Okay, I concede, not only was my provincial election forecast wrong, it was spectacularly so.
While I was not alone – and did manage to call the Northwest – that is hardly enough to erase the embarrassment.
So, to quote a single line e-mail I had from one of my ex-reporters long based in Calgary, “What the heck happened?”
There have been many explanations offered up.
1) Christy Clark won the election for the Liberals. Did she? She undoubtedly had a positive effect, but how is it that a leader apparently forceful enough to turn the province around couldn’t hold her own seat?
2) The Greens split the left wing vote allowing the Libs in.
True, there were 13 seats where the combined Green-New Democrat vote exceeded that of the victorious Liberal.
But I think it is simplistic – and inaccurate – to portray the Greens as a bunch of lefties. Rather they are simply what they say they are and those people who voted for them do not fit neatly into either of the left or right pigeon holes.
Look at where they won their lone seat. Oak Bay-Gordon Head is hardly a bastion of the working class.
3) Adrian Dix lost the election.
Undoubtedly the most plausible explanation because, rather as 1996 was for Gordon Campbell, this was his to lose.
And he managed to do just that convincingly. His “positive campaign” obviously was a contributory factor. By all means don’t launch personal attacks and you’ll probably pick up Brownie points with many.
But failing to repeatedly remind voters of Liberal past misdeeds let his opponents off a very large and barbed hook.
And allowed the Clark campaign to keep singing the economic development/jobs song without interruption.
In that context, his flip flop on the southern B.C. Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion was, as I said in my May 8 column, dumb and sure to scare the energy industry.
It now appears I underestimated the impact of that decision in that it obviously also scared a significant number of British Columbians.
4) Complacency cost the New Democrats the election.
The theory here is that many NDP supporters, believing the opinion polls, decided the election was in the bag and so didn’t bother to vote.
While that may be true in some cases, I don’t believe the numbers would have been enough to fully explain the result.
Rather, I think that when the NDP brains trust pores over the entrails of this election, they will be forced to come to an uncomfortable conclusion – that the party is destined to remain the permanent opposition.
Look at the record: 40 years of Social Credit rule interrupted briefly by the Dave Barrett government, then two terms of NDP government – the first of which was a gift as a result of the Socreds meltdown – and now a minimum of 16 years under the Liberals.
And if they couldn’t win this one, barring a repeat of the Socreds self-destruction it’s long odds they’ll ever win again.
So what happens next?
Obviously Dix has to go. After all, the party booted out Carole James because she could only win 35 seats in 2009 and he wasn’t able to even match that tally despite more favourable conditions.
Which takes us to the choice of a new leader. Given NDP efforts for two successive elections to “nice” the business community haven’t washed with either it or the voters, why not just go back to your roots and select a fire and brimstone individual to reignite the class war?
You won’t win, but you weren’t going to win anyway so why not have fun going down to defeat.
Besides, such a leader would provide ample fodder for columnists like yours truly.
Malcolm Baxter is the former editor of The Northern Sentinel in Kitimat. He now calls Terrace home.
