MARRIOTT: Higgs and Rustad on a roll, Smith to get comfortable passing grade

Six elections in three weeks, second in a series from Bill Marriott. Read the first one here. William D. Marriott is a retired economist who specialized in public policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.                                                        

Modern electioneering depends heavily on polling, focus groups and detailed numerical analysis, even down to the individual polling district within each constituency. Election platforms and priorities are all tailored towards the ‘soft’ supporters, both of the subject party and their main opposition. Election information is intended to turn your soft supporters into committed voters and your soft opponents into recent converts.

But, the general polling by public polling companies, which is supposed to indicate how a campaign is going and ultimately predict the election outcome, has proved to be spectacularly wrong.

For example, in the days before the last Alberta election, all the polls were ‘close’ with no more than a 2-3% point advantage to the UCP. However, when the votes were counted the UCP had a nearly 9 point advantage or a polling error of around 6 points. Generally, conservative parties poll around 5% points below their actual ballot day performance.(For a deeper analysis of the flaws of modern public political polling see — Polls, more annoying than Harry and Meghan)

With this perspective on polling what has changed in British Columbia and New Brunswick in the last week?

In both cases, the one year ‘celebration’ vs ‘condemnation’ protests of the Hamas terror attack on Israel became a focal point for electors. The abhorrent celebrations of the October 7^th atrocities seem to be getting more vocal and more hostile. Voters who are concerned about these developments may look to the ballot box to express those concerns.

In New Brunswick, Blaine Higgs promised more funding for security in places of worship. In BC, John Rustad went further vowing to demand the federal government revoke the visas of those who promote terrorist organizations. Jagmeet Singh didn’t do NDP supporters any favours by embracing the terrorists. Both Higgs and Rustad have put a clear bold line in the sand concerning their positions on Israel and anti-Semitism. This will certainly resonate with older voters who actually show up to vote. Advantage conservatives.

 The BC polling numbers have changed since last week but the released numbers did not yet fully reflect either the leader’s debate, nor the effect of Hamas supporters burning the Canadian flag in Vancouver.

On October 8^th, Leger reported a surge in BC NDP support increasing an incredible 8 net percentage points in a single week, driven mostly from the young (18-34) and women.

The next day Mainstreet Research, which daily publishes a three-day rolling average, reported a +3 percentage point advantage for Rustad’s CPBC. These wildly different numbers more accurately reflect the vagaries of modern polling rather than substantive changes in voter preferences. Philippe Fournier’s model has whipsawed to reflect these wildly different projections but currently has an advantage for Eby.

The leader’s debate at times looked like a four against one pile-on against Rustad. Moderator Shachi Kurl’s prefaced her first question to Rustad (at four minutes) with “you are too extreme in your views to be premier” and then asked him to defend various hot button comments. This is reminiscent of the smear campaign against Danielle Smith which failed, spectacularly.  Rustad held his own and continuously pointed to the failing policies of the NDP. If British Columbians genuinely want change then he is really the only option.

The next election in this season is Saskatchewan on October 28.

Even early on it was clear that the NDP would have no chance of making a breakthrough. This is not surprising, because although Danielle Smith gets the most attention for her Alberta-first policies, Scott Moe has been walking in lock step and even upping the ante. His refusal to collect the federal carbon (dioxide) tax was seen as poking a big stick in Justin Trudeau’s eye. And his voters loved it. Fournier has them nearly doubling the NDP’s seats.

Although not really an election, October 29 will bring us to Yves-François Blanchet’s phoney Bloc Québécois deadline to topple the federal Liberal government. Of course they will say that this is the deadline to start discussions with the opposition parties but don’t expect Poilievre or Singh to be lining up for photo-ops with Blanchet.

However, we are running out of time as no one wants a federal election to go over the Christmas holidays, so we will likely need to wait until at least New Year’s for relief from our political hangover pain. The past week has just amplified all of the dysfunction in the House of Commons leaving Canadians begging for an election.

Similarly, Danielle Smith’s much awaited leadership vote on November 2 is not an election per se but will give an indication of her support vs some of her not-so-friendly UCP enemies.  With over 5400 delegates, far eclipsing last year’s 3700,  it should be an interesting convention.

Post Media political commentator, Don Braid, will find some off-the-cuff Smith comment as evidence of a vast super duper loony far-right conspiracy. And Danielle Derangement Syndrome sufferers will all cheer, anticipating her imminent demise.

However, this same Braid, who seems to have access to some UCP mole, predicts she will obtain over 80% approval. Not bad for someone who only got 53.8% of the votes to become the leader of the party. Although we are not in an election, Fournier gives the UCP 59 seats and 54% of the vote, compared to 49 seats and 52.6% of the vote in the 2023 election.

So the convention will be a report card on how well she has been governing and how successful her charm offensive has been in the UCP’s first year. It is  interesting to see her critics accusing her of “playing politics” or “pandering to her whacko base”. They seem to forget that her job is “politician” and she maintains her position by listening to the people who voted for her in the past and may continue to vote for her in the future. She does this very well and it is in a large part the source of her ongoing success. She will do great on November 2^nd .

Stay tuned next week where I will give my final views on BC and NB as well as trying to make sense of the antics south of the border.

William D. Marriott is a retired economist who specialized in public policy analysis of the oil and gas industry.