Yesterday I was asking if the BC Liberals were ahead. The answer was a likely yes. And then we got a new poll from Justason putting the party of Christy Clark well ahead, 39% vs 34%, thus confirming what I was saying. This firm previously had the party of John Horgan ahead, then a statistical tie and now this.

We won't know for sure until we get the last polls from everybody, in particular Mainstreet, but it's pretty clear the trend is positive for the Liberals.

Also, Google Trends confirms, hum, the trend:

 

The most up to date projections are below. If you want the details, go to BC election page.

There are a high number of really close races (look at the riding by riding projections available on the BC election page). This is why the NDP remains in this contest. But it's getting to the point where this party will need to hope for the polls to have underestimated it.

If you want to see the possible distribution of seats, here they are (again, I put the Green on another graph because the x-axis is very different for them).

So the race isn't 50-50 anymore, it remains one of the most uncertain elections I've ever covered on this site.

By the way, I invite you to read my article about trying to use Twitter to predict the election.

Polls have started showing the BC Liberals ahead but we'll have to wait until Monday and the final set of numbers to make a definitive call. In the meantime, let's try to predict this election using other indicators.

I already did Google Trends before and I have an update later today. Let's try Twitter for now.

I went and collected the number of followers of every candidate (well of the main three parties) in the 87 ridings. The idea being that this could potentially serve as a closer indicator of the strength of the respective campaigns than using province-wide polling numbers. Doing so, I noticed a few things:

- There are quite a lot of candidates who don't really have a social media presence or campaign. This is especially the case outside of the Lower Mainland. I was surprised, for instance, to see many NDP candidates without an official Twitter account (when you click on the twitter logo on the page, it redirects you to the NDP's official twitter). You'd think that in 2017 every candidate would have some sort of social media campaign.

- In some situations, especially outside the Lower Mainland, some candidates were clearly focusing more on Facebook than Twitter. So in these situations, I used the number of "like" on their page instead.

- You can use most of the non-existing campaigns to get an idea of which seat each party isn't even challenging for. There are exceptions but overall, the pattern is there.

- I feel like the Twitter approach is most likely better suited to get an insight on the races in the Lower Mainland.

- Incumbents have a huge lead over newcomers. This isn't surprising but the extend of the difference was, at least to me.

Because of the last point, we can't simply compare the number of Twitter followers directly. If you did, you'd mostly get that every seat will be won by the incumbent. Specifically, you'd get the following results if you simply predict whoever has the most followers to win:

BC Liberals: 50

BC NDP: 29

BC Green: 8

I'm sure some of you want to know where are the 8 Green seats. Here is the list:

Cowichan-Valley

Maple Ridge - Pitt Meadows

Oak Bay - Gordon Head

Richmond South Centre

Saanich North and the Islands

Vancouver False creek

Vancouver Langara

Ok so Cowichan Valley, Saanich and OBGH can all make sense. Maple Ridge and Richmond? I don't think there is a snowball chance in hell of the Green winning there.

The real issue with the exercise here is the advantage of the incumbent. Some might argue that this edge actually exists but I disagree. Just think about it: if the BC Liberals were last in the polls at 20%, using the raw number of followers would still project a ton of seats to go Liberals. Simply because these followers existed before and most likely didn't unfollow. We need to find a way to correct for this problem.

So here is what I did:

1. Calculate the average number of followers by region (Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and Rest of BC) for incumbents and non-incumbents.

2. Calculate the average ratio of followers for incumbents to non-incumbents, in each region. If you are curious, in the Lower Mainland, a typical incumbent would have 3500 followers while a challenger would be at 500, that's a ratio of 6.9. The ratio is 4.9 on the Island and 4.3 in the Interior (Note: I excluded Christy Clark from the average because her 93k followers were just skewing the average; Clark is a super star and very different from anybody else in BC politics).

3. For each incumbent, divide their number of followers by the ratio of the region. Again, this is done in order to scale the numbers to be able to compare them.

