{"id":20277,"date":"2013-05-15T10:07:02","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T15:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20277"},"modified":"2013-05-15T10:07:02","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T15:07:02","slug":"pollsters-wrong-footed-again-by-bc-election-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/05\/15\/pollsters-wrong-footed-again-by-bc-election-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Pollsters wrong-footed (again) by BC election results"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn’t supposed to go down like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

First things first: British Columbians last night witnessed the most incredible comeback in recent political history, and the biggest choke the province has ever seen.<\/p>\n

In the days ahead, Christy Clark\u2019s stunning, come-from-behind win will be endlessly compared to Alberta Premier Alison Redford\u2019s surprise win over Wildrose in 2011. But this is so much harder to believe.<\/p>\n

For starters, Alberta\u2019s Progressive Conservatives were actually leading Wildrose in polls right up until the election. The B.C. Liberals have essentially been trailing the NDP since 2009 (briefly, after the 2011 leadership race that saw Clark take the Liberal helm, the party moved ahead of the NDP in polls before again plunging far behind).<\/p>\n

And in Alberta, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith made serious campaign blunders. Many Albertans scurried back to the PCs, worried Smith wasn\u2019t ready for prime time. But B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix made no major mistakes. In fact, Dix\u2019s campaign had so impressed the Globe and Mail<\/em> that yesterday it published a premature ode to his campaign. Dix\u2019s positive style would surely become a model for politicians across the country, it argued.<\/p>\n

Just how historic was the Liberal win? Going back 20 years, there are no examples of a government in a parliamentary system trailing by such a wide margin for the 18 months leading up to an election, then coming from behind for the win.<\/p>\n

And the Liberals didn\u2019t just win; they increased their seat count, giving Clark a comfortable, 50-seat majority (the NDP won just 32 seats).<\/p>\n

Those results almost perfectly reversed predictions of pollsters who, after yet another spectacularly bad call, will certainly face tough questions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn’t supposed to go down like this: First things first: British Columbians last night witnessed the most incredible comeback in recent political history, and the biggest choke the province has ever seen. In the days ahead, Christy Clark\u2019s stunning, come-from-behind win will be endlessly compared to Alberta Premier Alison Redford\u2019s surprise win over Wildrose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,53],"tags":[491,188,908,798,289],"class_list":["post-20277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","category-politics","tag-bc","tag-electionwatch","tag-liberalparty","tag-ndp","tag-polls"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5h3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20278,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20277\/revisions\/20278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}