Premier Christy Clark was right when she told the Canadian Press it’s“the people of British Columbia that choose the government.” For months polls indicated the BC NDP was winning the hearts and minds of British Columbians. Then a couple of weeks prior to the election, the gap narrowed as the news media rushed to publish poll after poll suggesting this.

But the polls did not all agree on how close that gap really was – some said nine points while others suggested a much closer “horse race.” Politicians have known for a long time that the news media makes a lot of money during political campaigns and elections, and they make even more when elections are close. While Clark doesn’t come out and say this word for word, there are hints of this idea within her words. And she’s right, it’s a good thing Canadians don’t listen to the polls, or else we’d just all give in, or give up.

As most Canadians are aware, the legacy news outlets in general are not doing so hot these days, which means the pressure to profit from elections is heightened. The few that are doing well are innovating – such as the Hearst Corporation, a media company with a long and storied history, that has taken to the tablet industry with great success.

While it’s undoubtedly a shocking time for many of our readers at The Common Sense Canadian, what’s more important to ask at this point is who benefited from a 20-point NDP margin that became a four-point margin in a few short weeks. These are not easy questions to ask as a voter living in a democratic country such as Canada – questions many Canadians shy away from asking because they sound conspiratorial in nature. At the end of the day, however, it was a poll conducted by Toronto-based Oraclepoll Research Ltd. that proved closest to the truth by suggesting a four-point margin. The actual difference was 4.9 per cent for the Liberals, not the NDP. So even the closest poll was wrong by 8.9 per cent. At worst, early predictions of a 20-point advantage for the NDP were off by a staggering 25%.

There are voter turnout issues to consider, since much of the NDP base consists of younger people who may not have turned out to cast their ballot. Perhaps pollsters should be asking citizens not only who they support, but whether they actually intend to vote for them. As reported earlier in these pages, the condition of the polling industry which is represented as a whole by the Marketing and Research Intelligence Association, is not so good. While most news organizations are pointing out that polls conducted by Angus Reid were perhaps the most wrong in this election, despite the venerable pollster’s solid reputation, Reid did say on the record about nine years ago that the polling industry was “shaky” to say the least.

So nine years ago a leading polling expert raised the red flag, but did our collective Canadian consciousness listen? Maybe, maybe not. But recent elections here in Western Canada should cause concern. There are many good points being made in the news media the morning after the B.C. election about how the 2012 Alberta election differed from our just-concluded 2013 election here. That being said, there are also many similarities.

As suggested by several good Canadian Press articles published in the last 12 hours, in Alberta it is thought polling was correct and that a last-minute shift occurred. As Canadian Press reporter Tyler Harbottle points out, there is no reason to believe that’s the case with the B.C. election. In the Edmonton Journal, the Alberta leaders weighed in on the B.C. election outcome, pondering how the same thing could happen here in B.C. as it did in Alberta not so long ago.

In the final days of the campaign, the mainstream media laid its cards on the table with a series of editorials backing Clark, praising her economic credentials. Despite their declining revenues, these newspapers still enjoy large readerships and are therefore able to wield influence. The impact they had on the BC election outcome is difficult to quantify, but it’s there nonetheless.

John King was a reporter and editor at a number of newspapers in Western Canada. Today he runs a design firm.

BC and Alberta Elections Raise Serious Questions about Political Polls and the Corporate Media who Publish them

Good thing most people don’t listen to the polls. If they did, they just might throw in their cards and give up. The clearest indication yet that pollsters don’t know what they’re doing – or are driven by motives other than the accurate prediction of election outcomes – was the 2012 Alberta election. Polls indicated the young, upstart Wildrose Party (a.k.a. Wildrose Alliance Political Association) was ahead by a wide and startling margin. While the party is little known to many Canadians, it is clear that it derives its support from Alberta energy companies. Go figure.

