If you click on this post by mistake and you only speak English, here are the final projections in English.

Je sais que je n'ai pas écrit un billet en français depuis un moment. Vous me pardonnerez mais j'étais occupé avec l'élection en Colombie-Britannique. Vu que j'ai le temps, voici un petit guide si vous voulez suivre l'élection ce soir.

Au fait, avant d'aller plus loin, je serai l'un des invités à la soirée électorale de ICI - Radio-Canada Vancouver/Yukon sur Facebook live. Ce sera en français bien sûr. Ça commence à 19h55, heure du pacifique (donc près de 23h au Québec).

1. Les partis en CB

Il y a trois partis essentiellement. Les BC Liberals sont similaires aux Libéraux du Québec avec une orientation plutôt centre-droit. Ils sont un peu plus à droite économiquement que ceux du Québec cependant. Socialement ils sont progressistes mais vu l'absence d'un vrai parti Conservateur, les conservateurs sociaux votent en général BC Liberals. Voyez le parti comme une grande coalition de la droite, assez similaire à ce qu'Harper avait fait au fédéral. Leur bilan économique est très bon et ils s'appuient naturellement là-dessus. En gros leur message cette élection a été "emplois, emplois, emplois". La Première Ministre Christy Clark n'est pas très populaire mais elle est connue de tout le monde.

Le BC NDP est un parti NPD classique et n'a plus été au pouvoir depuis 2001 (donc litérallement depuis le début du siècle). Au pouvoir dans les années 90, ils n'ont pas fait une très bonne job, ou du moins c'est la perception de la population. Même aujourd'hui, si vous parlez à des personnes qui vivaient en CB dans les années 90, ils vont généralement avoir de mauvais souvenirs. Le parti a un nouveau leader, John Horgan. Il reste assez peu connus des électeurs (il était carrément inconnu de la majorité avant la campagne). Il a décidé de faire une campagne ciblée sur la grande région de Vancouver, là où il y a beaucoup de sièges en jeu. Cela pourrait leur coûter dans l'intérieur de la CB cependant. À l'inverse de 2013, le NPD a décidé de faire une campagne relativement négative en attaquant beaucoup les Libéraux (corruption, donner des coupures d'impôts aux plus riches, ne rien faire pour lutter contre la hausse incroyable du prix de l'immobilier dans la région, etc). Ils proposent d'instaurer des garderies à $10 sur le modèle du Québec ainsi que de hausser le salaire minimum à $15 de l'heure.

Finalement les Verts. Ils ont eu un député (leur chef maintenant, Andrew Weaver) en 2013 et espèrent bien davantage cette fois-ci. Ils sont sondés à près de 18-20%, ce qui constituerait une hausse importante par rapport au 8% de 2013. Le mode de scrutin pourrait cependant leur faire très mal. Politiquement à gauche, ils partagent davantage d'électeurs avec le NPD qu'avec les Libéraux, mais je crois qu'il serait faux de parler d'une claire division du vote. On a plusieurs indices montrant que ce parti peut prendre des votes aux Libéraux. Leurs meilleures chances ce soir sont quasiment toutes sur l'île de Vancouver (une île à l'ouest de la province et non, la ville de Vancouver n'est PAS sur l'île de Vancouver... c'est mélangeant). C'est la région où Elizabeth May s'est fait élire aussi.

Finalement, il y a techniquement un Parti Conservateur mais il ne présente que 10 candidats. Il n'a même pas de chef ou d'organisation. Étrange car ce parti avait plutôt bien fait en 2013 avec près de 5% (sans présenter de candidats partout) et il semble y avoir un appétit pour un tel parti. La preuve étant que les sondages, jusqu'à récemment, avaient ce parti à plus de 10%!

Si vous voulez voir la répartition géographique, voyez cette carte pour 2013.

Cet article (en anglais) présente les positions des trois partis sur les principaux enjeux.

2. Projections

Les voici les voilà. Désolé mais je ne traduirai pas les graphiques. J'espère que vous me pardonnerez cet accroc à la loi 101!