4. Look who has the highest number of followers in a riding and declare this person the winner.

Doing so gave me the following results:

BC Liberals: 42 seats

BC NDP: 28 seats

BC Green: 17

Compared to my most recent projections, the call is different in 41 ridings! Here are some examples.

Abbotsford South. Projections have the Liberals Darryl Plecas with a 100% chance of winning. But he only has 2475 followers. For an incumbent in the Lower Mainland, that isn't very impressive. Plus he's facing a Green candidate, Aird Flavelle, who had 1012 followers when I collected the data. Once we remove the advantage of being the incumbent, we'd actually have the Green candidate ahead.

Another example is Burnaby Loogheed where former morning news anchor at Global, Steve Darling, is running for the Liberals. With 21k followers, he has the second highest total in BC behind Christy Clark. And he's well ahead of anybody else running there (there isn't an incumbent). Yet the projections have the seat leaning NDP (and yes, the model does take into account the loss of the incumbent for the NDP).

So, does it work? Quick answer: not really. Or at least I haven't found a way to really use the data. Because it doesn't make sense for 41 seats out of 87 to be projected differently (even in a bad night my model won't make that many mistakes). And there is just no way the Green party will win 17 seats with around 20% of the vote (of course, maybe the Twitter numbers are telling us the polls are wrong but they'd have to be really dead wrong).

Are the Twitter followers completely useless? No, I don't think so. First of all, going over one by one, it allowed me to identify some strong candidates in some key ridings. Steve Darling has the profile of a star candidate, so does Barb Desjardin in Esquimalt-Metchosin (three terms mayor). So is Jenny Sims in Surrey Panorama. There are some cases where it's obvious the Twitter followers are indicative of something. The problem is that there are many cases where it most likely doesn't provide any indication at all.

As a last try, what about looking only at the ridings without an incumbent? For instance the new ridings or the ones where the incumbent retired. here is the list:

Burnaby Lougheed: As mentioned, projections have NDP, Twitter has Liberals

Columbia River - Revelstoke: leaning NDP for both

Courtenay - Comox: leaning Liberals in both

Cowichan - Valley: Green in both

Delta South: Liberals in both

Esquimalt - Metchosin: NDP in the projections, Liberals for Twitter

Kamloops - North Thompson: Liberals

Kootenay East: Liberals in both

Peace River North: Liberals in both (Note: also, Twitter shows us that the independent candidate will likely do a good score)

Richmond - Queensborough: Liberals in both (but all three candidates have a relatively high number of Twitter followers)

Skeena: NDP according to projections, leaning Liberals in followers

Surrey - Green Timbers: Liberals in followers, NDP in proj.

Surrey - White Rock: Dead heat in followers, easily Liberals in projections

Vancouver - Langara: Leaning Liberals in projections (with NDP close behind), heavily Green based on followers

So that's 14 ridings. With 4-5 (depending on how you look at Surrey-White Rock) with a different prediction. Interesting that a lot of the discrepancies are in Surrey, where advance voting seems to indicate a rise in turnout. I guess we'll have to keep an eye on Surrey this Tuesday.

I also think that the Twitter followers might indicate a tough path for the Green in their conquest of more than 3 seats. While it confirms that they are in the race in Cowichan-Valley and that Saanich and the Islands seems to have a really popular Green candidate -so the two seats we are already projecting to go Green - it also shows them way behind in Esquimalt-Metchosin, Saanich South or in the two Victoria ridings. So at this point, I don't have any compelling reason to boost the Green candidates in those ridings. Sure this party might win these seats on Tuesday, but I can't start simply making up boosts without any valid reason.

Yesterday we got two new polls and we can indeed wonder if the BC Liberals aren't now ahead. The first one, in the morning, was from Angus-Reid. It seems the long time pollster finally decided to enter the BC election. Notice the convenient timing: early enough that if the poll is wrong, they can say that people changed their mind at the end, but late enough that they can claim victory if they were right. This poll confirmed my suspicion that this is essentially a tied race with the BC Liberals at 40% and the BC NDP at 41%. This is after redistributing proportionally 19% of undecided. Remember that doing so means you either assume that all the undecided will ultimately not vote (a very strong assumption) or that they will all ultimately vote like the decided and leaning (another strong assumption. After all, it'd mean decided and undecided are the same). If you assume on the other hand that undecided have a tendency to vote a little bit more for the safe incumbent instead, then the BC Liberals are likely ahead.

