The Liberals' and NDP's Strategies of Mutual Destruction

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Jack Layton is criticising Stephen Harper. Michael Ignatieff is criticising Stephen Harper. It's a strange country we live in where the main goal these two men have in attacking Stephen Harper is not to steal votes from Harper but to steal votes from each other.

But it's true. The sad fact is the the NDP sees its best chance for growth in siphoning from the Liberals, and the Liberals see their best chance for growth in siphoning from the NDP. Both parties seem to think that Harper's 35-or-so percent is more or less carved in stone, and as yet they haven't made much of an attempt to take votes from the two seemingly 'single-issue' parties.

As Harper himself seems eager to paint them as natural coalition partners dying for the chance to jump in to bed with each other, it may seem bizarre to see these two 'infighting' so much. It must seem, from the outside, counteractive as hell - and there are many who consider it the surest way to get Harper's Conservatives a majority.

Is it?

Well, what I've done here is looked at the results of the 2008 election. And then what I've done is determined what the composition of the house would look like if we shifted support only between these two parties. So that suggests a scenario where everyone who voted CPC, Green or BQ last time does again this time, and the only fluidity is between the Liberals and the NDP, in a completely consistent and predictable fashion across the country. For the sake of consistency, the graph I've generated looks only at increments of ten percentage points, even though a shift of merely 1% is enough to get seats changing colours. So when it says, for example, "LIB-10%", that imagines a scenario where one in ten Liberal supporters starts voting NDP - in each riding, one-tenth of the 2008 Liberal vote is shaved off the Liberal tally and added to the NDP tally. Obviously this is going to see Liberals lose seats and the NDP gain seats, but it can also effect the other parties too: a riding where the Liberals finished first, the Conservatives finished second and the NDP finished third is likely to turn Conservative sooner than turn NDP as in this scenario Liberal support bleeds to the NDP. To what extent is this a problem?

Well, the results are interesting. The centre column of the graph shows the Commons composition that actually resulted from the 2008 vote. When we start to move left from there, as Liberal support goes, ten percentage points by ten percentage points, to the NDP, we see that the Liberal seat count drops swiftly and the NDP seat count rises. Ten percent gone and the Liberals lose ten seats, another ten percent gone and they lose another seventeen seats. Yet where the Liberals have lost 27 seats, the NDP have picked up only ten. Where have the other seventeen seats gone?

Amazingly, to the Conservatives. With no other factors affecting voting preferences, the defection of one in five Liberals to the NDP gives the Conservatives a majority. That is to say that in my scenario the Conservatives get not a single voter more than they had in 2008, yet this movement on the 'opposition' side gives them their majority.

It continues from there - to a point. If the Liberals shed 30% of their vote to the NDP, then the NDP pick up eleven seats, passing both the Liberals (now down to a mere 33 seats) and the stable BQ to form the official opposition - but to a further strengthened Conservative majority. The NDP's success at the Liberals' expense in this scenario has handed the Conservatives a remarkable 22 seats, which is even more than the NDP themselves have been able to pick up. In these 22 ridings, the Liberal vote has dropped below the Conservatives, but the NDP vote hasn't risen enough to pass the Conservatives. Yet, I hasten to add, though while the model continues, past here I think it really stretches the boundary of 'possibility' into 'strictly theoretical'.

But let's carry on: an extra ten percent reduces the Liberals to an eight-party rump, and this time it's just the NDP who benefit: the Conservatives and the Bloc stay more or less the same, while the NDP seat count vaults from 58 to 83. When we reach the 50% mark, the point were one in two 2008 Liberals have left the party and are now voting NDP, the Liberals have disappeared from Commons altogether and the NDP have now hit the 100 mark. One hundred MPs and a turnaround where the Conservative numbers are now starting to drop again - but at this 50% point, even if the 100-person-strong NDP caucus unites with the essentially-unchanged 50-strong Bloc caucus, and even in the unlikely event that Bill Casey and André Arthur side with them, the opposition is still not enough to topple Harper. The Conservatives still have a majority.