C'est une éleciton très serrée. Les Libéraux sont en baisse (après avoir récolté 44-45% lors des 3 dernières élections), le NPD stable et les Verts en hausse. Ce n'est pas une course 50-50 car les Libéraux ont davantage de moyens d'obtenir 44 sièges, soit une majorité (87 au total). Pour le NPD, il se doit d'augmenter dans la grande région de Vancouver (surtout les banlieues) et de conserver ses acquis ailleurs. Sur l'île, il doit faire face aux Verts et aux Libéraux. Dans le reste de la province, la plupart des comtés sont très libéraux et le NPD n'a que peu d'espoir de faire des gains. Dans les faits, le NPD serait sûrement très heureux de conserver ses sièges dans le Nord Ouest ainsi que dans l'Est.

Je l'ai mentionné mais il y a de fortes chances que les Verts soient l'une des pire victimes du mode de scrutin. Dans les faits même le 2e siège n'est pas assuré. Les résultats passés indiquent une victoire facile dans Saanich North and the Islands, mais le vote Vert varie beaucoup d'une éleciton à l'autre. De plus, deux sondages faits dans ce comté ont montré le candidat Vert trainant de l'arrière.

Les projections n'utilisent pas vraiment les moyennes régionales. Si celles-ci ont raison, les Libéraux devraient faire des gains dans l'intérieur (Stikine, Skeena par example) et le NPD devrait balayer la région de Vancouver. On verra bien. Il y a beaucoup d'incertitude (nouvelle carte, grosse hausse des verts, les Conservateurs qui n'existent plus, etc).

Au final je dirais que les BC Liberals partent avec un avantage mais il suffit d'une erreur des sondages de 1-2 points pour que le gouvernement change de couleur. Et vu que les sondages avaient été incroyablement dans l'erreur il y a 4 ans (ils projetaient tous une avace du NPD mais ce dernier avait finalement perdu par 4-5 points!), cela montre bien que beaucoup de scénarios sont possibles.

Here we are, decision time for British Columbians! It was predicted to be a close race and according to the latest polls, it'll likely be. With that said, I believe that the numbers give a small edge to the BC Liberals of Christy Clark over the BC NDP of John Horgan. But this is a very small and uncertain advantage. So, for once, it seems things might indeed be too close to close! If I must absolutely make a call, I'd have to go with the Liberals but a NDP victory tomorrow would not surprise me much.

Let's put this way: while it's a close race, it'd be wrong to call it a 50-50 race. There are more ways for the Liberals to win a majority than for the NDP. Therefore the odds favour the Liberals.

Let's cut to the chase, here are the final projections. You have, in order, the voting intentions, the seat projections with the 95% confidence intervals as well as the chances of winning the most seats (it doesn't sum to 100% because of the possibility of a tie). If you want the riding by riding projection, please scroll down to the bottom.

Before going into the detailed analysis, let's make something clear: this is one of the most uncertain elections I've ever covered. While I don't see it as a 50-50 races (see reasons below), it remains possible for both main parties to win a majority (with chances relatively high). Also, it seems we won't really see large swings compared to 2013 (except for the Green of course), which means that changes will most likely come at the local level - getting the vote out, new star candidate, demographic changes, etc - and polls-based projections are usually worse when it happens (simply because we can't collect much data at the riding or local level).

1. Polls and projections

Like in 2013, the BC NDP started this election with a lead (of a couple of points). This lead became wider in the middle of the campaign (although very few polls were published, so it's hard to be very definitive about this) before seeing an upward trend for the Liberals. If we look only at the very end, it seems polls have been converging (some might say herding...). The convergence is actually pretty crazy and, quite frankly, not normal. Random samples should NOT give results this consistent. If there is a big surprise tomorrow (NDP way ahead or way below for instance), let's remember this. It honestly looks like pollsters are happy to show a tied race so that no matter who wins, they won't be wrong. But remember, polls should be evaluated looking at the average. If the NDP is 3 points above this average, even though it'd be within the margin of error of each poll individually, that would still be the sign of a systematic underestimation of this party. Anyway, let's hope for the best, right?

While the Liberals climbing back up will remind some of 2013, the scenario is quite different. 4 years ago, literally every poll had the NDP ahead, even in the final days. No such thing this time around. The raw poll average is a virtual tie while my personal average (where I allocate slightly more undecided to the incumbent) has Christy Clark's party slightly ahead.

