Municipalities in BC will elect new councils and mayors on Saturday, November 15, 2008. A few days earlier, on November 4th, US voters will elect a president, their entire House of Representatives, a third of their Senate, and many state legislators and governors. Canada might even have a federal election sometime in 2008, but then again it might hit the newly established federal fixed election date on Monday, October 19, 2009 without Harper's minority government falling on a failed confidence vote. One way or the other, a lot of water will go over the dams before British Columbians elect their next provincial government on May 12, 2009, but with less than a year to go, the countdown is on for politicos in BC. I still encounter people who don't know that BC has a fixed election date, which only goes to show that many people won't care about any of this until at least 11 months from now.

Polls that have shown the Campbell Liberals with a comfortable double digit majority aren't a source of joy for New Democrats, but due to the concentration of the Liberal vote, they aren't as much a worry as some might think. In the last provincial election on May 17, 2005, the popular vote was 45.8% for the Liberals, and 41.5% for the NDP. The Liberals won by a large margin in several ridings: the North Shore, Richmond, parts of Surrey and the Okanagan. The winning margin of the Liberals in their top 10 ridings (out of 46 won) totals 78,858, or more than the total provincial winning margin. The NDP had a margin of 60,262 in its top 10 ridings; while the overall popular vote had a difference of only 4.3 points, the Liberal's top ridings had almost 25% greater concentration of support. That means a lot when it comes to analyzing province-wide polling, which randomly samples all voters. The political parties don't care about sampling in ridings they know they will lose. The key for predicting which party might win an election is to poll in the potential "swing-ridings", the ridings where real contests occur. Looking at the seven ridings where the Liberals had narrow wins in 2005 shows that if less than 2,600 votes had gone the other way, Carole James would be Premier today (with fewer votes than the Liberals).

Unless the BC Civil Liberties Association is successful in a challenge to the new electoral boundaries, the 2009 election will be contested in 85 new constituencies. That makes comparisons with 2005 particularly challenging, although you can bet that both the Liberals and NDP have overlaid poll-by-poll results from 2005 with the 2009 boundaries and know what the 2005 results would have been, based on the new riding boundaries. In fact, Elections BC has the sophisticated computer programs to also do those calculations; it is unfortunate that it doesn't do them and share the results with the public. That would certainly help the minor parties (and the media) who don't have or won't spend the resources to do that calculation for themselves.

In his column on May 13, 2008, Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer spelled out one scenario with the NDP winning in 2009. He speculated that the Liberal's forest policies combined with their gas and fuel tax (a.k.a. "carbon tax") could contribute to their defeat. This is not to suggest that the NDP is on victory's door. The most likely outcome is that Campbell will sweep with an increased majority in 2009, thereby encouraging him to become more arrogant and repeat the kind of mistakes he made in 2001-2005. That poses a strategic problem for NDP election planners. Should they structure a campaign based on electing a strong opposition that will force Campbell to moderate his policies and stop a return to his Maui-Wowie days, or should they push hard on forestry and tax policy arguing that they are ready to form a more competent and accountable government? The one thing they shouldn't do is produce a campaign platform with a thousand and one promises that cater to everyone who ever thought of voting NDP. A well focused and disciplined campaign with an easy to understand message might succeed in defeating Campbell, or at least holding his majority to a level that keeps him on his toes.