BC Conservative Party statistics
Posted June 1, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Analysis
Comments (5)
While I will be dissecting the election after the judicial recount, I’m getting around to the miscellaneous inquiries I have received with respect to analyzing the election results.
One of them was this comment:
I would be interested in knowing what the Conservative vote as a proportion of votes cast in the 24 ridings they ran in was.
Just a cursory glance at the results show that it appears that they made respectable showings in most of the ridings they ran in.
While I didn’t vote for them, and I thought their campaign was far from professional and policies were a little too out to lunch, I think with some tweaking, they could be a serious threat to the BC Liberals, in terms of splitting the right-of-centre vote. The BC Liberals had better watch their right/rural flank.
The answer to this question is the following:
The BC Conservatives obtained a total of 34,465 votes in 24 electoral districts. The 24 electoral districts had 470,990 valid votes cast, which means that the BC Conservatives had an average of 7.32% in those ridings.
On the issue of analyzing the BC Conservative Party’s performance, there are some other points of analysis:
In terms of the “leftiness or rightiness” of the seats, 5 of those seats were won by the NDP; 19 seats were won by the BC Liberals. Two of these seats were close (less than 5% spread) in the results – Boundary-Similkameen, and Vernon-Monashee. It appears that these seats would be favourable to the right-wing voter. Of the seats that went NDP, the Conservatives performed at 4.86%, while the Greens performed at 7.35%.
In terms of the “none-of-the-above” voters, the Green party performed 8.60% in the 24 seats, or slightly higher than their provincial average. It does not appear that the BC Conservatives have split any of these types of voters, especially considering that the number of valid votes divided by registered voters (one measure of voter turnout) was 54.9%, or roughly the provincial average for turnout.
Out of the 24 seats, I would estimate four seats as being contentious – Boundary-Similkameen, Kootenay East, Skeena and Surrey-Fleetwood. Vernon-Monashee was closer in the actual result, but this was due to an extraordinarily strong Green party candidate. In the four seats, the Conservatives had a vote of 10.94%. However, this is in the statistical white noise range, and also includes the strong performance of Joe Cardoso in Boundary-Similkameen.
Party leader Wilf Hanni received 9.98% of the vote in Kootenay East, a riding where many pundits predicted would hurt the BC Liberals due to a close race; yours truly never saw it happening, but if others did see it being a factor in the riding, the numbers would suggest that the entrance of Hanni in the race helped the BC Liberals, instead of the intuitive conclusion of helping the NDP. I don’t believe this is true.
The other special case was in Chilliwack, where Benjamin Besler was clearly the the recipient of votes (14.7%) against John Les (due to continuing special prosecution investigation that involves himself and others).
It is easy to say that the BC Conservatives’ performance in Election 2009 will harm the BC Liberals in the future, but it will only be the case when they start getting credible candidates. Out of all their 24 candidates, only two have elected office experience – Joe Cardoso (Okanagan-Similkameen regional district) and Mark Thompson (Saskatoon City Council).
Thanks for the analysis.
I wonder how much of a threat they would be if they ran a full slate, had a credible leader, a more mainstream centre-right policy, and a spot on the debate?
I also am glad you noted Joe Cardoso. About 1/3 of the BC Conservative vote (10,000 votes) was from Cardoso alone, and that was because of him, not the Conservative brand name. That whole situation could have been avoided if the BC Liberals didn’t dump him (as he was the liberal candidate before) for petty reasons. Again, I would say his high amount of vote was support him, not the party. If that situation had hadn’t have happened, and the Conservatives didn’t run a candidate in Boundary-Similkameen (and Cardoso was the liberal candidate), the BC Cons vote would be lower in that riding. What is the average BC Conservative percentage of the vote without Boundary-Similkameen included??
SSO, If they ran a full slate (of reasonable candidates), had a credible leader, a more mainstream centre-right policy, and a spot on the debate, they would be the BC Liberal party.
Cardoso got about 3,600 votes, not 10,000.
BC Conservatives minus Cardoso would be 6.81%, compared to 7.32% with him.
But you are right with respect to the candidate. One thing the BC Liberal party excels at is that they are very active when it comes to recruiting electable candidates. I don’t think the NDP appreciated it when they put in their ‘affirmative action’ policy which really hurt them in a lot of winnable seats. Better candidate recruitment might have even saved them a few seats, enough to make the BC Liberals’ majority government a miserable majority for them (i.e. if the election result was BCL/NDP/IND 43/41/1, you have to keep everybody close to the legislature in case if you have votes in committee of the whole… no day-time excursions for the Premier!).
A real simple example is that there is no way the NDP would have won Burnaby-Deer Lake without Kathy Corrigan.
Sorry for my mistake on Cardoso and vote totals. I think I got mixed up with his percent total (20% of the vote in his riding)