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 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.
Posted August 26, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP
The NDP continue to send out some mail about raising $10 per person in the first 10 days of September. They are using gifttool.com, and their fee schedule is in their FAQ:
GiftTool will format your template page to identically match your website with all your navigation links. You pay a one-time setup fee of only $150 per service (receive a discount when you setup 2 or more services at once). Whenever your website changes in future, GiftTool will reflect these changes at no extra cost.
In addition to a small monthly fee, GiftTool charges a flat rate of $0.99 per transaction which is discounted for larger volumes. A credit card administrative fee of $0.24 will be applied to each credit cards transaction, plus the credit card fees charged by your internet merchant account gateway.
So to outsource the online donations, the NDP is paying approximately 2 dollars per transaction, plus the $150 setup fee.
Posted August 21, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP, Polls
Langley Politics mentions the internal poll released by the NDP, relating to their Carbon Tax poll.
As I said in that previous post:
I am also wondering what other questions they asked in the survey that were cropped out - typically when such surveys are commissioned the first or last question they ask is “If there was an election held today, who would you vote for?”.
Apparently the answer was:
Lib: 41%
NDP: 40%
Green: 12%
A commenter here, BJ, has astutely said (well before Langley Politics and myself) all I would want to say on the topic, mainly:
For obvious reasons one should be careful of this poll result as it was asked after 5 leading questions. Sometimes these polls are referred to as “push polls”.
Well said, BJ.
One would wonder what the strategic or tactical outcome of such a release would be - is the NDP trying to telegraph to its supporters that “things are more competitive than you think”? Releasing information that is over a month old gives away more information about the party’s intentions than the information itself.
Posted August 21, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP
I try to subscribe to all the political junk mail I can - it is the only form of spam that I will willingly sign up to receive, as it is very interesting to see the techniques political parties use to get their messages across.
Not coincidentally, I am the last person on the planet that political parties really want to reaching with such advertising.
I received an email yesterday from the NDP with regards to the minimum wage - implying it should be raised to $10 (from the existing $8) because the government decided to raise government executive salaries by a disproportionate amount. I will not be arguing about the policy in this post.
The letter continues, encouraging readers to give $10 in the first 10 days in September.
Concerning the Elections Act, there are two possible scenarios how such donations will be treated. One is that the donation will be considered an anonymous contribution and a name will not be recorded. The second is that the donation will be cataloged to the individual donating and a tax receipt will be issued sometime early in 2009. Processing an anonymous donation is easy - just take the money and don’t do anything about it other than accounting for it to Elections BC at the end of the year. As long as the net of anonymous contributions is less than $10,000 (section 188 of the Act), you can continue to accept them.
If the party decides to deem the contributions as not anonymous, the cost to process a $10 donation is around 50 cents for the credit card fees, and another 70 cents to prepare a letter containing the tax receipt and mail it to the recipient, and finally the labour costs to processing such information.
So the NDP are certainly not asking for $10 to raise money - instead, they are doing this to identify the vote.
Soliciting for very low donations in the hopes of finding new supporters is an interesting idea, especially if you’re the political party where contributions from individuals are likely to be lower.
Posted August 13, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP
I’ve noted a lot of speculation as to why the two Davids decided to no longer run for the NDP - they would have had a good chance (especially David Chudnovsky) to be re-elected. Langley Politics has a good summary article that speculates it may be due to Carole James‘ leadership, especially considering the carbon tax issue.
This is really bad news for Carole and there may be more to come - I would be surprised if Diane Thorne runs again and other green-oriented MLAs like Bob Simpson may be considering their options. Make no mistake, whatever their public statements say, the “2 Davids” in particular are quitting over disenchantment over “axe the tax” and Carole’s leadership in general. Gregor, the 2 Davids, Sather were among the leading enviros in that caucus. Cubberley and Sather’s seats are both gone and I think the NDP will lose the by-election in Fairview as well. Watch for a Green surge in the by-election and possibly in the general election next May.
If this turns out to be true, then the BC Liberal push to the left, from a political perspective, is nothing short of brilliant. In the first past the post system, having one adversary with the ability to get 40% of the vote is 1,000,000 times more dangerous than two opponents with 20% of the vote. By driving NDP voters into the green camp, it leaves the BC Liberals the winners by default.
Of course, this speculation might be unfounded - Chudnovsky did say that the primary reason for him leaving is due to the corrosive and artificial nature of the legislature. At the age of 59, spending another 4 years in such an environment (likely in opposition) is not exactly making a dent in the world.
Posted August 6, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP
Two NDP MLAs, David Cubberley (Saanich South) and David Chudnovsky (Vancouver Kensington) have decided not to run again this May. This makes five NDP MLAs no longer running in May 2009.
Vancouver Kensington is likely to go NDP again this coming election, while Saanich South had its electoral boundaries rearranged, giving a slight advantage to the BC Liberals in the upcoming election. Saanich South was decided by 328 votes and went NDP in 2005. The electoral boundary changes give a mild swing to the BC Liberals, so you can be sure that in 2009 that this seat will be hotly contested.
Saanich South loses net NDP support to Victoria-Swan Lake (now Victoria-Hillside) and gains a fractional amount of NDP support from Oak Bay-Gordon Head.