The current state of play in Canadian poliltics

The current state of Canadian politics has been the subject of many columns emerging from Ottawa.  The absence of a parliamentary sitting has led many to conjecture on the current state of our politics.  One topic that has attracted some attention is the by-election race in Toronto Centre between Liberal Chrystia Freeland and New Democrat Linda McQuaig (both appear to be highly capable candidates) where it is presumed there will be a race that turns in part on a debate over inequality. More on this later.

Overall one impression left by the surge in Liberal support following the selection of new leader Justin Trudeau is that there is something of a return to pre-1993 normalcy in Canadian politics. Commentator and journalism professor Andrew Cohen explicitly endorsed this idea recently:

Is Canada creating a new political realignment, which looks an awful lot like the old one? Is it returning to a three-party system in which the Conservatives and the Liberals hold power, alternating with each other, while the New Democrats languish on the margins? Perhaps.

What is striking about the resiliency of the Liberals under Justin Trudeau is less their lead over the Conservatives, which may or may not hold up through the next election. It is their lead over the New Democrats, who have fallen from second to third place.

Looking at polls, you could think we have returned to the way things were in Canada before we elected a multi-party Parliament in 1993, when the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois erupted as regional powers. Now we have become essentially a three-party country again (the Greens and BQ notwithstanding.) While they may shift positions with each other, the story is about the Liberals and Conservatives.

What has not changed much in recent months is the growing marginalization of the New Democrats. It may be that this fall from grace is temporary, reflecting Trudeau's highly publicized arrival. But you have to think the New Democrats are worried with the emerging narrative.

Another assumption on the part of Ottawa journalists such as Lawrence Martin is that renewed Liberal strength in Quebec signals yet another return to the status quo ante.

I have averaged the seats estimates generated by my forecast model from polling released over the summer and found the following:

The NDP total, while down significantly from their 2011 total of 103, is nevertheless 21 seats higher than the party's previous record high in 1988. And the party, despite ground lost since 2011, is still getting significant support in Quebec, enough to win many seats. All is not quite as it was.

TC views the current situation this way:

• First, if this is a high point for the Liberals as a consequence of the Trudeau honeymoon (perhaps it is a plateau from which we will see more gains) then we see a Liberal Party still gravely weakened from its setbacks of recent years.

• The combined total of Liberals and the NDP is 176 seats, a comfortable majority - something that was not the case after the 2006 and 2008 elections. Coalition efforts by the two parties in 2008 required the acquiescence of the pro-Quebec independence Bloc Québecois, one factor in the successful efforts by Stephen Harper to stymie them.  

• All projections from recent polls have an NDP-Liberal majority.  Discussion of two party cooperation has so far focused on pre-election cooperation. These numbers, if they resemble the 2015 election at all, suggest the parties will need to think about their post-election positioning. They had best start thinking carefully about it now. 

• It is clear from these numbers that the Conservative Party has dropped a long way from 2011 for various reasons including the Senate scandal, and is highly unlikely to repeat its majority victory (although winning a plurality of the seats is quite possible).

Trudeau and Mulcair
Although the polls are not as favourable for the Liberals as the pundit class thinks, you can see that they are already seeing them as permanent and aiming salvos at Mulcair (some of which are justified) due to his declining poll standings. The problem is that too much of our journalism is windy, empty and poll-driven. If you are down in the polls you become a target and the criticism of Mulcair is an example. See, for example, this summary of a Toronto Word on the Street panel discussion by Liberal blogger Jeff Jedras. If Trudeau drops off in the polls it will happen to him too (whether he deserves it or not).

Trudeau and Marijuana

Partly because his polls have appeared to be strong, Justin Trudeau largely received a free pass on marijuana legalization. The issue has been lightly treated by the media in substance, and discussed largely on the basis of whether or not it has helped Justin Trudeau politically. In fact it raises some thorny issues.