Regionally, the race in the Lower Mainland has been pretty stable with a slight convergence at the end. For John Horgan, this is the key region. The NDP clearly decided to run a narrow campaign focusing on the few seats they needed in the great Vancouver (he mostly campaigned there, the main policies -$10 daycare, minimum wage, housing- are mostly for this region as well). As I show below, the path to a NDP victory necessarily go through a much improved seat count in the Lower Mainland. Riding polls from Mainstreet have shown the Liberals doing better than expected, most likely due to a strong incumbency effect. So while the NDP might indeed take the lead in the Lower Mainland, I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberals were able to defend the seats they currently have.

Vancouver Island (note for non-BC people: Vancouver, the city, is NOT on Vancouver Island. Victoria is. Confusing I know) has seen a steady NDP lead with some marked fluctuations (across polls) for the Green party. Sub-samples are  naturally small but it remains that the Green at 22% or 35% would most likely have very dramatic consequences on the number of MLAs for Andrew Weaver. On top of that, riding polls (from Oracle and Mainstreet) have shown the Green doing worse than expected with the Liberals doing better (I'm thinking in particular of Saanich North and the Islands which should have been an easy Green gain based on the projections but where two different polls put them behind).

Overall though, while the island is a 3-way interesting battleground, it most likely won't have the same consequences on who is the next Premier as the Greater Vancouver.

I want to write a little bit more about the Green party here. It represents the "wild card" of this election. This is, after all, the party that will likely increase (or change at all) by a lot. And since this isn't a well established party, it's harder to predict where the swing will come from. Intuition and past results dictate it should on the island, but the poll average hasn't placed the Green high enough on the island in order to really win that many seats. Also, the Greens are running more candidates this time around. So the additional votes they'll receive in ridings they didn't contest last time will automatically increase the Green's share of votes province-wide. So some of the positive swing will likely be "wasted" in ridings where they have no chance and where there wasn't even a candidate last time around. On top of that, there is the possibility that many Green voters will change their mind at the last minute. Green parties have often been overestimated by the polls in the past. I didn't do much adjustment to their polling numbers because they were polling high enough not to be considered a "small party" (plus their support has been fairly steady during the campaign and Weaver likely won the debate). I'd also keep an eye for a surprise showing from one Green candidate not on the island. Likely ridings could be Vancouver-Langara, New Westminster or Kamloops North Thompson.

Finally, in the interior, the Liberals have enjoyed a large and increasing lead. So much actually that it's not unlikely to see some seats going from NDP to Liberals (which could allow them to offset any loss in Vancouver). Watch out for instance for ridings like Skeena.

1.1 Outside the horse race numbers

What about the issues for instance? Healthcare and housing are always the top two and John Horgan is usually seen as better on them. Christy Clark systematically scores better for jobs and the economy. So technically, the issues should favour the NDP but we all know that undecided might be more convinced by the economy.

I find it interesting that healthcare is always a top 2 issue when we talked so little about it during this campaign. We talked more about tolls, MSP (which is related to healthcare but is really more a tax issue) and nonsense like "#ImLinda" or discussing whether Horgan is too angry at times.

I would say that this election is not unlike the 2015 federal one where the incumbent isn't very popular and most people say it's time for change. The problems are that polls were already showing that in 2013. Plus, as opposed to Trudeau who had the clear momentum at the end, the NDP didn't manage to gather this vote for change. The Greens have stayed remarkably steady and the debate likely helped Andrew Weaver. If the NDP wins tomorrow, it likely won't be because of a crazy NDP wave but because of some key wins in some ridings.

Christy Clark also has the leadership going for her. The last Angus-Reid poll showed that while a majority/plurality of people agree with him (on the issues), they still think the Liberals would run the province better. Christy Clark is also often seen as a better Premier than Horgan. For undecided voters making their choice literally in the voting booth, this might well make the difference.

I have used Google Trends a couple of times and it seems the edge is with the Liberals as well. Note that in 2013, while all polls had the NDP ahead, Google Trends already had the BC Liberals.



Using Google Trends with the names of the leaders is likely skewed because Christy Clark is so much more known than the other two leaders.

2. Uncertainty

While most people will have stopped reading by now, I maintain that my best work is done with the simulations and probabilities. Representing the uncertainty is more important to me than getting the exact seat count right (because, let's face it, there is some luck to it). So let's look at how much uncertainty there is.

2.1 Possible outcomes

It might seem weird that the two most likely scenarios are so opposite to each other (Liberals majority vs NDP majority) but it makes sense given the electoral system with mostly only two parties. This should also be remembered when interpreting the probabilities: a close race doesn't mean one party will win by only 1 seat. In our case here, a close race means there is a wide range of outcomes and the available information isn't enough to completely exclude some.

