Canada Election 2006: BC Seat projection

Posted in Politics on January 20th, 2006 by Sacha Peter

Here is my official seat-by-seat projection for British Columbia. I screwed up the provincial election prediction, so hopefully this is my chance for redemption. I have also included a “Margin of Victory” column. Slim means a victory by less than 5% of the total vote, while wide means a victory by more than 5% of the total vote.

Federal Election - BC Predicted Seats 2006

Totals:

  • Conservative – 19
  • NDP – 14
  • Liberal – 3

    • The reason why the NDP are going to do very well in this province is because they are going to benefit from a lot of disenfranchised Liberal voters that will be casting their ballots for the NDP. This is quite different from previous elections where NDP voters typically had their votes sucked by the Liberals. As it’s very obvious that the Liberals are not going to form government, voters will trend toward the NDP in ridings where the NDP candidate has a chance of unseating the Conservative. This will also account for less support of Green party candidates in ridings that are close.

    The other reason why the NDP are going to do relatively well in the province in proportion to their popular vote is because the Conservatives will be amassing huge majorities in the eastern Fraser Valley ridings and the interior, while most NDP victories in the province will be quite slim.

    The riskiest calls that I predict, in descending order of risk, are:

  • Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission – ElectionPrediction.org currently has it as a Conservative lock, but I beg to differ. The Liberal candidate is going to end up with 7000-7500 votes, and this will mostly swing NDP. It should be enough of a margin of victory to barely unseat the Conservative candidate (incumbent MP Randy Camp). If Camp does win the seat, it will be closer than the 2800 vote margin from last election.
  • Fleetwood-Port Kells – Nina Grewal is going to face a very tight challenge. She’ll survive in a squeaker with the NDP candidate.
  • Richmond – In my home riding, Darrel Reid is going to have to fight NDP voters voting strategically on the Liberals, but the Liberals’ Raymond Chan will have lost votes from the previous election based on the same sex marriage vote and Paul Martin’s declining popularity. This will be a very close and interesting battle, but I think will go narrowly Conservative.
  • Newton-North Delta – Gurmant Grewal’s old riding will probably go Liberal or NDP, depending on how much of a liability voters perceived Grewal to be in the previous election (before the audio tape recording scandal). I’m thinking this will go NDP.

    • This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2006 and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    3 Responses to “Canada Election 2006: BC Seat projection”

    1. Declan says:
      January 21, 2006 at 9:54 pm

      Hmm, we’re pretty much in agreement, except Newton-North Delta (which I had NDP, but changed my mind to LIB, the one riding in the country where I second guessed myself), New West (CON), Pitt Meadow (CON), Richmond (LIB), Surrey North (CON) & Vancouver Centre (NDP). As far as I can tell, the main difference is that you see more of the Lib vote going NDP, where I see a little more of it going CON.

      I guess you don’t think people will vote for Svend huh? Van Centre is probably my riskiest pick and then Richmond and then Newton.

      My thoughts

    2. Sacha says:
      January 22, 2006 at 1:47 pm

      Svend is toast. The ring incident killed him – I’m surprised as many people as there will be will still vote for a convicted thief. Especially considering that the public is voting Conservative because they’re tired of the magnitude of corruption and incompetence in the existing Liberal party, why would you want to elect a criminal? Maybe it’s a prerequisite for getting into Ottawa.

      Hedy “cross burning” Fry is no angel either, but at least I could safely say that she hasn’t stolen any diamond rings and probably had nothing to do with Liberal corruption – her fault was that she just said some stupid things, which is better on my moral scale than what Svend did.

      I’m just glad I don’t live in the riding, since I wouldn’t want to vote for either of them, no matter which party they ran for.

    3. Declan says:
      January 22, 2006 at 7:50 pm

      Perhaps I am projecting my own indifference to the ring incident onto the riding. Or maybe I am just reading too much into having seen about 30 Svend signs so far and 2 Fry ones. Fry is a good campaigner, no doubt, and maybe the ring will sink Svend, I guess we’ll see.

    Leave a Reply