BC Election overview - Canada's closest election ever
Episode Stats
Summary
Wyatt Claypool gives his thoughts on the BC election results and what he thinks about the future of the Conservative Party of Canada. He also talks about why the election was so close and the implications for David Eby and the current government.
Transcript
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Hey everyone, Wyatt Claypool here. I just wanted to put out a quick video overview of the British Columbia provincial election, because I know a lot of people are going to be asking me my opinion on the results.
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And I'm going to get into that, where the Conservatives came from, where we ended up, sort of issues around the election, whatnot, where I think the Conservatives can move going forward, and the state of play for David Eby in the current legislature.
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Before I get into that, I just want to encourage you all who are not subscribed, to subscribe to the channel. I've looked at my analytics, and I think about 75% of people who watch are not actually subscribed.
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So make sure you do that. Like the video, too. But technically, the results are still not final in this election. I'm just going to say whatever's in place is the final for now, unless things change.
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There are judicial recounts happening in Surrey-Guilford, where the BC NDP only outed out the Conservatives by 17 votes, and then Kelowna Center, where the Conservatives are only ahead by 40 votes.
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Judicial recounts don't tend to overturn election results. Sometimes it does. If the Conservatives end up picking up Guilford, that means that the NDP only have a minority government,
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since they only have barely a majority right now at 47 seats, which actually causes problems in the legislature, because now David Eby has to figure out who's going to be the Speaker.
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And if the NDP end up picking someone from their party to be the Speaker, that means they're going to have to take the long process to have the Speaker tie-break votes constantly,
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unless the BC Greens are supporting them on pieces of legislation, which is actually kind of hazy, because I've heard that although Sonia Firstenow is staying on as the leader of the Green Party,
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which is wild, considering she got blown out in Victoria Beacon Hill, and obviously is not much of a political tactician or strategist,
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the other two people who were elected for the Greens, I've heard, are more on the Andrew Weaver side of the party,
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in terms of they're more pragmatic and willing to work with the Conservatives on certain issues, and maybe with the NDP on others.
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That remains to be seen. They seem to be old trade unionist-type people, from what I've seen from their careers,
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because the two Greens, or three Greens from last legislature, are not the two people who just got elected.
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Either they retired or lost elections, like Firstenow did.
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Anyways, so the NDP, and this is literally the tightest election in Canadian history.
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If you know of a tighter one than this one, like, let me know, because I don't know.
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Whose people turned out, I have no doubt that the weather probably affected some of the ridings,
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and it's not really much of a victory for David Eby if he barely wins re-election with a bare majority,
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This is really what I'm talking about around issues with the election.
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Not like issues, I'm not going to say that the election's rigged or anything, it's not.
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I have no evidence for that. I don't think that, yeah, I have problems with mail-in ballots being
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counted multiple days after the election's ended. I don't think that people are stuffing ballot boxes
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or creating mail-in ballots out of nowhere. I think that all mail-in ballots should be counted
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on election day, and we should have procedures in place to make sure that people mail in early,
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and you're not mailing in literally on the day.
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The NDP ended up getting the best of the mail-in ballots.
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It was surprising to me, considering Main Street polling asked people,
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how did you choose to vote? And conservatives seemed to be higher in most polls than the NDP.
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But whatever, that's just somehow sometimes how the cookie crumbles.
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And really, it just comes down to the NDP had $8 million taxpayer dollars,
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Because the BC conservatives in British Columbia, I think it's like $1.87, $2, something like that,
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that each party got for the votes they received last election.
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So if you're the BC conservatives who only had 2% of the vote, you didn't get much money.
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And that money is given to the party every single year. So you get like $1.85. I'm not sure what
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the exact number is. I sometimes hear $2. Sometimes you're like somewhere in the $1.80 range.
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But you get that $1.80 or so every single year. And so yeah, that's nice for the conservatives.
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But it's even nicer for the BC NDP and you won a landslide victory last election and you're getting
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a massive amount of taxpayer money each year. Plus, you get 50% of what you spent in each
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riding given back to you if you at least got more than 10% of the vote, which is also a pretty
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big advantage for the BC NDP. Money doesn't buy votes in the sense it doesn't make people want to
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support you. Bad campaigning is bad campaigning. Just ask Michael Bloomberg if money bought
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him the Democratic nomination in the 2020 Democratic primaries. It does buy you get out the vote.
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And the fact that the BC NDP are winning a lot of these ridings by like 100 votes, 50 votes,
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230 votes is pretty pathetic since they had so many advantages over the BC conservatives.
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And the BC conservatives, because they're going to get that taxpayer money next time in larger
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quantities, they're going to have a much easier time driving out their votes. That's really what I
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think is going to make up that discrepancy in people who said they mailed in a vote and then
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people who did mail in votes is that the BC NDP are going to have a far better campaign machine and
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infrastructure to go out to people and remind them to send in mail in votes to help them request
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mail in votes to help them submit them. That's fair based on the rules. I tend to like it when elections
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are just people showing up in person because you actually have to have skin in the game and drive there
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and vote. Whatever. The rules are the rules. Fair enough. But like, so this next time, if the BC
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conservatives have more money and people, a bigger volunteer list and whatnot, I think it's going to
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be a wipeout for us. The BC NDP basically ended up just holding on to Vancouver. It has become a deeply
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undiverse party when you look at the places that they have appeal in. A lot of the Surrey ridings were
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extremely tight. And outside of Vancouver, there really wasn't that many ridings that the BC NDP won.