Chances of a minority are even smaller than last time I wrote about it. Again, this is the electoral system and the fact there is no third party capable of winning enough seats. The set of conditions required for a minority (NDP and Liberals around 40 seats each, Green winning more than 3 seats) are such that this outcome is unlikely tomorrow. Not impossible of course, including the chances of a tie.

One reason the chances of the NDP are lower is because of the Green. Specifically, one source of uncertainty comes from how many votes (and where) the Green party will get. Will it be 21% with a heavy concentration around Victoria (so many possible seats for them) or will it be 17% uniformly distributed across the provinces (this would likely mean 1-2 seats max)? This source of uncertainty has a greater impact on the NDP's seat total. This is because the ridings the Green party can win would almost systematically go NDP otherwise (although the riding polls have indicated this might not be that easy). If I use my 20,000 simulated outcomes, I find a strong and negative correlation between the number of seats of the NDP and Green but no such correlation between Liberals and Green. So while the Green party is getting votes from both sides (data definitely suggests so), they hurt the NDP more in terms of seats. Call it vote splitting if you want to, I think seat splitting might be more appropriate. Speaking of vote splitting, if the regional polling average is right for the island, the Greens seem to be taking more votes (or net shares of votes) from the Liberals than the NDP. It's possible there are more transfers -like some Liberals voters switched to Green and some Green went NDP- but the idea that the Green party is only taking voters from the NDP is just not true.

Uncertainty works both ways. If the NDP can still win, the Liberals can also win a large majority. For instance the chances for the Liberals to get 50 seats and more are around 28%. So if we were to rank the outcomes, I believe it should go like this

1. Liberal majority
2-3 (tied or very close) NDP majority - Super Liberal majority

2.2 Distributions

Here below you have the distributions of seats for each party. The bars represent how many times this seat total came up out of 20,000 simulations (Note: not 50,000 simulation, this is typo on the graph).

This, right here, should probably be the main graphic of this article. It should really drive home that there is enough uncertainty for each party to win very few or many seats. And yes, I get it, some of you will argue that if this is the case, analysts like me aren't very useful. It's simply a lot of calculations for saying "anything can happen". While I get the sentiment, remember this quote from Mark Twain:

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

See it the other way: in the last US election, most analysts were giving Hilary Clinton chances of winning way over 90%, even over 99% for some. Yet she lost. At the same time, saying "everything is possible" is misleading and lacking unless you also show the corresponding probabilities.

We can also look at how many seats are safe for each party. Remember that the probabilities come from the simulations which do account for the possible errors of polls as well as the distribution of the vote. They are therefore valid even if the polls turned out to be wrong.

Few seats are guaranteed at 100% for each party (6 for the Liberals and 5 for the NDP; remember that the current model has so far never made a mistake when calling a riding at 100% or 0%). On the other hand, there are 18 ridings that are really, really uncertain (margin of victory of less than 5%; Probabilities of winning usually at 60% max). Most of them are the Lower Mainland (13).

So maybe another way to look at it is to see that the Liberals start with 35 seats with chances above 90% while the NDP only has 30. If we add ridings with chances above 80%, we get 37 Liberals and 31 NDP. This, right here, is maybe the best illustration of the advantage the Liberals start with.

Here are the 18 close races:

Boundary-Similkameen

Burnaby-Lougheed

Burnaby North

Coquitlam-Burke Mountain

Coquitlam-Maillardville

Courtenay-Comox

Cowichan Valley

Delta North

Kamloops-North Thompson

Maple Ridge-Mission

Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows

North Vancouver-Lonsdale

Penticton

Port Moody-Coquitlam

Surrey-Fleetwood

Surrey-Guildford

Surrey-Panorama

Vancouver-Fraserview

Among these 18 close races, the NDP is projected to win 8 and the Liberals 10. If the NDP wants to form the next government, they'll need to win a majority of these races. By the way, I'm not saying all these ridings will be close. See them as the "path to 44", similarly to the "path to 270" for the US election. In other words, if tomorrow night you see one party winning most of them, then this party is likely on track to form the government. But let's imagine the NDP outperform the polls and get 43% of the votes versus 38% for the Liberals. In this case, the NDP will win most of these ridings by a comfortable margin.

