Rob Shaw: As the B.C. campaign wraps up, the Conservatives are still standing

It's too close to call. That itself is remarkable.

By: Rob Shaw

B.C.’s wild, nasty, tumultuous, provincial election campaign is careening over the finish line, and nobody can confidently predict who could form the next government.

On the one hand, we have the incumbent B.C. NDP. After almost two years under the leadership of David Eby, the party appears to have squandered any goodwill built up under John Horgan, to such a point that an angry electorate is seriously considering replacing it with an untested and controversial new cast of characters.

On the other, there are the upstart B.C. Conservatives under John Rustad. The party has been hammered by scandal after scandal during the 28-day campaign, yet its popularity remains undented. They are within striking distance of forming government on election day, Oct. 19.

The Conservative rise to a more than 40-per-cent approval this campaign — at some points even leading the NDP in polling — is made all the more remarkable when you consider the party logged only 1.9 per cent of the popular vote and elected zero MLAs in the last B.C. election two years ago.

That turnaround is illustrative of what kind of change-mania has gripped B.C. over the last month. The question is whether that wave is enough to sweep the Conservatives into power, or if it washes out the party to official opposition. It’s just too close to call.

Much will come down to the ability for the parties to get their vote out and translate polling numbers into actual results in each of B.C.’s 93 ridings. Here, the NDP is expected to have an advantage, with decades of previous voter ID lists, local organizers, union support and experience on the ground.

The Conservatives have been constructing their electoral airplane while in flight, contracting out voter ID software, random calling services, social media expertise and other key areas to conservative-aligned companies in Alberta and Ottawa.

As a result, the Conservatives feel they’ve closed the inexperience gap. But they aren’t sure. And neither is the NDP. Both parties expect to spend to their maximum $5 million caps.

Conservatives are pointing to record turnout in advance polls as evidence of an electorate motivated to switch governments. Elections B.C. says 778,000 people cast ballots ahead of Oct. 19, twice breaking single-day voting records.

That may be a sign that Conservatives have tapped into a new, eager, group of voters. Or, it could just be more people getting comfortable voting early in elections.

The turnout is a bit surprising when you think of just how nasty an election this has been, which typically suppresses votes. Most of the NDP’s strategy has centred around digging up and airing every awful comment ever made by the new crop of Conservative candidates. And to be fair, there have been a lot of them.

Most recently in the last week, there’s been the Conservative candidate who described Muslims and Palestinians as “little inbred walking talking breathing time bombs,” questioned whether several high-profile mass shootings like Sandy Hook were real, shared memes about how Liberal voters should properly kill themselves, and then hid in a utility closet in his campaign office when a local TV news crew came to question him.

The controversy is made all the more remarkable because the candidate, Brent Chapman in Surrey South, is the husband of sitting federal Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay.

It’s incredible the Conservative party weathered so many red-hot controversies in such a short period of time without their support collapsing — and that speaks to the depth of public anger over the NDP and its policies.

Rustad has spent the election successfully prosecuting the NDP over its decriminalization experiment, worsening street disorder, hospital ER closures and random assaults caused by prolific criminal offenders. His party forced the NDP to shutter vending machines located outside hospitals that dispensed crack pipes and cocaine-snorting kits.

In response to the Conservative success, the NDP has pivoted to embrace involuntary care for the severely addicted, leaving the two parties now mostly aligned on scrapping decriminalization, boosting treatment and confining addicts to new hospitals.

The two parties both propose to increase the provincial deficit to new record levels in their election platforms, and both promise to eventually return to balance one day by growing the economy, streamlining government services and avoiding any new taxes.

The wildcards heading into election day Saturday remain the B,C, Greens and the record number of independent candidates.

Green leader Sonia Fursteanu has spent her entire campaign urging voters to give neither the NDP nor the Conservatives a majority, and to instead elect enough Greens to hold the balance of power like in 2017.

Five incumbent MLAs who used to be part of the B.C. Liberals, before that party shuttered in September, are also running for re-election — and could either win, or dramatically split the vote in their ridings.

The parties have all proposed a variety of new policies during the 28-day campaign, but none of them have really stuck. It’s a populist election, not a policy election. The most talked-about idea has been the Conservative proposal to reinstate plastic straws and utensils, to replace the paper ones that dissolve into mush in your mouth. It’s not even clear the province would have the power to do so, given federal single-use plastic regulations. But nobody seems to care.

That’s the kind of B.C. election it’s been. Mushy. Many B.C. voters seem to just want to get it over with, and aren’t particularly thrilled with any of the options.

Polls close at 8 p.m. PDT on Oct. 19, with Elections B.C. expecting preliminary results in as quickly as 30 minutes.

Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics. He now reports for CHEK News and writes for Glacier Media, as well as the website Northern Beat. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast and YouTube show Political Capital, and the weekly political correspondent for CBC Radio’s All Points West and Radio West programs. You can reach him at rob@robshawnews.com.

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