For example, I doubt that many denizens of Ottawa have seen the excellent CBC Nature of Things documentary, The Downside of High, but it should be required viewing. Anyone can view it online at the Nature of Things web site. See a promo here. To summarize, it "tells the stories of three young people from British Columbia who believe - along with their doctors - that their mental illness was triggered by marijuana use. All three spent months in hospital psychiatric wards, and still wage a battle with their illness. Today's super-potent pot may be a big part of the problem."  (To be fair Trudeau has mentioned regulating the THC content of marijuana.) 

But there are also other health issues associated with marijuana consumption. TC's view is that all drugs should be dealt with as health issues, and not through the criminal justice system. The Liberal discussion of marijuana to date has been completely inadequate. Ironically, Trudeau's own mother appears to have suffered from mental illness as a consequence of smoking marijuana. So it seems amazing this has not figured into Liberal discussion of this issue.

TC's harsh appraisal of Trudeau as Liberal leader at the time of his selection remains unchanged. He does seem to be terminally shallow.

The By-Elections in Toronto Centre and Bourassa
The impending by-elections in the Liberal held seats are being touted as a "test" for Justin Trudeau. However, these were ridings held by the Liberals in 2011 at their lowest point ever. If the recent polls mean anything at all the Liberals should be in a position to easily retain them. I think this will be true of Toronto Centre, where the latest numbers would put the Liberals twenty-five percentage points ahead.

Bourrassa in Montreal needs to be assessed differently. The 2011 election completely upset previous voting patterns in Quebec and created a new party system. This means there is greater uncertainty about what the future holds. Nominally the Liberals would be forty points ahead but it may be that while Denis Coderre could hold the seat against the orange tide in 2011, a by-election could well be different.  Certainly that is the calculus of the NDP, which is targeting the riding. TC's hunch is that this may be the NDP's better bet despite the numbers, if they nominate a strong candidate. But we should be under no illusion about how large a shift from 2011 it will take for the NDP to win.

In Toronto Centre in 2015 there will be new electoral boundaries that will make the NDP much more competitive in the constituency if not favoured (you can look up one estimate of these impacts here). The more northerly affluent parts of the riding will be moved to another new district. What the NDP needs to do in this by-election to be successful is to win in the more southerly poorer reaches of the constituency rather than winning the by-election outright. Toronto Centre's class divisions do make a debate on income inequality highly appropriate here. Hopefully this will just be the start of a discussion that will carry on for some time to come.

Boundaries of the Existing Toronto Centre

Likely boundaries of Toronto Centre in 2015

Nova Scotia Election - Can the Liberals Win?

The Nova Scotia campaign is underway and the Liberals have a clear lead in the one poll released just ahead of the election call by Corporate Research Associates. The poll has the Liberals ahead with 41% followed by the NDP at 31% with the PCs at 25%.  However, the Liberals have been ahead in every CRA poll since September 2012, Liberal leader Stephen McNeill is preferred as premier by 30% of the electorate compared to 19% for Darrell Dexter and more Nova Scotians are dissatisfied with the NDP government (45%) than satisfied (42%).  So should we conclude that we are looking at a probable Liberal government?

Not necessarily. The most important point about this is that voter preferences are usually quite soft, softer than the bare numbers in any survey indicate. And as we know from B.C. and Alberta recent polling in provincial elections has not done a good job of helping us accurately anticipate the result.  That said, I was favourably impressed by the analysis of polling methods offered by Don Mills of Corporate Research Associates in this interview with 308, particularly the following:

308: While other firms have moved to online panels and IVR polling, CRA continues to use live-callers. Why have you stuck with this methodology?
DM: The methodology has stood the test of time. Our industry standards do not allow the use of margin of error for online research which are considered samples of convenience. Many companies violate industry standards in this regard. We agree with that standard.
308: What do you consider the strengths of telephone polling with live-callers compared to other methodologies?
DM: Its ability to produce random representative samples is still the biggest strength in my opinion.