As we preside over the final destruction of the Liberals here, as we watch 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% and finally every last Liberal vote cross over to the NDP, these numbers switch. At 60%, the Conservatives lose their majority. At 80%, the NDP passes the Conservatives and we finally see the spectacularly unlikely face of Prime Minister Layton (provided Harper doesn't form a coalition with Duceppe...). And at the terminus of 100%, we have the point at which the Liberals and NDP have entirely combined to form a new party - a different 'unite the left' scenario - we see the NDP/Liberal party with 152 seats to the Conservatives' 113 and the Bloc's 41, and Casey and Arthur still laughing. But still no majority.

Which raises and entirely different point: that for all the talk of a divided left, that neither the NDP nor the Liberals can sneak to a majority by reaching into each other's pockets. In more than half the ridings in Canada, the theoretical combined Liberal/NDP vote remains less than the actual vote given to the Conservatives or the Bloc - there is simply no way either the Liberals or the NDP can get a majority without stealing votes from the Conservatives or Bloc, and there's no way they can get a functioning coalition without working with either of them. Not based on 2008's numbers, anyway.

Excepting that I've completely ignored the Green vote here. The Green vote could serve as a spoiler in a number of ridings, I don't know. That might be another thing to look at on another day.

However, I've only looked at half of the above graph. As the current Liberal caucus is much larger than the current NDP one, obviously the game of dominoes I've set up tumbles more entertainingly when we watch the Liberal vote shift to the NDP vote. But looking in the other direction, we see a very different story indeed.

Superficially, much is the same: the NDP number drops quickly, to the point where it takes a 50% vote shift to kill of the NDP completely (meaning that if half of all 2008 NDP voters in every riding in the country cast their votes this time out for the Liberals, the NDP would not win a single seat). We have to go all the way to 70% to see the Liberals pass the Conservatives as the party with the largest number of seats - what Harper would like to call 'the winner' (it was 80% for the NDP, though the 70% number was pretty close). And of course the end point is the same - as it should be, since 100% NDP support going to the Liberals is much like 100% Liberal support going to the NDP. The Liberals are as unable to vault to a majority on NDP backs as the NDP are on Liberal backs.

Yet there is a huge difference between these two scenarios: bleeding support from the NDP to the Liberals never pushes the Conservatives into majority territory - in fact, it never results in anything greater than a single seat gain for the Tories. In fact, as an NDP-to-Liberal bleed starts peeling seats away from the Bloc much faster than the other way round (since the NDP were much less of an issue in Québec in 2008 than they're shaping up to be thins time round), NDP-to-Liberal transfer immediately improves the total combined Liberal/NDP seat count.

A million other factors muddy the issue to the extent that nothing here has any value outside of the strictly academic, I concede. Yet when viewed strictly on the basis of this information here, the outcome is tough to overlook: to the extent that 'vote splitting' between the Liberals and the NDP can be seen as a 'key to a Conservative victory', it's really only true whenever the NDP manage to take votes from the Liberals: the Liberals can fearless steal from the NDP as much as they want without risking a Conservative majority, while the NDP can make no such claim.

A surprising result, perhaps. But one with many repercussions for the campaigns over the next month.

Canada: "The Progressives", a Fiction

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So I'm looking at the newest EKOS numbers - they have a few extra parameters this week. I've been considering a particular fiction that crops up every now and then: the idea that more unity existed on the left side of the spectrum. I'm not talking about some grand coalition or merger between the Liberals and the NDP; considering the Liberals to be what Trudeau once called the 'radical middle', I consider the three mainstream parties that have left-of-centre platforms (regardless of the political alliegances of their supporters): the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party.



Let's consider a particular fiction: that these three parties somehow merged and shed no support to other parties. Would it affect the political landscape? Wow, would it ever:

• Nationwide, the Progressives have a slight lead over the Conservatives at 35.5% to 34.4%. The Liberals trail at 27.8%.
• In BC, the Conservatives have a slight lead, at 40.9% to the Progressives' 38.7%. The Liberals are far behind at 16.3% (though British Columbians are to pollsters as Samoans are to anthropologists).
• 'Fortress Alberta' remains firmly in Conservative hands with an amazing 61.8%. The Progressives and the Liberals are far behind at 19.9% and 15.0%.
• The Prairies are also safe for the Conservatives, with 45.0%. The Progressives are in second at 30.7%, with the Liberals trailing at 20.2%.
• Ontario is a tight race between the Conservatives at 37.8% and the Liberals at 37.3%. The Progressives trail at 23.8%.
• 'Fortress Québec' remains firmly in Progressive hands, with a remarkable 59.8%. The Liberals and the Conservatives trail at 24.0% and 13.7% respectively.
• Atlantic Canada has the Liberals out front at 37.0%, but it's a rather tight race, with the Progressives polling second at 33.7% and the Conservatives at third at 26.9%.
• Urban centres look like the following:
• Vancouver: CPC 43.6%, Prog 34.0%, Libs 16.5%
• Calgary: CPC 57.6%, Libs 22.0%, Prog 16.0%
• Toronto: Libs 44.4%, CPC 35.8%, Prog 17.9%
• Ottawa: Libs 37.5%, CPC 35.0%, Prog 27.5%
• Montréal: Prog 62.6%, Libs 27.2%, CPC 8.1%
• The gender gap is strong.
• Nationwide, the Conservatives lead among men at 40.0% to the Progressives' 32.4% and the Liberals' 25.8%.
• Women, on the other hand, put the Progressives ahead at 38.6% with the Liberals in second at 29.9% and the Conservatives in third at 28.5%
• Huge gaps surround age too.
• Under 25s have the Progressives at 45.1 to the Liberals' and Conservatives' 26.5% and 25.4%.
• The 25-44 age group also has the Progressives in the lead at 38.6%, but the Conservatives overtake the Liberals 31.8% to 27.1%.
• In the 45-64 group, the Conservatives overtake the Progressives 36.3% to 34.8%. The Liberals trail at 26.7%.
• In the 65+ group, the Conservatives are well in the lead at 41.8%. The Liberals pass the Progressives 32.4% to 24.1%.
• Country of birth matters as well.
• Canadian-born Canadians have the Progressives ahead at 38.0%, with the Conservatives at 32.8% and the Liberals in the basement at 26.2%.
• Foreign-born Canadians put the Liberals in the lead, however, with 38.1% to the Conservatives' 31.4%. The Progressives trail at 27.8%.
• Education also makes a significant difference.
• People with no post-secondary education put the Conservatives and the Progressives almost exactly equal, at 38.3% and 38.0% respectively. The Liberals trail at 20.7%.
• People with a college or CEGEP education are similar, though they push the Progressives ahead at 36.4% to the Conservatives' 34.5%. The Liberals again trail at 25.7%.
• Among university grads, though, the split is effectively three-way, with the Liberals at a slight lead with 33.8% over 33.2% for the Progressives. The Conservatives keep it tight at 31.9%

Quite interesting, no? Considering it this way shows a rough three-way split nationwide but all kids of variation across demographics. Looking at these stats a little more graphically, in each case I'm forgetting the numbers and just looking at the one-two-three positions, colouring them blue for Conservatives,  red for Liberals and green for the theoretical Progressives:

• #1, #2, #3: Nationwide
• #1, #2, #3: BC
• #1, #2, #3: Alberta
• #1, #2, #3: Prairies
• #1, #2, #3: Ontario
• #1, #2, #3: Québec
• #1, #2, #3: Atlantic
• #1, #2, #3: Vancouver
• #1, #2, #3: Calgary
• #1, #2, #3: Toronto
• #1, #2, #3: Ottawa
• #1, #2, #3: Montréal
• #1, #2, #3: Men
• #1, #2, #3: Women
• #1, #2, #3: Under 25
• #1, #2, #3: 25-44 years old
• #1, #2, #3: 45-64 years old
• #1, #2, #3: 65+
• #1, #2, #3: Canadian-born
  
• #1, #2, #3: Foreign-born
• #1, #2, #3: High school
• #1, #2, #3: College / CEGEP
  
• #1, #2, #3: University grads

Or, what is probably a better way to view this whole mess:

• #1, #2, #3: Nationwide, 25-44 years old, Canadian-born, College / CEGEP
• #1, #2, #3: BC, Alberta, Prairies, Vancouver, Men, 45-64 years old, High school
• #1, #2, #3: Ontario, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, 65+, Foreign-born
• #1, #2, #3: Québec, Montréal, Women, Under 25
• #1, #2, #3: Atlantic, University grad

There is no demographic ranking Liberals first, Conservatives second and Progressives third.

