BC Election: #ScrimshawSix, 9 Days Out

On The Wonderwall Of Campaigns

(Listen to this week’s Scrimshaw Show with Nathaniel Arfin on October 7th, the role of organizing in politics, and L’Affaire Angus Reid!)

The last time I wrote about Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah I referred to it as almost a religious experience listening to it, and especially the instrumental at the start. The rising crescendo, the sheer intensity, the intentionality, the sigh … it is in so many ways the greatest music ever created. It’s beautiful and deep and conveys so much without so much as a word.

I was listening to it last night on shuffle, and there was something supremely comical. I went from quite literally spontaneously crying when I heard that sigh to, I wish I was joking, Wonderwall. And amidst the complete absurdity of that transition, I had a realization. I understood why this BC election has not captivated me in the slightest. We have had the most interesting term in provincial politics not just in BC but in the country in decades, which plot twists every week and a genuinely too close to call race for months. And now we have the most boring, mediocre campaign about who’s tax cut is better and whether some random billionaire is right or wrong to call David Eby a communist.

Congrats BC, you’ve created the Wonderwall of campaigns. Truly, amazing work. Anyways, I don’t have a theme, so let’s just do 6 thoughts on the BC election, #ScrimshawSix style.

Eby Should Win

There is really no way John Rustad should win this election. I’m sure someone can explain to me some version of the car insurance announcement that explains it, but it seems like the change will increase premiums. Eby’s also proposing a tax cut, so that’s not a winning issue. The Conservatives can’t exactly run on fiscal prudence, since they’re claiming they will cut taxes, spend more on some priorities, and not cut health and education. This really should be an Eby win.

Leger had a 5 point lead pre-debate and the enduring story out of the debate seems to be John Rustad falsely claiming to have seen someone die of an overdose. I don’t think provincial debates generally move the needle but if my prior is that Eby was ahead going in and Rustad didn’t win, then tie goes to the guy already winning.

More importantly I just don’t buy that Rustad can do well enough in the Lower Mainland. The broad, global trend is towards suburban and urban areas moving left, unless the left fails so dramatically that the right can outflank them in specific cases. I think Eby has been sufficiently radical on housing reform to get the kinds of younger, progressive social liberals who elected a Conservative MP in St. Paul’s to stick with the left. That Rustad is more prominently and vocally socially conservative, and his candidates keep turning out to be not the most solidly vetted, helps.

Rustad’s Island Breakthrough

The counter to thinking that the Lower Mainland won’t break sufficiently for Rustad is the fact that I’m very optimistic that the Conservatives can pick up seats on Vancouver Island. Vancouver Island has a reputation as a progressive bastion for two reasons - it being the first place to elect a Green MP in Canada, and because it’s wholly NDP or Green at both the Federal and Provincial level. But that’s not a particularly robust way of judging an area.

Victoria is not the whole island, and the population of the Island gets more remote and less urban the higher up it goes. You have small towns and places dependent on the fisheries or paper mills, areas left behind by automation and globalization. It’s also a generally culturally conservative area, and there’s plenty of historical NDP voters there that don’t agree with the party’s Vancouver and Victoria based leadership on social values.

Every election now we see these walls start to tumble down, even when the Conservatives lose. There’s a reason the Federal Conservatives gained in North Island Powell River in 2021 despite going backwards nationally. There’s a reason the NDP vote fell in Timmins and Windsor. Doug Ford won seats in Ontario that look very demographically similar. Rustad will win formerly safe NDP seats on the island, and people will be shocked. 

Greens For The Asking?

The Green vote seems more resilient this year than I would have expected. It’s interesting only in the sense that I would have thought they’d bleed more progressives to the NDP in competitive battlegrounds, but it’s also entirely possible such a squeeze message doesn’t kick in till the last 10 days.

As for the Greens’ chances of holding any seats, honestly I haven’t the foggiest idea. Unless Mainstreet drops some riding polls we won’t know.

Can Any Independents Win?

The honest truth about any modeling of Greens or independents is that it’s not rigorous or particularly reliable. At best what you’re modeling what province wide swing off of a baseline looks like, but you’re doing it in the exact kinds of seats where the macro trends matter least. How much incumbency is worth, how to handle “effort” and prioritization is entirely subjective calls, and the honest truth is that for every breakthrough called correctly, there’s a dozen well hyped breakthroughs that never happen.

There’s an intense survivorship bias to these sorts of seats - we remember the the hard fought campaign from an independent that wins (Jody Wilson Raybould, say) and forget that Jane Philpott ran and came third in the same election. We remember Jeremy Corbyn winning again as an independent, but forget the efforts of Anna Soubry in 2019, who got 8.5% as an independent.

It’s folly to pretend there’s some objective way, sans riding polling, to know. Don’t ask for false precision because it’s impossible. 

Federal Implications

I do think this will have federal implications, but not so much in a newscycle sense. I don’t think the NDP are going to get a boost if Eby wins, but I think this election will confirm where the BC battleground will be next year. It’ll tell us how far south on Vancouver Island the Cons can contend, how screwed the NDP are in Kootenay and Skeena, and whether a scare campaign against social conservatives can work in Delta, Surrey, and the Greater bits of Greater Vancouver.

I don’t think this will tell us much we can’t already educatedly guess, but confirmation would be nice. 

LOL Canucks

I only had 5 thoughts, so I’m tacking on a bonus Canucks section with some barely coherent thoughts after Game 1.

• That JT Miller goal to tie it was filthy.

• How do you blow a 4-1 lead to Calgary? 

• Y’all better hope Thatcher Demko is fine soon. 

• If every Canucks game is as exciting as that one it’ll be a fun season.