Of course we all know what happened. The other party won, to everyone’s apparent surprise. The Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta has retained power in Alberta since 1971, and continued to do so in 2012 by defying the odds set against it by the pollsters who claimed their surveys showed voting Albertans no longer backed the venerable party.

Who knew, right? Wrong. Canadians now live in a political environment so illusionary that unknown pollsters are able to come from out of nowhere to try and persuade the public into believing any unsubstantiated claim. But do Canadians bite? Generally, no.

Heading into the 2013 B.C. election, voters are seeing this same theme. Suddenly, obscure pollsters often funded by unknown sources are constructing the narrative that the ailing B.C. Liberal Party checked itself into the ER, bandaged itself up, and is making a contest out of what was anything but.

Leading into the final weeks of the election, the provincial NDP showed strength and endurance – outpacing their dogged counterparts. Then came the paid advertisement featuring none other than the “Comeback Kid” herself, Premier Christy Clark, on the front page of the Sun Media-published 24 Hours newspaper – the Vancouver edition that is. It’s probably worth mentioning this is a company owned by that monolith back East known as Quebecor Inc., which in case you haven’t been following, wants its conservative-slanted news channel on the docket of must-see TV for Canadians.

The headline reads, “Poll: Christy Clark stands tall in debate,” and shows our glowing leader all smiles, arm raised in a triumphant pose. Critical and discerning B.C. voters might ask, “How can a poll say Clark stood tall in the recent televised debate?” Did the people who were polled unanimously suggest this by using these exact words? Mysterious to say the least.

Back in 2004, respected pollster Angus Reid suggested there was a problem in the way polls were conducted. While it’s now 2013, Reid’s concerns should raise the hairs on any honest voter’s neck.

In two Tyee articles, Reid suggests there are too many non-media funded polls being conducted. In addition to this, he says many polling firms don’t say how many people refused to participate in the survey, whether conducted by phone or online. He goes on to explain that polls conducted in provincial elections, which are more regional in nature and see a smaller sample size, allow for as much as a 20-point margin of error.

While Reid toots his own horn in the Tyee articles, saying his method has allowed for his polls to be more accurate than his competitors, if this is a fact then what’s the problem? And the facts do demonstrate that Reid, now an executive director at Vision Critical, is much more right more of the time than many other pollsters out there. So what he has to say matters. And it resonates no less today than it did eight or nine years ago.

Case in point: polls closing out the last working week leading into the BC election show wide discrepancies. An Angus Reid poll has the NDP out in front by a nine-point margin after going from 20 points ahead down to six, then back to nine. Meanwhile, a poll commissioned by the Victoria Times-Colonist says the NDP lead has “narrowed to just four percentage points.”

It’s worth highlighting the fact that the current publisher of the Times-Colonist is none other than ex-Hollinger executive David Radler. For those who thought he was locked up somewhere in jail for participating in fraud along with his former pal and partner, Conrad Black, Radler actually now enjoys a leadership role at Glacier Newspaper Group. Radler tattled on Black and got off. And now he’s busy commissioning polls from unknown firms (in this case it’s Oraclepoll Research Ltd. – check out their website and decide for yourself if you’d trust them), suggesting the Liberals are in the midst of a miraculous comeback. Huh? Did we British Columbians miss something?

The B.C. election supposedly became a “horse race” when Adrian Dix said he opposed a B.C. Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, which would see a dramatic increase in Alberta bitumen departing from the Lower Mainland where tankers park in the waters off Georgia Straight one after another to fuel up. In a laughable article from the Edmonton Journal (where we see a good example of journo-speak, i.e. the word “some”, as in “some pundits,” is used to somehow create credibility), the writer indicates that Dix’s flip-flop might cost him the election. Yet, a poll from Justason Market Intelligence says the exact opposite, using hard facts rather than the term, “some pundits.” Who are these pundits anyway?

According to Justason, 35 per cent of B.C. voters polled supported Dix more after his opposition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion. This is compared to just 24 per cent who were less supportive. Many large newspapers would have B.C. voters believe otherwise. It’s a good thing voters aren’t as stupid as pollsters apparently believe they are.