Québec: Who Supports the NDP in Québec?

So back to Québec. Leger Marketing / Le Devoir have a new poll out. Le Devoir's polls are cool because they're so comprehensive. They focus in great detail on a single province, and they poll federal and provincial intentions at the same time. They split the province into three, Greater Montréal, Greater Québec City and the rest of the province, and they divide results into Francophone and 'non-Francophone' (a three-way Franco, Anglo, Allo would be nice but the sample size would presumably be too small to be useful anyway). I'd love to see similarly detailed polling results for the rest of the country.

One thing that's interesting about the poll is the extent to which the appearance of near-hegemony federally by the BQ is not at all reflected provincially. Québec would stand to benefit from a more proportional method of representation at least as much as any other part of the country would. While they poll 36% province-wide, fourteen percentage points above their nearest rival, they have made little inroads mong non-Francos, who support them at 6% compared to 46% for the Liberals. They trail the Conservatives in and around Québec City, where Harper's party is polling a remarkable 37%. And yet the party polling first in one of Québec's two metropolises is polling fourth in the other. Averaging them out, the Conservatives are, bizarrely, at second province-wide and are currently the highest-polling federalist party. Incidentally, replace "BQ" with "PQ", "Conservatives" with "ADQ", and "Liberals" with, er, "Liberals", and you have rough provincial numbers too.

So Québec's all over the shop. Parties' support depends on region or on language. Yes, but with one very interesting exception. Let's look at the NDP's support in Québec:

• Province-wide: 17% (of decideds)
• Among Francophones: 17%
• Among Anglophones and Allophones: 14%
• In Greater Montréal: 18%
• In Greater Québec City: 15%
• In the rest of the province: 15%

Remarkable, isn't it? Looking at each of those six stats gives the BQ a range from 6% to 43%, the Liberals from 17% to 46% and the Conservatives from 16% to 37%. And yet province-wide in all of the above stats, the NDP's lowest is 14% and highest is 18%, a difference of four percentage points that itself undoubtedly falls within the margin of error.

It's an interesting statistic, one that further confounds the question of who exactly NDP supporters in Québec are. The answer appears to be 'everyone, in almost equal measure'.

By some standards, this is a bad poll for the NDP. Undoubtedly because of the long-gun registry issue, the NDP drop nationwide is certainly mirrored in Québec. The NDP remains fourth province-wide, which is no cause for celebration. When you're only polling in the high teens, even distribution of support is a terrible thing. It's tough, based on these polls, to see how the NDP can have any breakthroughs at all in Québec.

But the silver lining for them is this: it proves that the NDP are not merely a Montréal flirtation. It shows that their rather Anglo image seems to be dissipating within Québec, where their support among Francos is now higher than their support among Anglos: I saw a pro-Bill 101 poster recently and looked at the list of official sponsors and was pleased to note the "NPD" logo alone amongst federalist parties there, alongside the BQ, the PQ, QS and the ADQ. Their logo included the only maple leaf on the whole page. "Rest of Québec" is too monolithically large to be sure, but they seem to cross the urban/rural divide in Québec, while in the rest of Canada that very question is pulling at the heart of the party.

Most importantly, it means Québecois NDP seats, if they come at all, will not come one at a time in various parts of the province. If the NDP can see their fortunes rise in Québec, they might start to see seats being filled from all over the province. It's not a realistic idea at all at the moment, but one day? Well, stranger things have happened.

Now that's how I remember it.

Harris-Decima's got a new poll out. Thought I'd look at The NPD in La Belle Province. Accepting that there are standard preferential differences between polls (and thus they're not directly comparable), we can see that their numbers are much closer to business-as-usual than the Angus Reid poll I recently discussed.