Simple but to the point. Many of the surveys in BC and Alberta were online polls. Such polling should always be distrusted but particularly so in a small province such as Nova Scotia where the size of the online panel must be quite small. I hope we don't see any.  

There has been a seat projection from 308 based on this survey which says a 10 point Liberal lead would give the party just a two seat advantage over the NDP.  His numbers are Liberal 22 seats, NDP 20 and the PCs 9.  TC thinks the Liberals would actually do much better in seats with these poll numbers.  I have it as the Liberals at 28 seats, the NDP 15 and the PCs 8.

But their performance depends on running a successful campaign and make no mistake about it, the election campaign will matter. My impression from afar is that Stephen McNeill has been the type of opposition leader who tries always to take a position opposing almost everything the government does or says.  He may have difficulty offering good reasons to vote for the Liberal Party (something he must do) during the campaign.

The NDP has governed cautiously and conservatively (and did not have an ambitious platform in 2009). They have focused a great deal on austerity and budget balancing, meaning they inevitably took measures that were unpopular to get to the balanced budget they projected in the spring.  This included previously raising the HST by two points, something they now promise to cut. One can understand why they have encountered political difficulties.

However, the recent record is of most incumbent provincial governments winning some sort of re-election. Since 2011 this includes Newfoundland and Labrador, P.E.I., Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. (Quebec in 2012 was an exception). This suggests we should not be the least bit surprised if the NDP wins again, although to do so I have little doubt it means coming from behind.

Two items on Syria worth reading

One blog post by Juan Cole includes the following:

...Obama’s own intelligence links cast doubt on whether President Bashar al-Assad had actively ordered the chemical weapons attack of August 21, which seems more likely the action of a local colonel who either went rogue or made an error in mixing too much sarin into crowd control gases. The Ministry of Defense seems to have upbraided him....

It is remarkable how important the Iraq experience has been in the debates on Syria, and how decisive. Even if the US goes ahead with the strike, it is likely to attempt to keep the action narrow and symbolic, and to avoid troops on the ground, and indeed, generally to stay out of the conflict thereafter as long as no more chemical attacks are launched. Whether it is possible to bomb Syria and then walk away like that isn’t clear; but it is the maximal Obama plan.

If Cole's speculation about what happened is true there is little point in attacking Assad's regime.

The other is from Bernard Avishai:

Anticipating Kerry's speech, I checked in again last night with my friend Charles Glass in London, a reporter who knows Syria and Lebanon as intimately as any American. A graduate of American University of Beirut, he's covered the region for 40 years; he was once held hostage by Hezbollah, accompanied the invasion of Iraq, and reported from Aleppo last year. He was preparing to fly to Damascus as we spoke.  

And I came away from our conversation believing what Kerry surely understands, that there are essentially two strategic choices for the US, the first diplomatic, the second, significant armed intervention. ...

Short of taking down Assad's regime, then, the only serious strategy is diplomacy and Putin is the only serious partner. Once the smoke clears from the "limited attack," this portion will be, at best, what Obama and Kerry are left with.

At this point an all out attack would appear to be imprudent, and possibly without proper justification; it may be better to put new effort into diplomacy, which would mean engaging with the Russians, if the real goal is to end the suffering.

The Ontario By-elections: a strong result for the PCs

The title of this post is at odds with the received wisdom about the by-elections. That is simply because the five by-elections went 2 Liberal, 2 NDP and 1 PC.  All five had previously been held by the Liberals but the PCs thought they could win as many as four of the five so gaining just one seemed a disappointment.

PC Leader Tim Hudak

However, when we look closely at the voting and I apply my reverse vote estimation model we get a different story.  The model essentially takes a single by-election and tells us what it would mean if blown up (by a mathematical conversion) to apply to the province as a whole. While the results should be taken with a grain of salt, I think they do give us some insight into current trends.

In the case of every constituency, the projection from this model would mean a PC majority: a Tim Hudak government.

