A modest suggestion to reflect the new reality in B.C. politics: Any pollster, pundit or political scientist who predicts an election should be required to carry a wand, wear a long purple robe and wear a wizard’s hat while doing so.
Because it’s clear now all the predictions — mine most certainly included — were based on hocus-pocus. I’ve always had a lurking suspicion that pollsters were using healthy amounts of pseudo-analytical BS to bolster the black-magic tradecraft they used.
But I’ve usually parked those doubts and joined the herd to rely on their assertions to some extent when confidently predicting outcomes.
Lesson learned: I will never again predict an election without presenting the possibility of other scenarios.
I have enough trouble grappling with the present. Best to leave future decisions to the people who make them: the voters.
B.C. Liberals gathered in Whistler last winter to get revved up for Tuesday’s contest and got similar advice from Alberta strategist Stephen Carter, who helped engineer a similar long-shot turnaround for Premier Alison Redford.
Over the past month in the Liberal campaign headquarters, people kept his basic message top of mind. Pay no attention to pollsters, pundits or political scientists. They represent “the holy trinity of people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”
In the bewildering aftermath of the biggest election surprise in 30 years, screenwriter William Goldman’s famous summation of Hollywood’s understanding of its market comes to mind: “Nobody knows anything.”
While Adrian Dix stayed quiet Wednesday — contemplating whether that 14-year-old memo is a permanent albatross around his neck — Premier Christy Clark told reporters she had a sense of momentum building throughout the campaign, particularly after the TV debate.
No clear winner was declared after that 90-minute showdown. But a veteran NDP campaigner taught me a trick Tuesday night as the full horror for his party was dawning. He watched the debate with the mute on. And he said Clark crushed Dix and the other two leaders, based solely on presentation and appearance, which is mostly what TV is about.
There was also the simple, endlessly repeated campaign message: B.C. Liberals are about jobs, economy, family security. The NDP isn’t.
“Every day, I felt like British Columbians were keying in on the message of thinking about the economy,” she said.
Clark also noted more than a million people watched the TV debate and saw the leaders explain in direct and unfiltered fashion what they wanted to do with B.C.
Although Clark credited Dix with being a tough competitor and hard worker, she said his pipeline switch was another key.
“The idea you’re going to say no to economic development before you even see it. That was part of it, this issue of who’s going to say yes to economic development and yes to growing the economy .... Being clear on where you stand really matters.”
She also provided the pithiest summary of the epic failure of the polls, and in turn, the commentary. “You guys get this stuff for free and you should take it for what it’s worth.”
Polls don’t tell how people are going to vote. They reflect how people think they might vote.
“It’s like me asking you what you’re going to have for dinner a month from now. ‘Maybe it’s chicken, maybe it’s steak, I don’t know.’ ”
Clark, who will shortly begin her second brief stint as an unelected premier, will go down in history as the leader of one of the most audacious, improbable comebacks in history.
And the B.C. Liberal Party she took over with zero support from the caucus is now entirely her own.
It’s split evenly at this point between 25 returning MLAs and 25 newcomers, all of them recruited personally by her to gamble their futures.
Just So You Know: An NDP friend at the party’s E-night gathering brought along a copy of the Vancouver newspaper front-page ad the Liberals bought, portraying Clark as “the Comeback Kid.”
It would have been a great ironic gag, if it had gone the way it was expected.
Instead, it turned out to be the only front page during the campaign that essentially got it right.
