Lessons For British Columbia's 2013 General Election

The BC Liberal Titanic is slowly sinking, as the NDP easily won 2 byelections in the province on Thursday. When you break down the numbers, the Liberals lost votes to both the NDP and Conservatives. Christy Clark will certainly try to blame this result on the Tories while attempting to scare monger for the next election, but the truth of the matter is that her party is bleeding votes in all directions, right and left. People like Chuck Strahl and Stockwell Day endorsing Christy's party have only delayed the inevitable Liberal demise, they can't stop it. After 3 straight majorities, the people are growing sick of the governing party. People want change. If Day and Strahl want to play the roles of the band playing the happy music as the Titanic slowly sank, the people of BC are going to pay a price because not enough people will get onto a life boat before it is too late.

The BC Conservatives saw a substantial increase in their vote totals over the last election, so anyone trying to portray this as a "disappointment" for the fledgling party set the expectations too high. The Tories went from 7% and 0% to 25% and 15%. But hey, if people want to call massive increases in vote totals as a "disappointment", then so be it, even when the party bleeding votes in all directions has struck an iceberg. Chilliwack and Port Moody, both went Tory federally with 58% and 55% respectively in the 2011 federal election. The BC Tories are growing while the BC Liberals are dying. If you are a pragmatic right winger in this province, to which should you look to for hope next year? The answer certainly is not Christy Clark. The party which brought us the carbon tax and the HST needs to be replaced.