Delta South and Cariboo-Chilcotin
Posted May 16, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Analysis
Comments (1)
Checking up on the preliminary count page, Wally Oppal appears to have picked up another vote, bringing him up to a 3 vote lead.
Going back to my previous post on the counting of special and absentee ballots, Vicki Huntington had a relative 1.3% positive difference compared to Val Roddick in the 2005 election; since there were 736 ballots to be counted in this fashion, it would suggest that Huntington would have a 9.6 vote edge (minus the three votes that Wally Oppal is currently ahead) if the same numbers were true in the 2009 election. However, these are dealing with very small numbers and percentages and I would not put any statistical weight on this. My estimate would be that Vicki Huntington has about a 55% chance of winning and Wally Oppal has a 45% chance of winning.
To put 45% in perspective, this is like throwing two standard dice and rolling a 6, 7, or 8.
Now we will examine Cariboo-Chilcotin, where the vote margin is currently 23 votes; NDP MLA Charlie Wyse has a slim lead over BC Liberal candidate Donna Barnett.
The analog riding is Cariboo South; in the 2005 election we had:
Total results (15,823 valid votes cast):
NDP Charlie Wyse, 45.99%
LIB Walter Cobb, 42.27%
In advanced balloting:
Charlie Wyse 998 / 2022 = 49.36% [+3.37%]
Walter Cobb 896 / 2022 = 44.31% [+2.04%]
In special/absentee balloting:
Charlie Wyse 445 / 883 = 50.40% [+4.41%]
Walter Cobb 363 / 883 = 41.11% [-1.16%]
Charlie Wyse has a clear showing of outperforming in the special balloting in the 2005 election. If we were to translate this into the 2009 election, combined with the fact that he has a 23 vote lead, he is likely to win his seat. There would have to be at least a 2.6% underperformance by Charlie Wyse, relative to his BC Liberal rival, in order to lose his lead. While the possibility of this happening cannot be entirely eliminated, I would estimate Charlie Wyse has a 90% chance of retaining his seat. I have checked Cariboo North as well, and the NDP candidate (NDP MLA Bob Simpson) outperformed by 2.48% in special/absentee balloting, while the BC Liberal candidate Steve Wallace underperformed by 4.87%.
The recount has seen some turnaround.
Donna Barnett now has a 59 vote lead over Charlie Wyse in Cariboo North (with 977 absentee ballots yet to be counted).
Wally Oppal now has a 7 vote lead over Vick Huntington (with over 900 absentee balots to be counted).
http://www.cknw.com/Channels/Reg/NewsLocal/Story.aspx?ID=1096360