This poll has some interesting questions. In particular, you see that a plurality of voters still think Christy Clark would do a better Premier. Maybe more important, a plurality also believe that the BC Liberals would be able to provide the best overall government. This is despite Clark being less popular than Horgan and despite the BC NDP's policies being preferred. If there is a "surprise" on Tuesday, please remember this question.

Then we got the first poll from Innovative Research. Actually three polls but all published at once in multiple pdf, including one with 101 pages (it's not a typo!). Innovative uses online panels as well as live-interviewers phone poll (something rare in Canada nowadays). So I was pretty excited to get this poll. Except that for some reason, Innovative still includes the BC Conservatives and they have this party at 7%! This pretty much invalidates the rest of the poll (the pdf is still full of useful info though) and I can't really do anything with it. Assuming we believe the numbers, the Liberals are ahead 34 to 31, with 9% of undecided. According to the second choices of the BC Cons voters, they favour the Liberals at 33% versus 22% for the BC NDP. Thus, if we redistribute the BC Cons votes, we get the BC Liberals at 42.5%, the NDP at 37% and the Green at 18%. I have NOT included this poll in my average as it relies on an iffy redistribution of voters who somehow still believe the BC Conservative party exists. With that said, the numbers from Innovative are maybe an indication that the Liberals are underestimated again in the polls. So I'm not included it but it makes me feel more comfortable about my own average putting the Liberals ahead.

Anyway, adding Angus-Reid to my average, I now have the following projections:

Voting intentions; Seat projections with 95% confidence intervals; Chances of winning the most seats

And yes I have the BC Liberals ahead (and favourite based on the probabilities). Some of you will most likely wonder why I have such different projections from the CBC forecast. To which I would respond two things. First of all, 44 seats to 40 is not that different from 40 to 44, especially once you realize there are many close races. Secondly, it's because I don't allocate undecided proportionally as I mentioned above. Remember that if you hate this assumption and you prefer to use a different one, then you can always use the simulator with your own numbers.

While the CBC forecast and my projections aren't too far in terms of seats, they differ totally in terms of probabilities. Oh well, I have full confidence in my simulations as they have proven over time to be very accurate. I think pretending the BC NDP has a 72% chances of winning is being delusional.

We'll see if the last wave of polls this weekend and until Monday pick up a last minute trend or confirm the one seen this the debate - an increase of the Liberals. I think the probabilities will remain close though, which means that the final projections won't be as assertive as I usually am. Oh well, at least if I'm wrong I'll be able to say that there was a lot of uncertainty.

Speaking of uncertainty, here is a list of factors or variables that can introduce error in my forecast: accuracy of the polls, region specific swings, effects of the turnout, the fact the Greens are surging and running more candidates, the fact the BC Conservatives are pretty much non-existent but had multiple ridings above 10% last time, the new electoral map, etc. yes it's a long list. Remember that doing riding-level projections is not the most precise science out there. Please do not have unrealistic expectations.

Keeping all of this in mind, here are the possible outcomes:

I won't expand too much for this blog post as I'm working hard trying to collect all the social data from the candidates in every riding. And I'll keep my detailed analysis for my final post on Monday. In the meantime, below is the riding-by-riding forecast.

The latest numbers from Mainstreet confirm the trend seen elsewhere while simultaneously adding to the already existing uncertainty. I say it confirmed the trend because, compared to the previous Mainstreet poll, we see the BC Liberals up, the BC NDP down and the the Green stable. This, except maybe for the Green, lines up with the trends observed in Ipsos and Justason. But the actual numbers are different. While the previous two polls had the Liberals slightly ahead, Mainstreet continues to show John Horgan and his party ahead (Note: yes, there was also this Forum poll with a huge NDP lead but I'm not including a poll that has the BC Conservatives at 7% because it makes no sense at all).