If we do a simple average of the province-wide vote estimate including all five ridings, we get the PCs with a huge lead in vote share:

	Liberal	PC	NDP	GP	Other
Average Vote Projection	22.4%	40.9%	29.7%	3.9%	3.2%

This would give us the following outcome in terms of seats:

	Liberal	PC	NDP	GP	Other
Average Seat Projection	12	65	30	0	0

The PC vote share average is driven up by an exceptionally strong showing in the riding they won: Etobicoke-Lakeshore.  However, in every other riding their result is quite consistent with the 34 to 36 per cent they have been getting in provincial polls. The projected PC majority is clearly a product of the vote splitting between the Liberals and the NDP and has echoes of the 2011 federal results in Ontario when the Harper Conservatives won over 70 seats in Ontario.

Here is a table of the overall vote shifts from 2011:

Party Shifts from 2011
August 1 2013 Byelections
Constituency	Liberal	PC	N.D.P.	GP	Other
Etobicoke—Lakeshore	-8.3%	18.3%	-9.3%	-0.4%	-0.3%
London West	-29.8%	3.3%	20.2%	1.8%	4.5%
Ottawa South	-6.5%	5.2%	0.9%	-0.1%	0.5%
Scarborough—Guildwood	-13.1%	2.1%	9.0%	0.9%	1.2%
Windsor—Tecumseh	-30.9%	-0.7%	28.5%	1.4%	1.7%
Total	-17.3%	6.3%	8.7%	0.7%	1.6%

The by-election results were actually very bad for the Liberals, despite their two victories.  These were Liberal held seats, and most had voted Liberal by substantial margins in 2011. The Liberal Party lost ground everywhere. In two seats, London West and Windsor Tecumseh, there was clearly a huge shift from Liberal to NDP, while the PC vote share remained relatively stable. The NDP also appears to have gained significantly from the Liberals in Scarborough-Guildwood.

Note that there was the appearance of a large shift in vote share from both the NDP and Liberals to the PCs in Etobicoke-Lakeshore where Doug Holyday, a long-time popular Etobicoke municipal politician, captured the seat for the PCs.  However, one can never know for sure in any election whether there could be a double shift happening where, for example, some NDP voters switch to the Liberals at the same time as Liberals are switching to the PCs. In terms of vote share Etobicoke-Lakeshore was the best Liberal result, and their second smallest vote loss, so it seems at least a possibility that something like that happened here: a polarization that led to NDP losses to the Liberals, partially offsetting significant Liberal to PC vote shifting.

Of the five seats it appears that two, Etobicoke-Lakeshore and London West, where New Democrat Peggy Sattler vaulted the NDP from third place in 2011 to first, strong local candidates played a critical role in determining outcomes (one reason why the vote projections above should not be taken too literally). Windsor-Tecumseh was a big win for the NDP.  It continued a long-term trend in the motor city from Liberal to NDP.  In Ottawa South and Scarborough Guildwood, despite winning, the Liberal party registered a loss of vote share from 2011.

The by-elections also continued the trend of shaky polling results.  This 308 blog post sums up the situation well.

The by-elections may predict a change in the next provincial election but they are not a completely reliable indicator.  In October 1978 there were fifteen by-elections across Canada following a decision by Pierre Trudeau not to go to the polls (among the victors in those by-elections was a young Bob Rae). Taken at face value the overwhelming message coming from the 1978 results suggested an impending large PC majority. Instead in 1979 the Joe Clark PCs, while victorious, secured only a minority government. Among the PC winners in 1978, five would go on to lose to Liberals in 1979.

The Kathleen Wynne Liberals should be considered down but not out.

The Green Vote and Strategic Voting in the 2013 BC Election

The May 14, 2013 BC Election created an unusual circumstance that allows us to make an assessment of the potential of strategic voting.  The circumstance was the universal perception that the NDP was going to win - the consequence of the inaccurate polling and punditry (see TC's three previous posts). This post will analyze the Green vote in this election and look at the strategic implications.