You’d think the media and the polling firms would take a hint and start serving the public they say they serve, rather than corporate interests that only work to their shareholders’ benefit. It’s time newspapers and polling firms do proper investigative work to show the truth to voters, and not deceive them. Newspaper people bemoan their industry as dying because of the Internet. This couldn’t be more wrong. Newspapers, and legacy news outlets in general, are losing ground to more innovative online news agencies because they no longer serve the public’s best interest.

It remains to be seen what happens in Tuesday’s provincial election, but if it’s anything more than a close finish between the NDP and Liberals, then our pollsters and corporate media will have some serious explaining to do.

John King was a reporter and editor at a number of newspapers in Western Canada. Today he runs a design firm.

Conventional wisdom would suggest there’s little an Independent MLA can do make an impact on government. Throughout the past term, BC’s three sitting Independents – Bob Simpson from Cariboo North, Vicki Huntington from Delta South, and Abbotsford South’s John van Dongen – have proven the pundits wrong, injecting new energy and ideas into a Legislature ordinarily dominated by caucus discipline.

All three are running again in Tuesday’s provincial election. Joined by a few other Independents with “long – not impossible – odds,” as Martyn Brown put it recently in The Vancouver Sun – this unprecedented batch of serious candidates without a political party promises a more interesting contest and intriguing possibilities should their campaigns lead them into office.

With polls tightening in the final days of the campaign, it’s not unthinkable that a handful of Independents could hold the balance of power in a minority government.

Among the 38 candidates running as Independents around the province, Arthur Hadland, from Peace River North, is of particular note, posing a serious challenge to incumbent Liberal MLA Pat Pimm. Hadland ran in 2009, losing by just nine points – the next best showing by an Independent to Delta’s Huntington. A lifelong resident of the Peace Valley, Hadland is a respected multi-term director of the Peace River Regional District and has been a strong voice against the proposed Site C Dam.

The three sitting Independents have shaken up the Legislature in surprising ways in recent years. From confronting important energy issues in ways neither party would, to torpedoing a recent forestry bill – making effective use of social media – and raising electoral reform in the lead-up to the provincial election, they are showing the power Independents can wield.

Being an Independent poses its challenges, without the benefit of caucus resources for researching and interpreting the avalanche of legislation that comes their way. “You have to look at every bill yourself,” Simpson explained a recent all-candidates debate on environmental issues in Vancouver, noting that he doesn’t have the luxury of voting along party lines.

Huntington became just the second MLA elected as an Independent in the history of BC’s legislature (and first woman to do so) when she narrowly defeated former Attorney-General Wally Opal in Delta South in 2009. Simpson, after being booted from the NDP caucus over mild public criticism of then-leader Carole James, decided to strike out on his own, rather than apologize. The incident would prove the straw that broke the camel’s back for James’ leadership, paving the way for the party’s resurrection under Adrian Dix.

Van Dongen is easily the most controversial of the bunch. The longest-serving BC Liberal MLA in the Legislature until his resignation from the party in March of 2012, he made more turbulent an already rough patch for the Liberals. His path to independence included a pit stop with John Cummins’ BC Conservative Party, becoming its only sitting MLA, until a very public falling out six months later that saw him go Independent. His departure and the manner in which it occurred seriously hampered Cummins’ efforts to breathe new life into the party – the effects of which linger to this day.

Huntington and Simpson have teamed up to bring issues like natural gas fracking to the fore in the Legislature. Their call for a science-based investigation into the controversial practice appears to have yielded results, as the NDP have committed to such a program if elected.

Van Dongen has been a wild card, bringing plenty of palace intrigue to the Legislature. It wasn’t just his two defections and the embarrassment of a suspended driver’s licence while Solicitor General that produced tabloid headlines. In hiring a private lawyer to investigate the Campbell Government’s paying off the lawyers of convicted bribers Dave Basi and Bobby Virk, Van Dongen proved he could still kick up a fuss.