So, are the polls just not agreeing with each other? Is it a simple question of online (Ipsos, Justason) versus IVR methodology? Maybe, but there is another possibility: they all have a share of the truth. Indeed, it's totally possible that the true voting intentions are around 39-40 for the main two parties and polls are simply varying because of the margins of error. Some polls will have one party ahead while another will show the opposite. If that's the case, doing an average should solve our problems.

I actually think that this might be what is happening. Let's compare the latest Ipsos to this Mainstreet. Before the redistribution of undecided voters, Ipsos had Lib at 34, NDP at 33 and Green at 11. Mainstreet has, respectively, 31, 35 and 17. No question that the Green party is different, but let's focus on the top two. 34-33 vs 31-35 isn't fundamentally different. Given the sample sizes, that's actually perfectly normal.

Personally, I'm not going to try to guess who is "right". It would be arbitrary (I could be lucky though). And I truly believe that the best description of the race is that it's very close between the top two. This theory is fully compatible with what we see in the polls (again, outside Forum), so that works for me.

Before we look at the projections, here are some observations:

- Pollsters almost all agree regarding the NDP, it's the Liberals and Green that fluctuate.

- The previous Mainstreet poll, with a NDP lead of 10 points, was likely an outlier. This one poll did create a  narrative for the mid section of the campaign though. It's unfortunate that many polling firms are staying out of this BC race because they are scared.

- The Greens have actually increased by 1 points among all voters in Mainstreet but dropped by 1 points among decided and leaning. It means this party dropped among the leaning voters (that aren't published by Mainstreet). It's kinda weird.

I added this poll into the average and the projections have been updated, as you can see below.

Voting intentions; Seat projections with 95% confidence intervals; Chances of winning the most seats

It's becoming fairly obvious that my final projections on Monday won't be able to pick a winner with a high certainty. That'd require a massive last minute swing (in favour of one or another) and we'd need last minute polls to pick it up. So just start accepting the possibility that next Tuesday's election will likely be the most uncertain in recent years. also, please notice that uncertain doesn't necessarily mean close. What it means is that based on the information we have, there are a wide range of possible outcomes.

Yes, the projections are back to showing the NDP ahead but with lower chances of winning. It was already the case weeks ago. It isn't a mistake. This is happening because one source of uncertainty is the score of the Green party. If it outperforms the polls (or is very efficient on the Island), it'll win more than 3 seats and that will eat into the NDP's total. So this source of uncertainty -a significant one- is mostly affecting the NDP and not the Liberals. Therefore the seat total for the NDP is more uncertain and the chances are lower. Weird but logical after the explanation (at least I hope so).

Speaking of the Green, they are stable but are still only projected at 3 seats. Yes the Green party will do much better than 4 years ago but that doesn't guarantee seats under our electoral system. I don't use regional numbers directly for my projections but I do follow them. The raw poll average on the Island has the Liberals 28.6%, the NDP at 39.6% and the Green at 29.3%. That only represents a drop of 5 points for the NDP that is still comfortably ahead. Of course, the Greens have chances in Victoria and around the city (mostly), so the percentages Island-wide aren't necessarily the most useful, but still. If the Greens are going to surge on the Island and win 5-6 seats, they'll likely need to be higher than 29% -and barely being ahead of the Liberals. Or they can stay at 29% and just concentrate their support in these 5-6 ridings. That works but it's harder and I can't really predict that.

What about other indicators?

Maybe we focus too much on the voting intentions, the "top line" numbers. What about leadership and best Premier? Mainstreet has Clark at 33% and Horgan at 35%, Ipsos has 29 vs 26 respectively. Again, this is showing a tight race.

Also, what about Google Trends? If we look for the parties since the beginning of this election, we see a tight race between Liberals and NDP.

 

If you search for the leaders, Clark is still way, way ahead of the other two. Comparing to 2013, it seems the party searches are a better indicator but it remains that John Horgan simply isn't enough known and that might hurt the NDP at the end.