Even if Green voters thought that the NDP was preferable to continued governance by the Liberals (a majority of New Democrats and a plurality of Green supporters made the other party their second choice in this poll) this unique context meant Greens had no reason not to support their first choice given the expectation that the NDP would win without any help. There was nothing to hold back Green performance in this election with the exception that the party did not run a full slate of candidates, something they did do in 2009.

On its face the Green performance in BC was little different in 2013 from 2009.  The Green share of the popular vote actually declined slightly from 8.21 % in 2009 to 8.13 % in 2013. Nevertheless, the Greens and most observers saw the election result as a triumph because they elected their first member to the legislature, Andrew Weaver in Oak Bay-Gordon Head.

Andrew Weaver - Oak Bay-Gordon Head

In fact, the Greens performed better in the popular vote than might seem to be the case at first glance. If we look only at the Green share of the vote in the ridings they did contest, we find the party capturing 11.2 % of the popular vote, a significant improvement from 2009, when the Greens won 8.5% of the vote in the same list of constituencies. This showing is second only to the 12.4% of the popular vote overall the Greens garnered in the 2001 election in the context of collapsing support for the NDP.

The question arises then: what impact did the absence of strategic voting on the part of Green voters potentially have on the election outcome.  I ran a number of scenarios to analyze this. Scenario one: if we absolutely take away all Green votes and give them to the NDP while leaving Conservative votes in place the NDP would have won 46 seats to the Liberals 38 (the actual result was Liberal 49/ NDP 35). This suggests a purely hypothetical maximum for the NDP in 2013 but is not realistic.

A more realistic way of looking at the potential of strategic voting is Scenario two: take one third of Green votes and deliver them to the NDP, as it is highly likely that only a minority of partisans would vote strategically.  In this scenario the Liberals would have led the NDP 45 seats to 39 compared to the actual (in this scenario the Green seat goes NDP). If we add as a parallel shift one third of Conservative votes to the Liberals the margin increases to 47-37.  These are hypothetical projections, but it is clear that Green voting combined with the flawed polling did not cost the NDP the election. The failures of their campaign accomplished that.

There was some evidence of strategic voting by BC Conservative voters.  Early in the campaign, the party was at 11 to 13 % in the polls (without forgetting their doubtful accuracy) and had been over 20% during part of 2012.  The attack ads aimed at the NDP by the BC Liberals no doubt had an impact in bringing these voters home (most were previous BC Liberal voters). The Conservatives ended up with just 4.8% overall (they averaged 7.3% in ridings where they had a candidate).

Strategic voting potential, however, was there. TC heard anecdotal evidence of a willingness on the part of some Green supporters to switch to the NDP. Would the Greens have finished closer to 8% if there was a context to motivate strategic voting? The question will remain unanswered.

Perhaps better described as tactical voting, this type of second choice voting is a fact of life in Canada and likely to be of increasing consequence in future elections, providing polling companies can do a better job of measuring vote intentions.

SMALL ADDENDUM: One observation I made in looking at Green voting is that in general Green and NDP support overlap geographically: both parties are strongest on the coast, Vancouver Island and the lower mainland.

In my next post, I will comment on the Ontario by-elections. I have come to some conclusions about the results, some of which may seem counter intuitive.

More on the B.C. polls

The invaluable Pundit's Guide points us to an interesting and revealing polling experiment that compared telephone IVR (interactive voice response) polls to online polls.  The conclusion according to a release from Campaign Research, which conducted the experiment, is that IVR beats online:

“I question the reliability of voter intentions derived through web based on-line panels” said Campaign Research Principal, Greg Dunlop. Further he said “We believe that IVR polls conducted properly are much more representative of the voting population.”