The three sitting Independents would also join forces to push for electoral reform. The six-point platform they announced in February includes some laudable suggestions like campaign finance reform, giving bi-partisan legislative committees real power, moving the fixed election date to the Fall so as to not interfere with the Budget, and free votes in the Legislature, to minimize the stifling effects of caucus discipline.

The fact that high-profile, effective politicians like these folks are choosing the independent path reflects growing discontent with the current party system.

Though few of the province’s 38 Independent candidates stand a real chance, any one of these four serious contenders – Huntington, Simpson, Van Dongen, Hadland – could well pull off a surprise victory on May 14. And with what is shaping up to be a tighter-than-expected race between the Liberals and NDP, even a few Independents could wind up holding the balance of power in Victoria.

In any event, their presence enriches this election campaign and an otherwise predictable, often undemocratic Legislature.

They say bad things come in threes.

For BC Premier Christy Clark, today’s series of gaffes perfectly confirm that theory.

Just when her campaign was gaining ground – with new polls showing a much-narrowed 4-7 point gap between the Liberals and front-running BCNDP – Clark’s “Debt Free BC” campaign bus has hit a few nasty speed bumps.

First, there was the leak by her opponents of documents allegedly revealing more evidence of tax dollars being spent on campaign activities, as early as 2011. According to the CBC, who broke the story early this morning, “The NDP says the emails it has leaked show a team of B.C. Liberal insiders — Dave Ritchie, Kim Haakstad, Trevor Halford and others — were having meetings about the by-election in Port Moody and preparations to strengthen the current Liberal campaign during regular business hours at the office of team leader Dave Richie: Room 247 in the main legislature.”

If true, these actions would be in violation of the B.C. Public Service Act, which forbids conducting partisan activities with public resources. The story comes on the heels of the “ethnic-gate” scandal, which involved similar dynamics and hamstrung the Liberals heading into the election campaign.

Next, there came news of Christy Clark’s bewildering ballot-box mix-up, which saw her allegedly spoil her own vote at a photo-op. The National Post  described the situation as follows:

Casting an advance ballot in her hometown of Burnaby in front of a throng of media and campaign staff on Wednesday, a confused Ms. Clark writes her own name on her ballot paper. But Ms. Clark doesn’t live in her own riding, a detail which would have rendered her vote invalid.

Quickly realizing the error, Ms. Clark asks for her ballot back. CBC footage shows Ms. Clark then writing down the name of Vancouver–Fairview Liberal candidate Margaret MacDiarmid, but failing to cross out her own name before submitting her ballot paper, leading to further confusion over the legitimacy of her vote.

Harmless gaffe or not, the move hardly inspires confidence in a leader whose job demands being cool under pressure.

To cap it all off is the most serious and damaging of revelations for Clark on what has become a day from campaign hell. Global TV is reportingthat a movement is underway within Clark’s own party to overthrow her as soon as the ballot boxes close on Tuesday. “It’s called the 801 movement, symbolizing 8:01 p.m., one minute after the election and precisely when the movement plans to begin the process of putting pressure on Clark to step aside,” Global reports.

“The movement — made up of party members and business leaders — has already created their own buttons.”

It’s no secret that Clark has never achieved widespread popularity within her own caucus, but surely this news breaking 5 days before the election can’t benefit anyone in the Liberal Party. How will British Columbians feel about casting their ballot for a leader whose own party may be scheming to dump her?

Maybe bad things do happen in threes…then again, as I write this early in the afternoon, there’s plenty of time yet to make it four.

Listen to this half-hour interview by CJSF 90.1 FM’s Sylvia Richardson of The Common Sense Canadian’s Damien Gillis on the eve of the provincial election. The two compare the Liberals’ and NDP’s true economic records and their positions on pipelines and tankers, private river power projects, forestry policy, Site C Dam, natural gas fracking and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

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