What do they look like? Well, here's the current Harris-Decima numbers in Québec:

• BQ: 37%
• Liberals: 28%
• Conservatives: 15%
• Greens: 10%
• NPD: 9%

These numbers are more than a little different from those Angus Reid numbers, aren't they? They were, with the deviation in parentheses:

• BQ: 37% (even)
• Liberals: 20% (up 8%)
• NDP: 18% (down 9%)
• Conservatives: 16% (down 1%)
• Greens: 7% (up 3%)

So while you can expect a percent or two difference from one polling house to another, can one polling house really say that one party's support is twice what another polling house suggests? Well, apparently so.

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The Odd Notion of Québécois Voting NDP

It's tough, while following federal polls, to avoid noticing a certain number slowly and inexorably inching up, try as you might to downplay it as a mere statictical anomaly, sure to disappear come election day. That number is the NDP's current support in Québec. Historically, the NDP have been, let's face it, a joke in Québec. Given that the Québec branch of the Liberal Party of Canada (as distinct from the PLQ, which is a different kettle of fish) has always had a more socialist bent than its Ontario branch and has always been the main 'federalist' vote-getter in the province, and furthermore given that on non-constitutional matters the NDP and the BQ overlap on a lot of policies, leaving the BQ as the main pro-union 'old left' party in the province, there's never been much reason for Québécois to vote NDP. And given its image - fair or not - as a Western party of anglophones, blind to the realities of life in Québec and built of a rather alien tradition, unable even to keep the provincial party alive (Québec is the only province currently without a provincial NDP party), it's certainly never come near the breakthrough in the province that the party perpetually talks up.


And yet Angus Reid has some new numbers. Certainly they're a bit on the extreme side as regards Québec. Certainly they're to be taken with a grain of salt, or even with a salt lick. But before condemning the numbers, let's take a minute to marvel at them. Angus Reid is showing the NDP at 18% in Québec. Historically, those are unheard-of numbers. How remarkable are they? Well, Angus Reid has the NDP at 13% in Alberta and at 15% in the Atlantic. Now obviously no-one expects much from the NDP in Alberta, but they had recently had reasons to be optimistic about the Atlantic, and more than just Nova Scotia as well. The Angus Reid has the Librals at a laughable 65% in the Atlantic, though, so let's get back to that salt lick. Anyway, Angus Reid has the NDP in monolithic Ontario at... 18%. Obviously Ontario has never been the biggest supporter of the NDP, but it's always considered the NDP to be an alternative, and electoral successes and failures for the NDP down the years have usually depended on their ability to bring in a few seats in Ontario. And 18% is not a bad poll for the NDP in Ontario. Yet it only equals the NDP's numbers in Québec. More incredibly, the entire list for the province reads as follows: BQ 37%, Liberals 20%, NDP 18%, Conservatives 16%, Green 7%. In other words, according to this poll, the NDP are within 2%, presumably well within the margin of error, of the Liberals. They're a whisker away from being the second most popular party in Québec, from being the main federalist option.

If you want to take these numbers and run even further with them, consider the extent to which the NDP rise seems to be mirroring the Liberal decline - and I think we can safely assume that's no coincidence. I doubt I could find it now, but I stumbled across a poll from a few months ago that showed NDP support in Québec was actually higher as a percentage among Francophones than among Anglophones. Since in recent history NDP inroads tend to be in places with significant anglophone populations, this is also a significant stat. If we're really looking at this 18% existing in roughly equal numbers in both the anglophone and the francophone populations, then the NDP could really be looking at seats in various parts of the province - particularly if they can inch past the Liberals' numbers and actually establish themselves as the go-to party for strategic federalist votes. Since Québec seems as ripe as Newfoundland for an 'Anyone but Conservatives' campaign, strategic voting might really matter. And with the Liberal brand so low these days, who would have thought that the NDP could conceivably be the recipient of strategic voting? In Québec? Take it even further - the NDP have a decent amount of respect in Québec, and always have had: not necessarily as a legitimate vote option, but as a decent party. The alien status that has plagued the NDP in Québec has never really meant that the people of Québec don't like the party, just that it's seen as a party of English Canada. But to the extent that that's a factor, it's common to all of the federalist parties at the moment. Jack Layton, by a large degree Canada's most-liked federal party leader and well-liked in Québec as well, is the single federalist party leader with the best chance of seeming 'one of us' to the people of Québec. Anglo, yes, but born and raised in the province.