One notable finding was that an IVR poll conducted on May 13 just prior to election day had the Liberals ahead by 41.6 to 38.0 whereas an IVR poll conducted May 10-12 had the NDP ahead 41 to 38.6.  The online poll reported an NDP lead of over 5 points. This suggests that there was some last minute movement to the Liberals.  Most polls conducted during the campaign, however, were online polls.

Another commentary from Ekos President Frank Graves`s, whose poll projected the NDP vote accurately but underestimated the Liberal vote, has written a comprehensive self-critical assessment, noted among other things that turnout is a critical factor in explaining the difference between polls and results:

The pollster sweepstakes that surrounded the nearness of final poll to election outcome once made a lot of sense. In the past, most people voted and the relatively small minority of those who did not vote were not systematically different. So the yardstick made sense. Neither of those conditions applies today.

In British Columbia, the electorate can be divided into two roughly equally sized groups – those who voted and those who did not. This is fairly typical of recent provincial elections. If the non-voters are very different than the voters, then a poll can be an accurate measure of the population of all eligible voters but a flawed predictor of the election outcome.

We have now seen significant differences between polls and election results in B.C. in 2013, Alberta in 2012 and in final polls before the 2011 federal election.  In particular, on average the polls underestimated the Conservative vote by about six percentage points in Ontario in the 2011 federal election, which by itself accounted for the difference between minority government and a Conservative majority.

The Campaign Research study, which provides a reasonably full accounting of its methodology nonetheless does not say how large the online panel was from which its sample was drawn either nationally or in B.C. However, it does say: "Web-based polls are not probability samples as the population that the survey sample is drawn from is, in itself, a non-random sub-sample derived through panel recruiting."

In the U.S. Gallup, the traditional gold standard in polling, is undergoing a critical review of its failures in the 2012 U.S. election.  There is clearly a broad trend here.

The B.C. election and polling fiasco

In August 1972 a hamburger poll at the Pacific National Exhibition accurately predicted Dave Barrett and the NDP would win the B.C. Election held August 30th of that year. TC has long had great faith in the capacity of polls, even hamburger polls, to capture public sentiment in election campaigns in a way that correctly, if not precisely, anticipates the election result.

The polls on the whole have delivered. Using Pollster.com's capacity to create one's own prediction map  and based on their aggregation of polls TC was able to accurately predict the outcome in 49 of 50 states in last year's U.S. Presidential election. The fiftieth, Florida, I had as too close to call. Most polls got the 2012 U.S. election right.

However, in B.C. in 2013 the polls were wrong and the errors were extreme (something similar happened in Alberta last year and there were significant regional errors in the 2011 Canadian federal election).  For the two leading parties (the minor parties should be ignored for the purpose of this analysis) only three polls out of the final seven had a result inside the margin of error for the NDP and all were outside the margin for the Liberals.

If we rank the pollsters by methodology we see that while all the polling was weak, the online polls were generally weaker than the phone polls (IVR or interactive voice response polls are still phone polls conducted using automated computer equipment rather than human operators). In the table below you can see that on the whole the phone was a bit more accurate.

Telephone polls do have two problems today that were not present in the not too distant past. First, many people either don't answer the phone or use call display to filter out unwanted telemarketing or polling calls. Partly because of this response rates have fallen dramatically. In addition phone polls to be valid need to call cell phones, which have become so widespread especially among the young that you can't capture an adequately representative sample without them but not all do. The low response rates mean the potential for capturing an accurate representation of the population must be declining.

Online polls are surveys conducted among panels recruited by the company to answer surveys on a variety of topics mostly market research (TC was formerly part of an online panel and has answered many such surveys).

The most important point about this methodology is there are no established standards or methods for what is a recently developed technique for polling.  Some good results have been obtained (there have been some bad results too) but considerable uncertainty about the method remains.

