real

T-C's Iain Hunter responds to Geoff Plant on Basi-Virk deal
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/Rail+deal+still+causing+discomfort/6393717/story.html

Schreck finds source of historic GDP stats
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/Economy/EconomicAccounts/BCGDPMarketPricesFinalDomesticDemand.aspx

Detailed analysis of federal NDP voting stats
http://www.punditsguide.ca/2012/04/cullen-narrowly-won-convention-but-mulcair-victory-already-assured/

Unflattering photo of Christy Clark
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Liberals+collapse+Poll+shows+mass+exodus+provincial+Conservative+party/6399190/story.html#ixzz1qx1yuWji