Posted November 20, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP
Thanks to DW at the Legislative Library, a scanned copy of the 2001 NDP Platform is now online (PDF, 1.1 megabytes). It’s likely an election platform that the NDP would like to forget, but this was the only one that was missing from my collection.
There is a full collection of party platforms from the 2001 and 2005 provincial elections, available here.
Posted October 28, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP
The concept of the “ballot question” is paramount to any political campaign - what question do you want to give to people when they go and vote?
In the last federal election, the ballot question was “Do you want Stephane Dion as your Prime Minister?” and the public generally voted no to this.
After reading the NDP economic plan response, I suspect the NDP may be trying to make the ballot question as “Do you want the carbon tax?” - if they can do this, it would give the NDP the best shot at forming government. The BC Liberals’ ballot question is shaping up to be “Do you think Carole James or Gordon Campbell will make a better economic manager in tough times?”.
I see two flaws with the NDP’s current approach. One is that they consistently refer to the carbon tax as “the gas tax”, which is to appease the green side of the party base. The NDP’s support is split on the carbon tax, just like the BC Liberals’ camp. The other issue the NDP has with their strategy is that their focus on certain other topics, such as homelessness, is not going to attract the moderate voter. The political middle pays to have a roof over their heads, and using their tax dollars to pay for housing that others are unwilling to work for is not going to win the NDP any new voters.
I also thought the NDP’s economic address had an unusual focus on rural British Columbia, so it is obvious the NDP is thinking they are going to make some inroads in the BC Interior. They would have to think that the Prince George seats are in play for the 2009 election.
Both parties are going to push hard to the middle in the next six months.
Posted October 19, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Greens
The BC Liberals announced that Chris Bennett, the interim leader of the BC Green Party (between Adriane Carr and Jane Sterk), is joining the party.
This is a fairly interesting signal that the BC Green party clearly has some organizational problems (which one could have inferred by the late financial return filing).
If the BC Green party fails to perform in the 2009 election, then one wonders whether this is actually good or bad for the BC Liberals. Initially one would think positively, but if the Green party were to collapse in BC, would those voters simply stay at home, or would they gravitate further towards the NDP?
Posted October 18, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Other Parties
A person writing in as Barry E Chilton (assuming the comment is authentic, is the former leader of the BC Conservative Party) wrote a comment in a previous post about how he alleges that the current leader, Wilf Hanni, is not really the legal leader.
This was generally covered in a September 4, 2008 Globe and Mail article.
Nobody other than BC Liberals benefit from this internal conflict - as the BC Conservative Party, just strictly on name branding, could have caused some electoral damage in the interior BC ridings.
The federal Conservatives should also pay attention to this as there is a sizable portion of the population that don’t distinguish between the provincial Liberal/Conservative parties and the federal counterparts. It is quite obvious that the BC Liberal party has taken explicit steps to de-couple themselves from the federal Liberals, while the federal Conservatives would no doubt want to be light years away from the BC Conservative party in association.
Still, the BC Liberals are likely to take some collateral damage from the federal Liberal’s plummeting support in British Columbia. One at the BC Liberal party would hope that it wasn’t the BC Liberal party causing the federal Liberals to drop!
(Subsequent update: More comments are there on that post - it’s pretty clear it will take a court case to resolve this one way or another).
Posted September 7, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals, By-Election
Public Eye reports that Margaret MacDiarmid beat Rick Peterson 179 (60%) to 119 (40%) for the BC Liberal nomination for Vancouver-Fairview.
Presumably if there had not been a federal election, we would be hearing a by-election call shortly, but this will not happen for at least another month and a half.
Posted September 7, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, BC Liberals, By-Election
Arthur Griffiths is applying for the BC Liberal Vancouver-Burrard nomination.
Vancouver-Burrard is going to be split into Vancouver-West End (strongly NDP) and Vancouver-False Creek (Strongly BC Liberal) in the next general election.
Griffiths is running for the 2009 nomination in Vancouver-West End, against David Harper. Vancouver-False Creek (the other half what used to be Vancouver-Burrard) is slated to be Mary McNeil’s seat.
BJ picked up on this far earlier than I did, or the Vancouver Sun.
The question here is - if Arthur Griffiths gets the nomination for Vancouver-Burrard, and wins the seat, is he going to become the shortest term MLA in recent BC history when he tries to get the Vancouver-West End nomination? What if David Harper wins that nomination? Is David Harper going to run for the Vancouver-Burrard by-election? Finally, how much power of incumbency will a winning candidate in the riding have, and who will the NDP nominate in response to this?
There are lots of unanswered questions, all of which have little to do with the outcome of the May 12, 2009 general election, and time will tell.
Both major parties will be spending a lot of money for little gain for the Vancouver-Burrard by-election, other than to prevent the Green party from sitting in MLA in the Legislature for the pre-election winter session.
Posted September 3, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals, By-Election
Sean Holman reports that Saturday, September 6, will be the BC Liberal nomination date for Vancouver-Fairview.
It is likely the Federal election will be on October 14, so it will be interesting to see whether the election date will be between this and the municipal cycle, or whether it will be after the municipal elections.
A logical compromise is to drop to writ just after the November 15 municipal elections, so my new suspected date will be December 8, 2008.
In addition, this date would be after the fall legislative session (assuming it occurs) ends on November 27, 2008.
Posted September 1, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP
I have the 2005 and 2001 platforms from the major parties on this site - the only one that is missing is the 2001 NDP platform. This can be found at the Legislative Library in Victoria, but unfortunately, I do not have access to this document.
Can somebody get a copy of this (link, call number 324.271107 N532pr), make a scan of it, and send it to me? You will get full attribution.
Optionally, somebody on the internet must have made a copy of it and has the PDF file on their hard drive - the original URL was “http://www.bc.ndp.ca/platform/NDP_Platform.pdf” - and obviously this is no longer on the NDP’s servers, as 2001 was an election they would like to forget.