I don't mention this to say that 'bloquistes will only vote for someone Québécois'. I don't believe that's true. But I think it can possibly increase the comfort level bloquistes would feel toward the NDP - already, according to EKOS, warm enough towards the NDP that 27.7% would vote for them as a second choice (eliminating those who listed 'no second choice' makes this number an amazing 39.6%). I have often wondered what percentage of BQ voters would list constitutional matters and the status of Québec as their prime reason for voting BQ. While undoubtedly a high number, I know it's hardly 100% - additionally, the BQ's progressive economic and social platform brings in voters. There's no reason why those voters - avowed seperatists or not - couldn't be convinced to vote for a snowballing NDP, one who (hopefully) would keep its constitutional policies out of the spotlight (I don't think anyone wants a consitutional election this time out).

Theoretically, a nudge of a few percent in Québec, then, could start a ball rolling that would actually see NDP numbers open up significantly in Québec. This, in turn, might have a minor snowball effect on Atlantic provinces and an even more minor effect on Ontario. And more significantly, it would do much to present the NDP as a truly national party - something they've always struggled to do. With just a few percentage points, the NDP could even start looking like a potential senior coalition partner, and the notion of Canada's most-liked federal party leader actually looking Prime Ministerial? Well, it...

...er, sorry. Time to wake up, I think. As tantalising as it seems, I don't think we'll see Prime Minister Layton any time soon. But in this scenario, a theoretical Prime Minister Layton would have something that neither Prime Minister Harper nor theoretical Prime Minister Ignatieff would have - the support of a significant percent of Québec. It might make certain people angry in this country that a government that doesn't have a measurable level of support in Québec doesn't really have a legitimate mandate, but it is frankly true. And something that really needs to be addressed if we ever want a return to governments that have the support of a broad segment of the population.

The thing is, though, that while it's interesting to see the NDP in a position of relative strength in Québec, and conceivable that it could snowball and lead to a real leap forward in Québec, it'd be tough to call it a 'breakthrough', because one wonders if the current political realities are actually creating long-term NDP voters in the province or merely allowing disaffected Liberal or BQ supporters an exciting new face to vote for until their regular parties become more atractive again. With a different Liberal leader at the helm, or a fresh new constitutional crisis to bear, would 18% of the province of Québec still be voing NDP? It seems even harder to believe.

Canada: Understanding BC

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I realise I'm properly due a 'part two' on the youth vote. But I got stuck in regionalism, I guess... nah, I'll get back to it, hopefully in a day or two. I was just intrigued by something that I've been noticing in EKOS polls for weeks now, something that's being called to attention this week: the existence of a true and proper four-way race in BC. The current EKOS shows the following for BC voters' intentions:

• Conservatives: 33.6% (1.9% above the national vote)
• NDP: 26.9% (9.5% above the national vote)
• Liberals: 19.8% (6.4% below the national vote)
• Green: 16.8% (5.3% above the national vote)
• Others: 2.9% (10.3% below the national vote)

A few things to consider: the BC 'other' vote is actually identical to the national 'other' vote: when I say there's a difference of 10.3%, that actually reflects BQ support, averaged across the whole nation. Accepting that the existence of a non-national party in Québec makes it more difficult to compare nationwide and provincial votes, we can still see that the NDP and Green poll much better in BC than in the rest of the nation, and the Liberals poll significantly lower. BC is actually the only part of the country where, above the margin of error, the Liberals are polling less than second-best. Intriguingly, the Vancouver numbers are practically identical to the province as a whole: I say 'intriguingly', because historically this has not always been true.