Finally, the issues, you know, that thing voters pretend to really care about. Polls have shown Horgan to be more relatable ("sharing your values") and better than Clark on the top two issues of healthcare and housing. At the same time, Clark is seen as a better speaker, better for the economy and job as well as public finances. So there as well, it's mostly a wash. Maybe worrisome for Horgan, the Insight West poll shows that 53% of respondents don't know if he would be a good economic manager. It's better than thinking he'd bad but it's not great either. Undecided voters might care more about the economic stability of the province and that could give Clark the edge she needs to remain Premier.

Anyway, as a conclusion, here are the detailed projections. As always, remember that you can make your own using the simulator.

Justin Trudeau got his (large) majority in part because of an increase in turnout (in particular in the key ridings). Others have also pointed out to the fact that quite often, there are more migrations to and from the non-voters than between parties. In other words, forget about the mystical "swing voter" and focus on trying tom get new people to vote for you.

An increase (or big change in) turnout usually also mean that polls would be less accurate and so would be my projections (yes, I'm already looking for excuses!).

With the BC election getting as close as it gets thanks to the two most recent polls (first two to actually show the Liberals ahead; I'm ignoring the Forum poll that still puts the BC Cons at 7% lol), should we also expect an increase in turnout that would add a layer of uncertainty to this already hard-to-call election? Let's look at the preliminary numbers from Election BC regarding the first two days of advance voting (people will also be able to vote this week on May 3, 4, 5 and 6).

Advance turnout has been on the rise in BC (and elsewhere in Canada) over the last few elections. Last BC election, it's more than 20% of the voters who did so by casting their ballot early. Still, we can't fully compare the turnout of 2013 to this year since advance voting isn't completed yet. But we can still look at the preliminary data and try to find some trends or patterns. After all, the increased turnout for the last federal election was visible in the advance turnout as well.

So here is some data. First of all, after the first two days, 231,034 people have already voted. That represents 7.3% of the registered voters. As comparison, in 2013, in total, 11.6% of the registered voters chose to vote in advance. So we are currently at 62% of the advance turnout of 2013, after only two days. At the same time, there weren't as many days to vote early in 2013. So again, it's hard to directly compare. Trends from previous years seem to indicate that early voting is big the first and last days. We'll thus know more by Saturday (Note: I personally wonder if voting 3 days before the election should really be considered voting early, but that's another question).

If we extrapolate, I think we can expect an increase in the advance turnout, but not necessarily a large one. And since the share of voters who decide to vote early has been steadily increasing, it's really not guaranteed that the overall turnout will go up.

1. Advance turnout in 2017

First of all, let's look at which ridings have seen a high and low advance turnout. Here are the top and bottom 10 so far, after two days.

Bottom 10

Mid Island-Pacific Rim

Richmond North Centre

Prince George-Mackenzie

Abbotsford South

North Coast

Prince George-Valemount

Peace River North

Vernon-Monashee

Vancouver-Kensington

Kootenay West

And the top 10:

Vancouver-Fairview

Surrey-Fleetwood

Langford-Juan de Fuca

Vancouver-Point Grey

Boundary-Similkameen

Courtenay-Comox

Kootenay East

Vancouver-Quilchena

Vancouver-West End

Esquimalt-Metchosin

Let's look at the top 10 first. Surprisingly, very few on the Island. I say surprisingly because I was kind of expecting the Green campaign to motivate more voters, especially young ones. Esquimalt-Metchosin is there and this is a really good sign for another Green seat. The latest projections (May 1st) give the Green candidate only 15% chances of winning. If the riding is still at the top of the advance turnout after Saturday, I'll likely make adjustments. With that said, please do not think that increased turnout is always a good sign for the Green. In 2013 for instance we didn't see any connection between the two. Even in the riding of Andrew Weaver, the turnout increased by less than the provincial average! Still, I said it before and I'll say it again: if there is indeed a Green surge on the Island, I'd expect an increase in turnout.

