It seems most pundits believe Premier Christy Clark is likely to win May’s election. Perhaps they think if Clark could spot the NDP a 20-point lead in 2013 and still win, how can she lose now when the polls show a dead heat?
Maybe. But there are historical precedents that make a different outcome plausible.
First, parties that luck out in one election often get their comeuppance next time around.
In 1978, the NDP in Saskatchewan won its third election in a row. Heading into the contest, there was a feeling among voters that it was time for a change.
But the Conservative leader, Dick Collver, blew up under pressure and had to be yanked from the campaign. That handed the NDP the win. What happened, I think, was that people felt compelled, reluctantly, to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Four years later, though, with Collver gone, they settled accounts with a vengeance and handed Grant Devine’s Conservatives a massive majority.
In truth, it would have been better had the NDP lost that ’78 election. A defeat at that point would likely have been fairly narrow. Instead, they were almost wiped out next time around, and the Tories ruled for a decade.
Second, parties (and leaders) that stick around too long are asking for trouble.
By 1993, prime minister Brian Mulroney had been in office nine years. His personal popularity rating had plummeted to 16 per cent, as Canadians became heartily sick of his self-pitying mawkishness.
But Mulroney clung on to the bitter end, eventually giving way only five months before the election. A hapless Kim Campbell took over, and went down to a historic defeat. The Tories were reduced to two seats in the House of Commons.
Consider the parallels here. In 2013, the B.C. Liberals improbably won their fourth election in a row, after the opposition NDP blew a massive lead in the polls — a lead it held well into the campaign.
The cause, it appears, was NDP leader Adrian Dix’s decision to oppose the Kinder Morgan pipeline. The Liberals coasted to victory.
But were the voters truly comfortable with that outcome, or did they feel jammed? At the outset, they clearly wanted an end of the Liberals. Will they take their revenge this time?
Then again, the premier is pushing the sell-by date for most politicians. Hillary Clinton fell victim (in part) to the sentiment that she had stayed too long on the scene.
True, the Liberals have a potential guardian angel, in the form of the Green Party. If current polls are right (no doubt a big “if”), the Greens are poised to do to the NDP what the Wild-rose party did to the Conservatives in Alberta — split the vote.
That’s not true in every region. But in Greater Victoria and Vancouver — NDP strongholds — they might garner enough support to give the Liberals a fifth election win.
For what it’s worth, though, I doubt it. We could as easily see Clark crushed in one of those earthquake elections in which voters finally decide it’s time for a change.
I recall Saskatchewan’s premier, Allan Blakeney, worrying out loud just before the 1982 wipe-out. Every day you are in office, he mused, another brick gets added to your load. Eventually, the weight becomes unbearable and a collapse occurs. And here’s the thing, he added: You don’t see it coming.
The conditions are ripe for such an upheaval here: A fluke win in 2013, a party too long in power.
Moreover, once the public mood changes, it tends to become a stampede.
We nearly saw that four years ago. We might see it three months from now.