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They also obviously won a bunch of ridings on Vancouver Island. But a lot of the ridings they
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won outside in the interior, it was either like a couple, like they run a North Coast Haida Gwaii they
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run. That one is a bit of a unique riding, a heavy First Nation population. So it's sort of a different
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riding compared to like a another, like the more Northern farmer riding. But overall, they only won
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these interior ridings if there was an independent splitting the vote. And that happened in a few,
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like, I think like three or four ridings, the conservatives would have blown out the NDP,
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if not for a BC United former MLA running out of spite, or some guy who wanted to be the BC
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conservative candidate. And because he wasn't given it, he basically ran as an independent just
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to trip up us. It was really sad. And silly in terms of like, I get it if you weren't chosen as
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a candidate. And this is a tactic to try and make sure that you're maybe considered to be the
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candidate next time. But some of these like BC United MLAs, they could have joined at some point,
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they just didn't want to and then out of spite for the conservatives just chose to run to mess with
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us. That's just stupid. Like, I don't get like, maybe that's what gets in their jollies at the end
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of the day, but whatever. So I think the conservatives can be proud of where they ended up. Because right
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now, we're in a position where if the conservatives, and I think this is a good strategy, start putting
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up tons and tons and tons of votes about SOGI 123 in the legislature, there's going to be a lot of
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NDP MLAs in the Surrey area who lied to their constituents saying, oh, of course, I'm totally against
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SOGI 123. Oh, yeah, David Eby will let me vote my conscience on that issue, who are going to now be forced
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to vote in favor of SOGI 123 over and over again. And if enough of these people get embarrassed enough, I could
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see them crossing the floor. Right now, the position David Eby is in is that he has to keep everyone in
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lockstep. But a lot of these people know that their conservative opponents who barely didn't beat them
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last time, are going to beat them this next time, because they're going to have more money, more
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volunteers and more name recognition and brand recognition. So they're not in a super comfy
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position right now. And so David Eby is going to have to try and browbeat these people to stay with the
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party. Obviously, every party has issues of people getting upset and leaving or crossing the floor or
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whatever. But I think the NDP is in the more uncomfortable position since the conservatives had a lot of
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people. I'm not going to call them activists, but like, you know, true orthodox conservatives who believe in
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the orthodox in the conservative ideology, where the NDP have a lot of like community leaders who only run for
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the NDP, because that's the party that you can win with. And that is going to have a bit of a risk factor
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going into it for the BC NDP into this legislative session, because if they lose one or two people,
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they're done. And then the conservatives could end up picking up a minority position or whatever.
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And this is also a legislature where nobody can go on vacation, because if you go on vacation,
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and you leave your party without enough votes to win, to win votes on policy, you're like dead in the
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water. So this could get extremely contentious and ridden with strife. Like, I guess I'm not what else
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can I really say about it? Like, again, the conservatives came overcame insurmountable odds,
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almost, it was really a ground war at the end of the day that was going to win a lot of these
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ridings. I was in the riding of Maple Ridge East, and we've pulled out that riding by I think around
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150 votes. So that's always fun when you know that if you didn't show up one of these days,
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we wouldn't have won. And there were so many days where we were walking through sort of more rural
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suburban parts of that riding. And it was like pouring rain, knocking on doors and making sure that
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people were going to walk down the street and vote at the closest polling station. And so I think we
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actually ended up turning that riding in Maple Ridge East. Lawrence Mock, the currently elected
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MLA of that riding, unless things change, I don't know. He's fantastic, probably the nicest guy I've
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ever seen in politics. He's, he's from Singapore, been living in the same house in Maple Ridge for 36
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years, has nine academic degrees, including a PhD in theology, a PhD in business administration,
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as a degree in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering. That guy's a mad lad. I love him.
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He's fantastic. I hope he, I think he'd make a really good MLA and hopefully a minister one day,
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especially a minister of industry. But yeah, it's really that these, these tight ridings,
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it's like, did you hit every door? Were you able to text blast everyone? And that's always the problem,
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especially with alternative voting methods like mail-in and telephone voting and whatnot,
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because yes, I understand that there's safety features in like involved. I'm not challenging
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on that side of things. The problem with it is it does gamify the election when one party doesn't
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have the amount of money to text blast their people saying, Hey, all the bunch of the polling stations
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in your riding are shut down, but you can technically vote by phone. If you don't have that,
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it means that you really can't reach out to people. And then the other side who has millions of extra
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dollars than you and way better data can just say, Hey, by the way, you can vote this way. And then they
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can get a few dozen more people to do it. It's not really going to change elections if you're way
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ahead, but it can end up affecting elections when it's super tight. But again, that's more of the
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money issue. They have a better GOTV game. And it's not because we weren't well organized because
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money tends to buy quality of turnout game because you're able to organize more volunteers. You can buy
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better election systems, all types of things like that. Anyways, that should be it for me today,
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guys. I'm actually about to do a live stream at 7pm Mountain Time, of course, 9pm Eastern with my
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sometimes co-host Daniel Boardman. So if you're watching this, and you just realized it's past
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7pm, we'll probably be live. So maybe jump in over on that. But again, like, share and subscribe,
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donate if you can in the description below really helps us out. I'll see you guys next time. And I
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will be making follow up videos on both the BC election, as well as BC politics in the future.