Angus Reid published their first poll yesterday and it shows the BC NDP more ahead than ever. The party of John Horgan is at 49%, a full 18 points ahead of the BC Liberals. The Green are far behind at 14%.
The regional numbers are even more devastating for the Liberals of Andrew Wilkinson. Someone on Twitter said they used my model with the regional numbers and it was a complete wipeout in Metro Vancouver. According to this poll, the NDP is at 59% versus only 24% for the Liberals in this region, rich in seats. Obviously the sample size is small and the polling average is less favourable to the NDP (I have the NDP at 53% and Liberals at 35%) but the trend for the NDP is strong.
With less than 3 weeks to go, I believe we can start to genuinely wonder if there is any path to victory for the BC Liberals. Sure this Angus-Reid poll is particularly bad but every single poll points to the same thing: a NDP majority. Angus-Reid is also a polling firm that is often accused of having a right-wing bias, so you know things are bad for the Liberals when this firm is showing such a devastating poll!
The NDP is more ahead than ever in Metro Vancouver, has taken a lot of the Green votes on the Island and is even competitive with the Liberals in the Interior, the one region they actually decreased in 2017. At this point, the uncertainty isn't to know whether the NDP would get a majority, it's whether they would win over 50 or 60 seats. The battleground ridings are like Chilliwack, Cariboo North or even, to a lesser extent, Abbotsford!
So anyway, the Liberals are running out of time and even if they are clearly focusing on the Lower Mainland (Massey tunnel, referendum on the police in Surrey, etc), I'm starting to really doubt they can't prevent a NDP majority.
If you are thinking 'oh well, polls have been wrong before', you aren't wrong, but we are at the point where those polls would need to be spectacularly wrong. I'm talking worst failure in history type of wrong.
Here are the projections.
 |
Polling average; Seat projections with 95% confidence intervals; Chances of winning the most seats  |
