We won’t know what B.C.’s next provincial government will look like for at least another week, and even now, seven days after the May 9 election, a new poll shows a large segment of voters are unsure of how they feel about the outcome.
According to a poll conducted by Mainstreet Research over the weekend, nearly one in five of B.C. voters (19 per cent) say they don’t know how they would vote if they were given the chance to do so again.
Last week’s election ended with a number of very close races — the tightest was Courtenay-Comox, won by the NDP by just nine votes — and the Liberals came away with a total of 43 seats, one short of the 44 needed to form a majority government. The NDP won 41 seats and the Greens won three.
Even in Metro Vancouver, where 37 per cent of voters said they would vote NDP (versus 30 per cent for the B.C. Liberals and 15 per cent for the Greens), 18 per cent said they were “undecided” on which party they would support if given another chance.
UBC political science professor Max Cameron saw two different possible reasons for this post-election ambivalence.
“One would be because it was an indecisive outcome,” he said, pointing to the lacklustre nature of the overall campaign, with all three parties seemingly on script. Voters just don’t know what the result is at the moment, and aren’t sure how they really feel.
The other was “something analogous to sticker shock,” he said. “There might have been Greens who voted NDP out of fear of splitting the vote and now aren’t sure.”
He also noted the frustration with the outcome among NDP supporters: 57 per cent said they were either somewhat unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the outcome. (Overall, 49 per cent of British Columbians said they were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the outcome, with seven per cent not sure.)
“They’re feeling the victory was snatched away,” he said. NDP supporters were done with the B.C. Liberals being in power and wanted to see a decisive switch in power. But Cameron cautioned against thinking the outcome came about because of the Greens splitting the vote.
“My interpretation is there’s more disaffected Liberal voters who found a home with the Greens than anything else,” he said.
That is seen in the poll’s overall picture: an electorate that was very dissatisfied with the Christy Clark government, as just 28 per cent of voters said they would like to see the B.C. Liberals returning to government. Instead, the clear preference is for the NDP: 51 per cent said it was time for the centre-left party to form government, with a further 21 per cent calling for the Greens to be in charge.
If the situation after next week’s recounts and counting of absentee ballots continues to point to a minority, 58 per cent of voters said they would prefer the Green party to work with the governing party on a issue-by-issue basis rather than joining a formal coalition — 29 per cent said they would like to see a formal coalition, while 14 per cent said they were not sure.
If there were to be a coalition, the preference was overwhelmingly for the Greens to work with the NDP — 57 per cent said they would approve — and 62 per cent said they would disapprove of the Greens working with the Liberals.