Courtenay-Comox is there, maybe indicating a true 3-way race.

I don't have Surrey Fleetwood as a close race but the people over at Election Prediction do have it as currently too close to call. The high turnout might force me to reconsider this riding (or maybe this is simply the indication of a strong NDP wave there).

Finally, here is some data about these 20 ridings.

	Bottom 10	Top 10
Average % BC Lib (2013)	45%	44%
Average % BC NDP (2013)	39%	44%
Average % BC Green (2013)	4%	10%
Average % BC Lib (proj)	46%	38%
Average % BC NDP (proj)	40%	42%
Average % BC Green (proj)	14%	19%
Number of close races (2013)	0	3
Number of close races (proj)	0	2

We can see higher turnout in ridings where the Green are projected to be higher and the Liberals lower. also, close races (winning by  fewer than 5 points) tend to  lead to an increase in turnout. That makes sense.

2. Comparing 2013 to 2017

Simply comparing turnouts might not be enough. In particular, it's often the change in turnout that can cause surprises. After all, maybe our top 10 above was already top 10 in 2013 and it's simply that people in these ridings vote more (and earlier). Since we are trying to compare preliminary data to final data, I proceeded this way: I created an index for each riding in each year. This index is very simple, it's the turnout in the riding divided by the average. So if a riding already saw 14% of its voters casting a ballot and the average is 7%, then the index value for this riding is 2. I then compared the index of 2013 and 2017 to see where changes were occurring. Here are the ridings:

Bottom 10:

Mid Island-Pacific Rim

Vernon-Monashee

Saanich North and the Islands

Powell River-Sunshine Coast

Prince George-Mackenzie

Peace River North

Oak Bay-Gordon Head

Parksville-Qualicum

Stikine

North Coast

Top 10: 

Surrey-Whalley

Surrey-Cloverdale

Burnaby-Lougheed

Coquitlam-Maillardville

Esquimalt-Metchosin

Surrey-Panorama

Kelowna-Lake Country

Surrey-Guildford

Kelowna West

Surrey-Fleetwood

The top 10 is interesting. In particular you can see the 3 Surrey ridings where there is high uncertainty (Fleetwood, Guildford and Panorama). Notice also that5 out of the 9 Surrey ridings are here!

Surrey was one of the regions where the BC Liberals actually increased between 2009 to 2013 (while dropping provincially). The fact that turnout changes could come from there just shows that Surrey might have become the volatile region of the Lower Mainland. No wonder parties spent so much time talking about tolls... So, is the possibly increased turnout in Surrey good news for the NDP (desire for change) or the Liberals (Liberals were up there in 2013 already)? I can't answer for now (and quite frankly I'm not sure I'll be able to by next Tuesday, maybe the data here is simply indicative that Surrey will be hard to predict).

	Bottom 10	Top 10
Average % BC Lib (2013)	41%	47%
Average % BC NDP (2013)	39%	40%
Average % BC Green (2013)	11%	6%
Average % BC Lib (proj)	40%	44%
Average % BC NDP (proj)	40%	40%
Average % BC Green (proj)	23%	17%
Number of close races (2013)	1	4
Number of close races (proj)	0	3

Interestingly here, the top 10 aren't in ridings supposedly good for the Green. Logical since Surrey is not expected to be part of any Green surge if there is one. The number of close races in both 2013 and in the projections most likely show that parties put more efforts in these ridings.

What I take from it is that I'll look more closely into some ridings on the island and especially at some of the Surrey ridings. I'll update after the full data will be available on Sunday (so close to the final projections).

This morning we got a new poll, from Forum. I have nothing against this firm as it has done fairly well in the past, but the new poll lacks credibility.

Why? Forum still includes the BC Conservatives as a choice in their polls. And according to Forum, this party is at 7% province-wide!

Now, let's be clear, the BC Cons have a grand total of 10 candidates, 10! Let's do some math.

Using 2013 as a baseline, there were 1.8 mio votes. Getting 7% of that means getting around 125k votes. It means an average  of 12.5k per riding.