But here is something the public doesn't know and something journalists should be demanding from the online companies.  While companies such as Ipsos say their national samples are large, as large as 200,000, we don't know the exact size of the B.C. part of its national panel (is it about 26,000 representing roughly BC's share of Canada's population) nor do we know fully what methods were employed. Almost by definition, members of online panels are more interested participating in survey research than is typical of the population. Is this not likely to be an important factor in determining outcomes?

The UK firm YouGov has a decent reputation (Nate Silver who generally likes phone polls said in evaluating polls in 2010 "A firm that conducts surveys by Internet, YouGov, also performed relatively well.") YouGov provides a detailed description of its methods on its web site. For example, YouGov notes "restrictions are put in place to ensure that only the people contacted are allowed to participate". Online polls are going to be part of our future, but the industry should establish some minimum standards about how such polls are to be conducted, and should be much more transparent about their methods than they have been to date.

BC may be a more difficult place to poll than other provinces. Reflecting its diverse geography BC is a province of micro-climates both meteorological and political. Pollsters should have a tougher time capturing its variety and likely do. Polls also have a hard time with turnout, which was low in this election. For example the weighting of results demographically by age has a critical impact (older voters are much more likely to vote than younger voters). No doubt some of the error was rooted here.

Paradoxically, at the same time that publicly available media polls are getting weaker we are entering an era where, in private, well-funded sophisticated campaigns such as the 2012 Obama campaign spend massive sums of money to give themselves an extensive almost-census like knowledge of political preferences.  This quote describes the Obama's campaign's activity in battleground states:

For each battleground state every week, the campaign’s call centers conducted 5,000 to 10,000 so-called short-form interviews that quickly gauged a voter’s preferences, and 1,000 interviews in a long-form version that was more like a traditional poll. To derive individual-level predictions, algorithms trawled for patterns between these opinions and the data points the campaign had assembled for every voter—as many as one thousand variables each, drawn from voter registration records, consumer data warehouses, and past campaign contacts.

The failures of polling matter  Our knowledge of politics depends on them in a way that was not the case many years ago. It clearly affected the perceptions of the campaign from beginning to end on the part of the parties, the media and the public. Watching election night coverage it was clear that the Liberals were just as surprised as the NDP. I am distrustful of all claims by those who now say they had foreknowledge.

In hindsight it is clear now that the NDP lost in no small part because it was receiving misleading signals from the polls.  It ran an unfocused weak campaign that took victory for granted (somewhat like that of Lyn Macleod and the Ontario Liberals in 1995 when a big lead at the outset became a Mike Harris government on election day) when they should have been looking over their shoulder.

The whole story is complex but let me discuss two factors:

Adrian Dix made a disastrous decision to forgo attack ads and insisted on a positive campaign.  It seems pundits and politicians confuse negative politics with unfair dirty politics. Negative political discourse whether it is question period, a TV debate or an ad critical of an opponent represents the normal content of political debate.  There is a key distinction to be made, however, between negative campaigning and dirty politics.  It is the latter that should be denounced at every opportunity, especially by journalists and political scientists. Those who have difficulty with this should read Kathleen Hall Jamieson's classic work, Dirty Politics, Deception, Distraction and Democracy.  The BC NDP could have run ads critical of the many twists and turns in Christy Clark's style of governing and the Campbell government's handling of the HST fiasco, which could have been tough but fair, without being the equivalent of the Willie Horton ad (for context see analysis here).

Whether deserved or not, the NDP suffers from a longer term reputation as a party that is weak on economic growth and fiscal management. The Clark campaign ads (they strike TC as quite effective) took advantage of the fact that Adrian Dix was associated with an NDP government in the 1990s that has been portrayed as playing into this NDP stereotype. His mid-campaign shift on the pipeline issue fed into this. This was always going to be a potential weakness the NDP needed to address not just through the proposals it made as a party, but through tough attacks on the record of its opponents as well. It is not something that can be ignored.

There is always a next election. This year's Liberal campaign talked about "getting rid of BC's debt".  Perhaps the BC NDP should make careful note of that pledge.