Vancouver 2008 Election mapped

Posted November 28, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, News

Chances are there are some political parties that are looking at the municipal election results, and are trying to make extrapolations on how this will affect the seats in Vancouver.

Note for the purposes of mapping, I have discarded all other mayoral candidates’ votes – the third place candidate was Betty Krawczyk of the Work Less Party, receiving 1.1% of the vote. Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson and NPA’s Peter Ladner’s votes are the only votes considered in these maps.

The 2005 and 2009 BC Electoral boundaries map superimposed on the Vancouver results (click for a detailed map):

Here are some notes for the 2009 election, assuming that the NPA and VV votes are good proxies for BC Liberals and NDP, respectively:

Vancouver-Quilchena (BCL), Vancouver-Langara (BCL), Vancouver-West End (NDP), Vancouver-Mount Pleasant (NDP), Vancouver-Hastings (NDP), Vancouver-Kingsway (NDP) and Vancouver-Kensington (NDP) are all safe seats.

Vancouver-False Creek (split with Vancouver-Burrard) consists of stronger BC Liberal support in the downtown Vancouver side (especially Yaletown), while the area on the south shore of False Creek is split between BCL and NDP support. Using NPA/VV results, however, shows that this seat will be a winner for the NDP. On the net, this seat is a swing seat, and right now should be favoured slightly to the BC Liberals.

Vancouver-Fairview (currently NDP; Jenn McGinn) has the south side of False Creek chopped off with the boundary adjustment north of 4th avenue, which doesn’t hurt too much from the 2005 election results. From the NPA/VV results, however, it would hurt the NDP’s chances. However, on the net, this would be a swing seat, although slightly favours the NDP.

Vancouver-Fraserview (currently BCL) has a very small slice of BCL support removed with the boundary adjustment; Wally Oppal won the seat by 5% in the last election and is the favourite; however, this seat is not safe.

Vancouver-Point Grey (currently BCL; Gordon Campbell’s seat) loses some net Gregor Robertson voters, but loses net BC Liberal support from the 2005 election (not shown on this map). The Premier won his seat by 8% in the last election, and all things being equal, will win it by a 5%+ margin. However, the seat can only be considered “probable” and not safe at this time.

As such, it appears that Vancouver is split 6-5 (NDP-BCL) with the battlegrounds being Vancouver-False Creek and Vancouver-Fairview – almost a repeat of the 2008 by-elections.

The NDP need to successfully target False Creek to win the election. The BC Liberals’ target will be Fairview. It will also be tempting for the NDP to target Point Grey, but resources spent into that battle would likely be better spent elsewhere.

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Riding Profiles slowly coming online

Posted November 27, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis

I am working on refreshing the 85 riding profiles, in the Ridings page.

The first one to come active is Burnaby-Deer Lake. More will come up over time.

Note if you transposed the 2005 results exactly on the 2009 electoral boundaries and gave the 2009 seats based on geographical spread, the BC Liberals would have won the election 49 seats to the NDP’s 36.

Against my own initial instincts, in the next couple of weeks I am going to enable comments on these pages. There will be the occasional person or two that will give some pot-headed justification why the Marijuana party will be taking seats in downtown Vancouver, but I would be more curious to see the dialog (if any) from those in the northern side of the province.

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Further strategy signals given out

Posted November 27, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, BC Greens, BC Liberals, NDP

The two majors in BC are showing what strategies they are going to be employing over the next half year.

The BC Liberals released their new website earlier in November; their slogan is “Keep BC Strong”, the site clearly emphasizes events and the “team” of the BC Liberal party. A supplementary focus is on the “online” portion – i.e. their “open platform”. The attacks on the NDP are on the 90’s, and there is a “compare and contrast” on the very bottom.

The NDP very recently announced the revamp of their website, and surprisingly, the focus is on Carole James, and “leadership”. The slogan for the campaign will be “Because Everybody Matters”. The attacks on the government are generally about Gordon Campbell.

Both sites are very polished. The key information here is that the NDP is planning on fighting this campaign about leadership, while the BC Liberals are going to fight about what has been done. Interesting.

The Green Party’s site right now is broken. See the attached screenshot, noting the comments “Sorry.. our site is broken” on the upper-left:

This is likely predictive of the performance of their election campaign.

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One economic plan point not reached

Posted November 27, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Economy

Premier Gordon Campbell stated on November 1, 2008 that he wanted to work with the Federal government to allow people over 71 to keep their RRSPs instead of having a mandatory conversion to RRIFs.

Today’s economic statement clearly states that this won’t be happening. Instead, people will be allowed to defer up to 25% of the minimum RRIF withdrawal level for a year.

The estimated cost of this initiative is a $200 million dollar line-item for the Federal government, as people would generally have to pay taxes on the amount they withdraw – if they can defer it then the federal government won’t realize the tax benefit.