I'd add to this list the one where advance turnout was the highest or increased the most. I wouldn't surprise to make mistakes in some if these ridings.

By the way, given where the leaders have been, I guess they have the same numbers as us since they mostly visited the key ridings identified above.

I think the number of races where probabilities are within 45-55% is insane. I didn't look at it thoroughly, but I think this is by far the election with the most "toss-ups" than I have seen. And in pretty much every single case, I can look at it in details (like the candidates, etc) and find reasons for the riding to swing one way or the other.

3. The path to a NDP victory

Don't be fooled by the top line numbers: a NDP majority is definitely possible. Here are a couple of scenarios that would allow John Horgan to become Premier.

a) Polls underestimating the NDP by at least 1-2 points

This is by far the easiest way. Use the simulator and input the NDP with a 2-3 points lead and you see a different scenario than the one featured here.


b) Polls are right but the NDP's vote is now more efficient

In this scenario, the NDP would save some key seats on the island (Saanich North and the Islands, Cowichan-Valley, Esquimalt-Metchosin, etc) as well as keeping all its seats in the interior and the north, while simultaneously making the necessary gains in the Lower Mainland. In this scenario, Burnaby Lougheed and North go NDP, so would the entire tri-cities area. It would also make some gains in Surrey and North Vancouver (and Vancouver proper possibly). I'm talking here about the 13 close races in the Lower Mainland.

Is it realistic? I tried to adjust the projections by giving a the NDP a higher percentage in the Lower Mainland and a lower one in the interior. This gave me 41 seats for the Liberals and 44 for the NDP. But looking at the close races, out of 17, the NDP was now winning 13! Is it possible to imagine the Liberals only winning 4 out of 17 races? That seems unlikely to me. The Liberals have the money and the data. At the same time, we are only talking of switching 5 ridings compared to the projections. For instance: Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, Maple Ridge Mission, North Vancouver Lonsdale, Surrey-Fleetwood and Surrey-Panorama would be enough. Ask Donald Trump how impossible it is to flip 4-5 States... (notice, by the way, that the odds I give the BC NDP are quite similar to the odds Trump was given by Nate Silver. Just a coincidence of course, but it shows how totally possible a NDP victory is)

Option a) would be far easier than option b) for the NDP. Province-wide swing is a more powerful force than grinding out close wins in key ridings. So really, John Horgan is in a position where if he wants to become Premier, he needs the polls to be wrong or he needs an efficient vote that gets out tomorrow. Polls can be wrong but there is no question that you are in a better position if you are leading rather than trailing.

Notice also that I'm spending time looking at a possible path of victory to the NDP. But uncertainty works both ways and I could also write "path to a 50+ majority for the Liberals" where Christy Clark would make gains in the interior and on the island (based on riding polls) as well as keeping her seats in the Lower Mainland (she could even make gains in Burnaby Lougheed thank to her popular candidate that is a former tv news anchor) or in the volatile Surrey (Surrey might be the wild card of this election. Fast growing city with a varied demographic, big changes to the electoral map, high advance turnout, etc).

Overall, I'm quite comfortable projecting chances of around 2 to 1 for the Liberals as I think it matches well with all the info available.

4. Reasons why the projections could be wrong

Time to prepare the possible excuses if I'm wrong...

Making projections isn't an exact science. And it's actually way more complicated and uncertain than predicting as US election for instance (and remember that they actually got that one wrong!). You need to "guess" the correct vote percentages. If polls are off by 1-2 points, pollsters will claim victory. Personally? An underestimation of the NDP by 2 points would literally cause my projections to go from a Liberal government to a NDP one! On top of that, having the percentages is one thing, getting the seat count right is another. We simply don't have enough local, riding-level data to make accurate predictions everywhere. British Columbia is also less uniform in its swing than Ontario or Quebec. It seems local events matter more, so do the local candidates.

A large turnout change, like in 2015 at the federal level, can also cause problems. Regarding this, advance voting was strong but once adjusted for the number of days (and the fact that people vote more and more early), I'd say it's likely for the turnout to be similar to last time. With that said, it doesn't mean localized turnout won't have an impact but it's simply hard to take that into account.