Now, the average total number of votes in a given riding was a little over 21,000 in 2013.

It means that in average, the BC Conservative would get almost 60% of the vote in each riding they are competing!

In other words, if the Forum poll is true, expect 10 BC Cons MLAs next Tuesday.

I'm not including this poll in my average. If the BC NDP is really ahead of the Liberals, then another firm doing IVR polling will show it. But Forum, get your things together, including the BC Conservatives makes you lose all credibility. It's like you just looked at the results last time around on WIkipedia and decided to poll the province.

British Columbia isn't used to minority governments. To be fair, our electoral system usually produces majorities (that's one of its advantages, at least if you believe its partisans). In the BC case, the main reason has been a lack of a consistently strong third party. However, things could be different this year with the rise of the Green Party.

Before going further, let me mention the updated projections. I have added the Ipsos poll. This is the second consecutive poll placing the BC Liberals ahead of the BC NDP. Is there really a trend or is it only due to the fact they are polls with an online-based sample? Hard to tell until we get IVR polls (Forum, Mainstreet). But notice that both Justason and Ipsos previously (2-3 weeks ago) had the NDP ahead. So they definitely show the same trend (Liberals up, NDP down and Green up) if not the exact same numbers (Ipsos has the Green much lower).

With the new polls added to the average, the projections are now closer than ever. There is a real possibility that the final projections won't be able to make a better call than the flip of a coin.

Anyway, let's go back to the topic of the day: is a minority possible?

Based on the most recent projections, we see that there is a 17% chance of this happening, almost perfectly divided between a NDP or Liberal minority (and a 3% chance of a tie). So, why is this election so close (both in terms of votes and seats -at least if you believe me) and a majority is still the most likely outcome? The answer is that the Greens aren't currently winning enough seats. So we still essentially have a two-party race for the 87 seats (or 84 if you remove the 3 relatively safe Green seats). So whichever party finishes first usually gets a majority. There really are only a couple of combinations that give us a minority. I'm talking here of scenarios of 43-41, 42-42, etc.

So what exactly would it take for BC to have a minority government next Tuesday? Let's take a statistical look.

I used the simulations to try to answer the question. Specifically, I calculated the probability function here below. It's showing you the probabilities of a minority government as a function of the share of votes of the Green Party.

As you can see, it seems the chances of a minority government are a positive function of the vote share of the Greens. That makes sense. We also see that the probability function isn't very steep. In other words, the chances of a minority will remain low until the Greens could somehow reach 30% or more. And remember, this graph is assuming the BC Liberals and BC NDP both remain around the 39-40% mark. If one of them was to surge or collapse, then the chances of a minority would become almost zero.

Maybe a better way to look at it is as a function of the seats, not the votes. It's simply a mathematical property that there can't be a minority until a third party wins seats. The graph below shows this probability.

A minority becomes the likely outcomes if the BC Green Party can win more than 8 seats. Can this party achieve this? Well it's possible but that would be a pretty major surprise.

In the most recent projections, the chances of more than 8 Green seats are less than 1% -the absolute best case scenario is 11 seats by the way. It'd require a perfect scenario for this party. We are talking of a massive underestimation by the polls as well as a crazy vote efficiency. Imagine a scenario where there is a Green surge around Victoria and the Green can win pretty much every riding. If you look at the detailed projections, you see that 7 Green seats is far from impossible. But 9 and more? This is really a stretch.

Still, let's go with a realistic best case scenario for Andrew Weaver and his candidates: 7 MLAs. The chances of Weaver to have the balance of power would therefore be 40%. Those are not bad odds. But getting to 7 MLAs is no easy task.

At the end of the day, the current chances for a minority scenarios are low and they'll remain low until the end of this campaign. There are only a few scenarios (Green winning many seats, NDP and Liberals being close to each other) that lead to a hung parliament. Interestingly, the Ipsos poll has questions regarding the expected outcome and people are doing a fairly good job. 35% expect a Liberal majority, 29% expect a NDP majority and 18% expect something else. So either these respondents were very well informed, or they got lucky.