A heightened level of support for the NDP and a lowered level of support for the Liberals suggests a bipartisan system of 'left party' vs. 'right party', with the centrist party as a minor 'third party': a political playing ground that exists in a lot of places, but has tended not to exist in Canada. Looking back over BC's voting trends in recent federal elections, we can see this:

• 2008: CPC 44.4%, NDP 25.0%, LPC 19.3%, Green 9.4%
• 2006: CPC 37.3%, NDP 28.6%, LPC 27.6%, Green 5.3%
• 2004: CPC 36.3%, LPC 28.6%, NDP 26.6%, Green 6.3%
• 2000: CA 49.4%, LPC 27.7%, NDP 11.3%, PC 7.3%, Green 2.1%
• 1997: Ref 43.1%, LPC 28.8%, NDP 18.2%, PC 6.2%, Green 2.0%
• 1993: Ref 36.4%, LPC 28.1%, NDP 15.5%, PC 13.5%
• 1988: NDP 37.0%, PC 35.3%, LPC 20.4%, Ref 4.8%
• 1984: PC 46.6%, NDP 35.1%, LPC 16.4%
• 1980: PC 41.5%, NDP 35.3%, LPC 22.2%
• 1979: PC 44.3%, NDP 31.9%, LPC 23.0%
• 1974: PC 41.9%, LPC 33.8%, NDP 23.0%
• 1972: NDP 35.0%, PC 33.0%, LPC 28.9%
• 1968: LPC: 41.8% NDP 32.6, PC 18.9%

An interesting picture, not nearly as clear as I'd thought it would be. Though we need to go all the way back to 1968 (42 years) to find the Liberals winning the province, whereas the Liberals have been in power nationwide for most of that time, they've spent longer as #2 than I'd figured. In fact, for the entire Reform/CA era, between the PC's collapse and the 'consolidation of the Right', the Liberals consistently came in #2 in BC. In other words, the splitting of the right-wing vote somehow consistently pushed the centrist Liberals above the left-wing NDP: which makes little sense on the surface.

Before that era and since it, I think we can truly see the makings of a bipartisan system in BC: in 1984, for example, the PC party and the NDP party between them took over 80% of the vote in BC. While there's certainly an element there of Western dislike of Trudeau and his energy policy, NDP support is more difficult to gauge, as they are equally interested in federal intervention in energy policy.

And dislike of Trudeau, and his party as a whole, does little to explain the extent to which, provincially, BC is even more polarised. Remarkably, you have to go back to 1937 to find an election where the NDP (or the CCF before them) polled lower than #2 in total number of votes: in fact, it was the success of the CCF that in 1945 caused the Liberal and Conservative parties to enter into a coalition in order to beat them: a bloc of anti-leftist support that arguably invented the left-right dynamic we see here. The coalition collapsed, and both parties were swept practically off the map by a new right-wing party called the Social Credit Party. By 1975, the SC and the NDP were capturing almost 90% of the total vote, making the Liberals and the PCs 'fringe' parties: at a time when their federal namesakes were the two main parties, nationwide.

What confuses the picture is the fact that, in BC, the Social Credit Party was ultimately replaced on the right by the BC Liberals. For most of the rest of the country, this makes little sense, but names do not tell the whole story: the BC Liberals are usually considered the main right-wing party in BC, and BC Liberal voters are by no means Liberal Party of Canada voters - in fact, there's a good chance they'll support the Conservative Party of Canada.

So if that's the case, how do things stand at the moment? Well, here's a recent provincial poll:

• NDP: 44%
• BC Liberals: 32%
• Green: 13%
• BC Conservatives: 7%

This is still extremely bipartisan, but less than it historically has been: 7% support for a party calling itself 'Conservatives' is unheard of since 1972 (though there has always been a small-c conservative party in either the government or in the opposition in BC).

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Canada: We're number two, but we try harder

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EKOS has released their weekly poll on the Canadian political landscape. This one includes two different indicators, both of which serve as kinda-good-news for the NDP. One is the non-news that Jack Layton gets better personal ratings than either Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff (I think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might poll better than those two lately). The other, and for our present interests more noteworthy, item regards voters' 'second choice'. In other words, if for some reason they were unable or decided not to vote for their main party, who would they vote for instead?

In this category, the NDP do incredible. Their total 'second choice' numbers are 17.4%, which puts them in a virtual tie for first with the Liberals, at 17.5% ('no second choice' leads in almost every category I'm about to consider, so I'll not discuss it). The Conservatives rank below even Green for second choice - a sign of how polarised opinions of the CPC are, and also a sign of how fluid support among the traffic-jam of left-of-centre parties could potentially be. Anyway, let's see how the NDP do stat-by-stat.