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A brilliant stalling tactic

Posted November 27, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Transportation

One way to get a group of people to be quiet is to say that “you’re currently studying the issue”. An issue of concern for the people in Langley and east of Langley is the issue of public transportation – currently the loudest lobby is the “rail for the valley” lobby, their stated goal being to revive the interurban route from Surrey to Chilliwack.

My guess is that this announcement of a $400,000 study being funded (to Urban Systems, a company typically used for this type of stuff) is going to be used as a political blunting tool to get the rail people off the government’s back until after the election. The final report on the study is supposed to be finished in “late 2009″.

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Mustel Poll shows BC Liberals up 2%

Posted November 25, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Polls

A November 14 to 22 poll by Mustel Group shows that the BC Liberals are at 44% support and the NDP are at 42% support, with the Greens being at 12%. Detailed results here (Mustel, Local Copy)

This was a random sample of 502 residents, which is less than the usual 800 that comparable surveys typically perform. There were 17% undecided, which leaves 417 people that actually gave an answer.

In context, I think the results show that the race in May 12, 2009, is closer than the previous years’ polls would suggest. The real killer piece of news in the survey is that the economy has absolutely taken top priority – with 40% of respondents indicating this (compared to last quarter’s response of “Fuel costs” which topped the scales at around 18%.

It’s obvious that if an election were held today, that the political party with the most convincing plan for the economy would win the election. The question is: Will the economy be the top issue six months from now, and if not, what will?

I am also very curious to know what the correlation between Green party supporters and the “Environment as a top issue” people are – I’d instinctively guess 75% – if you discount this from the survey, it makes one wonder whether the BC Liberals are getting any political equity from their shift to the left. My guess would be no.

Thank you for BJ for pointing me to this item – you’re much better than I am at getting these releases!

I have also updated the Polls page.

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Green party making noise

Posted November 25, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, BC Greens

The Green Party just realized now that the election campaign started a few months ago, and it is clear that they are leaning to the left with respect to their stance on “what to do about the economy”. The following is quoted from a BC Green Party press release today:

Vancouver, BC – “Given the global economic meltdown, it is no surprise that the finance minister announced that the budget surplus for BC will be half of that predicted just six weeks ago,” said Jane Sterk. “The more surprising news is that the government plans to continue with personal tax cuts as an economic stimulus.”

“These tax cuts will not make a big difference to individual British Columbians. They amount to $5 to $10 a month of reduced income tax. Last time I looked, $10 could buy a dozen donuts and not much else. These tax cuts, like the $100 carbon rebate are simply window dressing before an election. We believe that British Columbians would support investing tax money into programs that make their communities better.

One rule inside the political spin book is that if you wish to make a large number appear small, divide a yearly figure into months or even days (examples – the above press release, or arguments against the $100/month child care credit, which most opponents said was $3/day). The opposite also applies – to make a small number appear large, use multi-year figures, or use percentages (recent examples – small business taxes going from 4.5% to 2.5% as a “44% decrease in small business taxes”, or “the government is facing a $3 billion revenue shortfall over the next three years”).

Referring to the Green Party press release, the one problem with saying “the tax cut only amounts to $5 or $10 a month” and equating them to doughnuts is that you are implicitly stating that if you go in the opposite direction, that it is equally considered immaterial. For example, if you are on the record of stating that $10 a month is “nothing”, that one would think that an increase in taxes of $10 a month is equivalently “nothing”. The way that such arguments are countered would be the following… likely to be heard from the government:

“The leader of the Green Party is suggesting that the people of BC think that a 5% reduction in tax is insignificant, especially when families are looking toward lowering their costs of living in this province. I would like to ask whether the Green Party would like to add to the burden of British Columbians by taxing them more since they are clearly saying that they think BCers want more taxes.”

This was my first-pass attempt, but a polished press release scripter could probably crank something far more elegant, and likely to be heard in a media scrum somewhere. This is even assuming that they reply at all since the Green Party is clearly in bad shape coming into this election.

Separating the signal from the noise gets progressively more difficult as you approach election time.

3 Comments

Province releases second quarter report

Posted November 24, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Economy, News

The financial situation of the province is going to be highly relevant for the upcoming election.

Today, the ministry of finance released their second quarter report (press release, actual report).

A lot of the assumptions look relatively untouched – such as personal income growth going up 5.5%, labour income growth up 6.5%, but the major assumptions are real GDP at 1.7% (nominal growth at 4.7%) which I think is optimistically high, natural gas prices at US$8.15/MMBtu (currently trading at US$6.50) and oil at US$109.10/barrel (currently US$54 a barrel).

The reasons for the rosy assumptions presumably involve not panicking the public (at least not yet) in the hopes that things will swing up in the next half year. We will know before the election, however, how the budgetary projection turned out, and what things will be like next year.

Some estimates have already been cut significantly, however – property transfer tax revenues are expected to decline by 26% from the initial estimates – this reflects lower real estate transaction volumes. Fuel and carbon tax collections are expected to decline about 3% as well.

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