Finally, not only is this election using a new electoral map with two new ridings, the political offering is different. The Green party has a new leader, mostly new candidates (and an increased number of them). The BC Conservative who got almost 5% last time around (and got over 10% in a couple of places) are mostly non-existent. What will happen to these votes in these ridings? I tried to find patterns and correlations (since intuitively you'd expect the BC Conservatives to take more votes away from the Liberals) but I couldn't. In some ridings the Conservatives hurt the Liberals in 2013, in others it was the NDP. So I decided not to do anything there but to redistribute the votes proportionally. I think it was the safe and smart thing to do, but it'll likely cause errors in some cases (but any call or assumption would have been, at best, an educated or hopeful guess).

Also, as mentioned. there is a new map with 2 additional ridings (one in Richmond and one in Surrey). A perfect transposition wasn't possible because of advance voting results. Election BC didn't even bother providing such a transposition. It thus adds a layer of uncertainty, especially in Surrey where boundaries were heavily changed.

Conclusion

I truly think this election is a really close one. If you absolutely want me to make a call, I think a Liberal win is slightly more likely. But polls aren't accurate enough in BC (or Canada) for anyone to make a definitive call.

This election might have less to do with province-wide numbers (and even regional ones) and more to do with getting the vote out in some key ridings. This makes the prediction game even more difficult.

I'm leaning towards a Liberal majority. So is Mainstreet Research. And so is Election Prediction. The UBC prediction market also agrees. But as I said many times, a NDP win is absolutely possible. A simple swing from soft Green voters towards the NDP (like 1-2 points) would absolutely be enough for John Horgan to become Premier. On the other hand, I feel relatively comfortable with my leaning stance because if I look at the close ridings individually, I actually think I might be underestimating the Liberals (Burnaby Lougheed for instance is projected NDP but I think the candidate and demographic changes could switch it to the Liberals).

Whatever happens tomorrow, I hope you enjoyed my coverage of this BC election.


Riding by riding projections:

Today is the last day of the BC election 2017. It means that I'll be spending the day using the latest polls (and every piece of info I can find) to make the final projections as well as writing a long post about them. This means that this blog post will be short.

I have updated the projections using the 4 ridings polls on the island done by Oracle and published in the Time Colonist (here and here). These polls weren't good news for the Green. I also added the latest Mainstreet poll that not only provides province wide numbers, but 4 ridings polls (including one in common with Oracle). There as well, the riding numbers on the island (in particular in Saanich North and the Islands) aren't comforting for the Green (It seems this party published on their fb page an internal poll showing them ahead in Cowichan-Valley... when a party needs to do that, it's usually not a good sign). SNI should be the first gain made by this party and yet we now have two riding polls in a row showing them behind. When riding polls are different from my projections, I do an average of the two.

So the last update before the final projections look like this:

Mainstreet poll is very interesting for multiple reasons. First of all, despite showing the BC NDP with a 1% lead province wide, the firm is calling for a Liberal majority. They justify it by saying the regional numbers favour the Liberals (very strong in the interior, holding in the Lower Mainland). On top of that, the riding polls show the BC Liberals higher than expected in Surrey-Fleetwood, Delta North and Fraser-Nicola. This seems to indicate a strong incumbency effect. If anything, the Liberals could make some gains in the interior, such as Skeena.

I agree with Mainstreet and unless the latest Ipsos and Insight West today show a large NDP lead, I think my final projections will likely project a Liberal majority. And here I was, dreaming of finally using the title of my blog for some final projections...

For the Green party, there is the possibility that it'll receive more than 17% of the vote but only have one or two MLAs. If it were to happen, Andrew Weaver and the Green would become the best example of why electoral reform is needed (you know my position on this issue).

By the way, Mainstreet and I aren't alone. Election Prediction will likely end up predicting a Liberal minority (41 seats called for the BC Liberals and 11 too close to close). The UBC prediction market is also suggesting the same outcome. And Teddy (that I know from Twitter) is suggesting an easy Liberal majority as well. I know the last source might lack credibility, but trust me, you usually don't want to bet against him.

Anyway, that is all for now. Here below you can find the current possible outcomes as well as the detailed projections.

Election BC has released the data for the full 6 days and the turnout is really high.

It's difficult to compare directly with 2013 mostly for two reasons. First of all, there were fewer days to vote in advance 4 years ago (including fewer weekend days). Secondly, advance turnout has increased systematically over the last 10 years.