They're preference #2 (behind the Liberals) for Tory supporters and Green supporters, and preference #1, by large margins, for Liberal and BQ supporters. Oddly, they rank low among supporters of 'other' parties.

They're the most popular second choice in Québec as a whole, preference #2 behind the Liberals in BC, Sask/Man (considered together in EKOS polls for some reason), Ontario and Atlantic Canada, and #3 behind a Liberal-Green tie in Alberta.

They're second-choice preference #2 for men nationwide, behind the Liberals, but #1 for women nationwide. They're behind the Liberals in the <25 and 25-44 age groups, but #1 in 45-64 and 65+ age groups. They're #1 for university graduates and 'high school or less', but tie Green for #2 in college grads.

Impressive stats, all-round. Except, of course, that EKOS is polling which party people don't plan to vote for. It's a bit of an always-the-bridesmaid thing, really. It shows that the NDP are well-liked, especially outside of the Conservative base, but not necessarily trusted to cast a vote for (this seems especially true in Québec, where the NDP's stock have at times been so low that they do not even have a provincial party, uniquely so among party-based legislatures in Canada). It's tough to know how much tactical voting enters into an opinion poll, but you might say that there are people presently telling EKOS they plan to vote for the Liberals or, arguably, the BQ as opposed to the NDP merely in order to keep the Tories out (in Quebec, possibly to keep each other out too). But I get the feeling that that's not really all that high a percentage. I think that 17.4% of the electorate 'like the NDP, but like another party better'. And in that context, it's not all that great news. It suggests that the NDP would stand to gain votes primarily through some large-scale shattering of confidence in the LPC or the BQ.

One thing that is interesting, though, is that this poll suggests that perhaps the NDP should reconsider which alternative to First Past the Post to support. As far as I know, the NDP by and large supports Proportional Representation - something that, at the moment, would afford them approximately 17.6% of seats in the House of Commons (yes, that's correct: the second-choice numbers for the NDP almost exactly equal their first-choice numbers). Perhaps they'd do best to consider a Preferential Ballot, where, confronted with a list of candidates, people enumerate them in order of their preference, '1' being their principal vote and '2' being the candidate to whom that vote is transferred if vote #1 was cast for a losing candidate. In this system, we can see that some 35% of the electorate would write either a '1' or a '2' next to the NDP.

But so what? Well, the poll shows that roughly as many NDPers choose Liberal second as vice versa, and as many NDPers choose Green as vice versa. This is also true for NDPers and Conservatives, mind you, but to a lesser degree. I think that, by and large, what we'd find in a Preferential Ballot system, is that in ridings where the NDP polled third or lower, the NDP vote would be broken up, largely in favour of the Liberals, in many cases pushing the Liberals ahead of the Conservatives. In ridings, though, where the NDP polled above the Liberals in second place, most of the Liberal vote wold be distributed to the NDP, in many cases pushing them above the Conservatives. What we might find, in this case, is a large number of ridings with a nominal Conservative plurality (the most votes but less than 50% of the vote) changing hands in a Preferential Ballot arrangement to either the NDP or the Liberals - in Québec, perhaps also to the BQ. Emboldened Green supporters in some ridings might push Green to second overall in some ridings (Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, for example, or Central Nova, or some ridings in BC or Alberta), which could then, upon redistribution of the Liberal and NDP votes, push them above the Conservatives, producing a parliament with Greens in it.

In any case, in a Preferential Ballot system, the Conservatives - 44% of whose electorate say they would vote for no-one else - would be the losers. Yes, they get double-digit second-choice support from each party, but that still remains substantially less than the second-choice support the other four parties enjoy from each other. The famous image from the leaders' debates in 2008 of four party leaders sat next to each other, all directly confronting Stephen Harper on the other side of the table is grounded in reality, and is a feature of the Canadian landscape that on the one hand registers great animosity towards the Conservatives but on the other hand, under FPTP, returns more Conservatives to parliament than any other party.

Which is a reality that all the good news Jack Layton gets in this EKOS poll won't change.

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