A few stray election observations.
• Be honest, after Tuesday’s nail-biting drama, didn’t you expect the Oilers’ game seven to go into quadruple overtime?
• The Liberals entered the campaign with high hopes of regaining lost ground on Vancouver Island.
They really didn’t want a repeat of 2013, when they were reduced to just two of the 14 Island seats and were shut out of Greater Victoria, leaving the capital without a government MLA for the first time since 1952. They even tried luring voters back with an Island-specific platform.
The result? The greatest flop since The Adventures of Pluto Nash. Michelle Stilwell hung onto Parksville-Qualicum, but that was all the Liberals got. Their other seat, Courtenay-Comox, went New Democrat (at least for now; the spread was only nine votes).
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Why did the Island platform fail? Because when you have been in a rocky relationship for 16 years, “Baby, I can change” promises ring hollow. It smacked of opportunism when the Liberals dangled a B.C. Ferries frequent user/loyalty program in front of the same people who have been force-fed big fare increases since the Gordon Campbell days.
• The NDP had mixed results in races where its gender-equity policy applied. Party rules say that in ridings where an incumbent female New Democrat MLA doesn’t run again, the new candidate must also be female. The NDP went 4-for-4 in such circumstances Tuesday. The rules also say the candidates replacing retiring male MLAs must either be female or a member of an “equity-seeking” group. The NDP went 0-for-3 in such races Tuesday.
That included Cowichan Valley, where the local party president, claiming discrimination, stomped off and ran as an independent after the contentious policy prevented him from replacing retiring MLA Bill Routley. The NDP also lost in Columbia-Revelstoke, where their candidate, after being challenged to justify his nomination, revealed himself as bisexual, something he had hoped to keep private. In Skeena, a white man who argued his hearing impairment fit the NDP policy lost to a Liberal who happened to be aboriginal.
• How diverse are Vancouver Island’s MLAs? Seven are male and seven female, an increase of two women from 2013 (though that would change to eight and six if the results flip in Courtenay-Comox).
Two Island MLAs, Métis Carole James and the Tsartlip-raised Adam Olsen, have aboriginal heritage. Liberal Dallas Smith, former president of the Nanwakolas Council, was defeated in Vancouver Island North.
• Conventional wisdom said any Green gains in the popular vote would come at the expense of the NDP. New Democrats groused that by splitting “their” votes, the Greens would allow the Liberals to hold power. Greens replied that they were just as likely to draw support from those who had backed the Liberals in past votes.
On the Island, at least, it appears the latter argument was right. The CBC’s Metchosin-raised data-mining wizard Tara Carman found the Liberals lost 4.1 per cent of the popular vote here relative to 2013, while the NDP lost 3.5. The Greens gained 9.3.
• That nine-vote split in Courtenay-Comox might be post-Christmas-trousers tight (there are strata council votes with wider spreads), but it’s not the closest race in B.C. history. In 1979, New Democrat Al (Landslide) Passarell beat Socred MLA Frank Calder 750 to 749 in a two-horse race in Atlin. Word was that Calder and his wife didn’t bother travelling from Victoria to their northern riding to vote.
• Can anyone explain why the Greens don’t play Gary Wright’s Dream Weaver whenever leader Andrew Weaver enters party functions? Great swaying-crowd potential. Just saying.
