CONSERVATIVES FINISHED, WHICH COULD HELP NDP
New Democrats have never won in B.C. without vote-splitting on centre-right
When candidate nominations closed last week for the May 9 provincial election, the B.C. Conservatives were in greatly reduced circumstances from the last time out.
The Conservatives nominated just 10 candidates by the April 18 deadline, a far cry from 2013 when the party made its strongest showing in decades by fielding 56 candidates.
Those were heady days for the stand-alone provincial party.
In the year before the 2013 vote, they briefly pulled even with the B.C. Liberals in the opinion polls and, just as briefly, played host to an MLA defector from the government side.
The showing earned party leader John Cummins a seat at the election debates alongside Premier Christy Clark and the then leaders of the NDP and the Green party (Adrian Dix and Jane Sterk).
But with the cameras on, ex-MP Cummins faltered. The party had other problems as well, including illadvised comments on social media, internal discontent and the federal Conservatives even insisted a vote for the B.C. Liberals was the only way to keep out the B.C. NDP.
Cummins and his slate finished up with just five per cent of the popular vote, still the best showing since 1972 when the party took two seats and 13 per cent.
Cummins lost little time vacating the leadership after the votes were counted and hopes rose the next year when his successor was chosen. Dan Brooks, 40-ish, energetic and the father of eight, was the operator of a hunting lodge in the northwest. His specialty was hunting bull moose and his “come hither” imitation of the call of the lady moose was said to be unmatched.
Try to imagine how keenly those of us who live off the more colourful avails of B.C. politics would have welcomed the presence of a champion bull-caller in the arena.
But two years into his term, Brooks resigned in frustration over a continuing legal wrangle with the man he defeated for the post. Later, with the legal situation suddenly resolved, he entered the race to succeed himself and secured the leadership a second time.
Then, in another of those developments that make the Conservatives a source of comic relief on the provincial scene, the party board ousted Brooks from the leadership on a technicality.
“Being leader of the B.C. Conservatives is like being in an abusive relationship,” Brooks told reporters, before returning to the moosehunting grounds.
As election 2017 approached, rumours persisted that the Conservatives were waiting for the right moment to re-enter the political arena.
There was a round of intrigue last March when the party nominated realtor Kay Hale as its candidate in the new riding of Richmond-Queensborough. She’d run for the B.C. NDP in one of the Richmond ridings a dozen years earlier.
Were New Democrats, like so many hermit crabs, angling to occupy the vacant shells of Conservative riding associations, so as to mount vote-splitting drives against the Liberals?
Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, by the end of the nomination period, the Conservatives had mustered just the aforementioned slate of 10. Three are contesting safe seats for the New Democrats and four others are in seats regarded as relatively secure for the B.C. Liberals.
Three are running in seats — Cariboo North and the two in Maple Ridge – that could swing from the Liberals to the NDP on May 9.
But contrast that showing to campaign 2013 when the Liberals faced Conservative challengers in pretty much every riding where they had a chance of winning.
The Conservative party’s meagre presence in this campaign could have other implications.
There are few rules in politics in B.C. But one proven reliable over the decades is that the NDP only wins with a split on the centre-right of the political spectrum.
The New Democrats won in 1972, 1991 and 1996 with about 40 per cent of the vote when the non-NDP vote was dispersed among several other parties.
Otherwise, the record for the NDP and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, is 17 losses in 20 tries going back 85 years.
Yes, one can readily think of recent examples where conventional wisdom was overturned.
The Conservatives were never going to lose power in Alberta. A guy like Trump couldn’t get elected president of the United States. The Remain side was bound to win the referendum in the United Kingdom
B.C. might be on the verge of that sort of upheaval as well. In the absence of Conservative candidates in most ridings this time, Mainstreet, the company polling for Postmedia News, suggests the beneficiary could be the NDP.
“The B.C. Conservatives are no longer included in our surveys,” Mainstreet wrote this week after the release of a survey showing the NDP ahead.
“We have seen for several weeks B.C. Conservative voters say they would vote NDP if there was no Conservative candidate on the ballot.”
Then there’s the wild card presence of the Greens. The party platform positions them well to the left on taxation and spending. But privately, the Liberals worry the positive aspects of the Green brand are such that the party could siphon as many votes from them as the NDP.
Still, an NDP win on May 9 would be remarkable not only for ending 16 years in power by the B.C. Liberals.
It would be a break-the-mould outcome, where the New Democrats would finally show they could win without the proverbial split on the centre-right.
The B.C. Conservatives are no longer included in our surveys. ... We have seen for several weeks B.C. Conservative voters say they would vote NDP if there was no Conservative candidate on the ballot. MAINSTREET, company polling for Postmedia News