So, can we expect an increased turnout for Tuesday? Let's look at the numbers.

614,389 citizens in BC have already cast their ballot. This is already much more than the 366,558 of 2013. The 614k this year represent 19.5% of registered voters. For comparison, the advance turnout (among registered voters) was only 12% in 2013.

Election BC shows the upward trends. Advance voters represent a bigger and bigger fraction of the total voters every election. If the overall turnout this year remains the same as in 2013, it means advance voting will have represented 34% of all the voters, a jump from four years ago (20.34%). A jump so big that a constant overall turnout appears unlikely. But again, we can simply extrapolate linearly since this year had so many more days available to vote early.

Ok, let's try to adjust the data. Based on the advance voting data from this year and 2013, turnout during the weekend seems to be significantly higher than during the week. Specifically, the number of early voters on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday was, in average, 89.9k in 2013 and 85.4k in 2017. As for the weekend, it was 111k in 2013 (only one Saturday) and 119.4k in 2017 (two Saturdays, one Sunday).

If we adjust the number of early voters of 2013, we get 602,000, not that far from the 614k from this year. This means an adjusted advance turnout of of 19%, just below this year. So it is well possible that more people voted early mostly because there were more opportunities (=days) to do so.

Also, given the trend of people to vote early more and more, I think that the safe bet is for the overall turnout to be similar to the one in 2013. It might even be slightly lower! I personally think it'll be a little bit higher because this election has more close races, including 3-way races. But I don't think the data about early voting suggest a giant turnout increase like for the 2015 federal election. Of course, remember that the comparison was hard and I had to make adjustments.

Anyway, let's look at the advance turnout by riding for this year.

Here below you have the top 10 and bottom 10 ridings as far as advance turnout is concerned (so the 10 ridings with the lowest and highest turnout):

Also, here is the top and bottom 10 ridings for where advance turnout increasesed, respectivley, the least and most. This second measure is important because some region/ridings have higher turnout no matter what and the two lists above might not be indicative of anything. Maybe the real indication of where surprises will happen is the change in turnout.

Edit: using the term "drop" was wrong. It's more the smallest increase as only one riding actually decreased.

Can we find any pattern? Well, if we look at the changes, it seems turnout is rising in Surrey (4 ridings out of 10 = there are 9 ridings in Surrey in total). This is a fast growing city with a diverse and changing demographic. This was also one of the regions to go, overall, against the provincial trend last time with the Liberals actually increasing there. There is also a new riding.

Esquimalt-Metchosin is maybe representative of the fact the Island is a real battleground with all three parties in the race (remember that both the projections have shown this riding to be hotly contested). 7 of the top 10 increases are in the Lower Mainland. As for the bottom 10, 5 are in the interior.

If we instead focus on the actual levels (not changes), we see really high advance turnout on the Island, in particular in the region around Victoria where the Green can win seats. Is it a good sign for the party of Andrew Weaver? Maybe, although the increased turnout could simply be because all parties know these ridings are contested and they are getting the vote out.

In 2013, in the 11 ridings where the Green had increased the most (10 on the Island + Nelson-Creton), the turnout had increases in average by slightly more than the provincial average, nothing really significant. Even if we focus on the top 5 we still don't find that the turnout increased more where the Green increased the most. So there is no guarantee that the high turnout in these ridings will actually help the Green party.

At the end of the day, I admit that I'm not fully sure how to interpret this data or how to incorporate it in my projections. I'll say that the fact that, once adjusted for the number of days, overall turnout could be similar is a good news for me. Polls and projections are usually more accurate when it's the case. So maybe take these lists and remember these ridings as the one where surprises could happen (compared to my projections).

This BC election is in its last stretch and if the ridings visited by the leaders are of any indication, it probably means that the close races identified in the latest projections are correct. But one of the big questions of next Tuesday will be: how many seats the Green party can win?

The party of Andrew Weaver is poised for a significant increase of its vote share, at least if polls are right and the voters don't change their mind in the last minute. A score of 20% is far from impossible, which would represent more than double the 8.13% of 2013. Back then only Weaver managed to get elected, mostly thank to an incredible "personal effect" that took votes from both the NDP and Liberals.

