Weekly Writ for May 29: Why BC Conservatives had good reason to reject BCU deal
Plus, a big PC win in N&L, and are the Trudeau Liberals bouncing back?
Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Wednesday morning.
Last week, B.C. United released a statement explaining how the B.C. Conservatives had rebuffed its offer to co-operate in the next provincial election, a proposal “aimed at preventing a vote split, risking another four years of Eby’s NDP government”, according to BCU leader Kevin Falcon.
Falcon said that Conservative leader John Rustad had put his own ambitions above those of the province.
Undoubtedly, Rustad is looking out for the interests of his own party. But it’s hard to see how Falcon wasn’t also doing the same in making this pitch — because the proposed terms made BCU the main beneficiary of the deal.
It’s rare that these kinds of negotiations even take place, let alone that the details are made public. According to the BCU’s statement, they were not proposing a merger but rather co-operation. The two parties would not have run candidates in the same riding against each other and would have formed a coalition government should the NDP find itself outnumbered after the election. The leader whose party won the most seats would get to be premier, the other leader would be the deputy premier, and cabinet posts would be distributed proportionally according to each party’s seat share.
As far as that goes, that all seems fair enough. But it was in the BCU’s proposals for divvying out ridings to each party where the scales were tipped in its favour.
BCU proposed that incumbent MLAs would not be challenged by the other party — a sweet deal for BCU, considering it has 15 incumbents running for re-election to the Conservatives’ two.
And those 15 seats are ones that the Conservatives would be surrendering to BCU. Nine of them are in the Interior and six are in the Lower Mainland, and in 12 of the 15 the Conservatives already have candidates in place. They would have had to step down and in the process give up their chances of becoming MLAs. And their chances were good. In my projections, the Conservatives are poised to win 13 of these 15 ridings, with only the two in Vancouver not projected to turn blue.
The notion that a non-aggression pact would prevent an NDP-friendly vote split in many of these ridings is itself questionable. Two of the ridings the Conservatives would have had to give up on were Peace River North and Peace River South, ridings in which the New Democrats took less than 20% of the vote in 2020 and where their chances of coming up the middle between BCU and the Conservatives are virtually nil.
In five other ridings (Cariboo-Chilcotin, Prince George-North Cariboo, Prince George-Valemount, Kootenay-Rockies and Vancouver-Quilchena) the NDP took 33% of the vote or less in the last election — again making a victory due to a vote split unlikely.
There are a few ridings where the NDP’s support was already high in the last election and so even a small vote-split between BCU and the Conservatives would benefit them (Fraser-Nicola, Surrey-White Rock, Richmond-Bridgeport, Vancouver-Langara, and, to lesser extents, Surrey South, Delta South, Kamloops-North Thompson and Kamloops Centre), but the fact remains that the Conservatives are probably in a better position to win these seats than the BCU incumbents, deal or no deal.
To distribute the non-held seats, BCU proposed a draft that would let the Conservatives choose three ridings for every one riding chosen by BCU, because BCU starts out with so many incumbents. At the end of the draft, the Conservatives would have 47 candidates and BCU would have 46 candidates. The one extra candidate for the Conservatives was generously offered by BCU because the party “has more incumbents to protect.”
But that would be a fair offer if this was between two equal parties. Polls suggest the two parties are far from equal.
The Conservatives have averaged 36% support in polls conducted since late April. B.C. United has averaged just 14%, and the two parties are trending in opposite directions. If those trends continue, the Conservatives could very soon have three times the support of BCU. An equal distribution of candidates between the two parties in such a scenario would benefit BCU.
BCU’s offer would have been a fair one had it been made back in the fall, when polls had BCU and the Conservatives neck-and-neck. The Conservatives making way for BCU’s incumbents, in ridings where their own chances were good, would have been the compromise made by the upstart. Now, with the Conservatives on the upswing and BCU heading to disaster? Rustad would be throwing a drowning Falcon a life preserver had he accepted.
In the end, things are getting to the place where the Conservatives might prefer to keep BCU on the ballot. Not all of BCU’s supporters would vote Conservative if forced to choose between Rustad’s party and the NDP — much of what remains of the BCU electorate would vote for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in a federal election, and might prefer David Eby to a Poilievre-aligned Rustad.
If the Conservatives can gobble up the remaining centre-right voters sticking with BCU, leaving Falcon’s party with a rump of centrist voters not willing to go over to the NDP, that might be far more helpful than removing BCU as an option and forcing those voters over to Eby.
In the interests of his own party, Rustad was more than justified in rejecting the BCU offer. He might have countered with an offer of his own that tipped the scales more in the Conservatives’ favour. But if his goal is to defeat the NDP government, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that he has a better chance of doing that on his own than if he ties his party to the BCU’s sinking ship.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News of a landslide PC victory in Newfoundland and Labrador, another vacancy in the province and a leadership date set for the PEI Liberals. Meanwhile, Doug Ford mulls an early call.
Polls suggest the Liberals might be bouncing back by the tiniest amount, plus new numbers out of British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta.
Majorities for Pierre Poilievre, Doug Ford and Danielle Smith if the elections were held today, but a minority for Andrew Furey.
Toronto–St. Paul’s riding profile ahead of next month’s important byelection.
A tight Ontario election in 1902 in the #EveryElectionProject.
A milestone for François Legault that could be one of his last.
IN THE NEWS
PCs wallop Liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador byelection
When ridings swing in Newfoundland and Labrador, they can swing hard.