Based on the projections, Weaver is very safe in his riding. Then you have Saanich North and The Island which is also heavily leaning Green (even though a riding poll published yesterday showed a surprisingly tight race, but margins of error are wide). Finally, Sonia Furstenau is in good position in Cowichan-Valley. But what about a 4th, 5th, 6th or even 7th seat? It's possible but unlikely at this point. It'd take essentially one of the following three effects to happen -or a combination of them. The Green could be underestimated by the polls province-wide. Let's imagine for instance that they get 25% of the vote. Another solution would require the Green to concentrate their vote on the Island. They could drop in the interior and the Lower Mainland while going up in Victoria and around. Finally, polls could be right but some Green candidates could benefit from a "boost" or personal effect (either due to themselves or their campaign).

Here below is a table of the electoral districts the Green could potentially win and how far they are from winning:

One of the possible problems with this list is that it relies heavily on the results in 2013. But the Green party isn't as well established as the Liberals and NDP. Its vote can vary more between election (and without any direct link to the provincial swing). Take the example of West Vancouver - Sea to Sky where the Green candidate, Jim Stephenson, got 22.9% of the vote in 2009. You'd think this riding would then see another increase in 2013? Nope, the new candidate only got 10.98% in 2013. It might of course have been the personal effect of Stephenson, but still, it shows that past results aren't as indicative of future ones.

Keep in mind also that my model already increases the Green more on the Island than anywhere else. For every 1% increase province-wide, the model increases the Green by 1.5 points on the Island. the deficits above are therefore there despite already predicting the Green to do better on the Island.

So, can the Green party really increase by even more than this? Let's look at the best swing the Green got in 2013. All the ridings but one were already on the Island. The next table lists them along with the swing between 2009 and 2013.

Remember that the Green party didn't increase provincially between 2009 and 2013, actually decreasing from 8.21% to 8.13%. That's only half the story however. The Green party wasn't running a full slate of candidates in 2013 (as opposed to 2009) and if we adjust for that, we actually find a positive swing of around 2 points province-wide. Still, you can clearly see that the swings in this table are way above the provincial one.

What happened in 2013 is a strong concentration of the Green vote on the Island. 42% of the votes specifically were on the Island. Overall, the Greens were at 17.5% there, the BC Liberals were at 33.9 and the NDP at 44%. That compares to the 10%, 39% and 50% respectively in 2009.

Polls have shown the Green between 22 and 38% during this campaign in this region. The current raw poll average places them at 27%. That isn't enough if they expect to win many seats. The electoral system is such that being third and only at 25% usually leads to very few seats.

If we go back to the three solutions to get more than 3 seats and we leave aside option 1 (unlikely), we see that solution 2 isn't met. At least not based on polling data. This leaves the Green solution 3: campaign hard and hope for some crazy personal effects in some key ridings. The problem? The effects the Greens need are fairly high and not everybody is Andrew Weaver or Elizabeth May.

One of the issues here is that the ridings the Green can win are ridings that already got a high swing in 2013. It's especially problematic since in many of these, the Green candidate has changed. Actually, all 5 ridings have a different candidate! In Victoria-Beacon Hill, the loss could be especially important since Jane Sterk was running there in 2013 (Note: the model does account for this). She was the former Green leader (before Weaver). It's possible of course that the Green have selected even better candidates this time around, but it's always hard to tell. Looking at the number of twitter followers, it isn't obvious that any of the new candidates is a "star" or running a particularly good campaign (based on Twitter, it seems Janet Fraser in Vancouver-Langara or Donovan Cavers in Kamloops-North Thompson are doing better). Also, it's not like the Liberals aren't trying to win some of these seats. In Esquimalt-Metchosin for instance, they are running Barb Desjardin, a former mayor there. And the NDP will defend these seats since they are needed in order to take the power. This could lead to many unpredictable 3-way races. Knowing this, it might not be surprising to see that many ridings on the Island have had high advance turnout.

At the end of the day, projecting the Green will likely be one of the challenges of this election. It's obvious that their best chances are on the Island. What isn't obvious is how many seats they can realistically win. The projections say 3, but the riding poll yesterday in Saanich North and the Island wasn't good news for the Green. It remains that the Green aren't in a position to likely win more seats. It's possible but it involves a set of conditions that is never optimal. Polls are polls, but you are always better being ahead in them the day before the election. For the Green specifically, they need to start hoping the polls are underestimating them.

Update: two new polls From Oracle. NDP indeed ahead in Esquimalt-Methchosin. Numbers very close to the projections. On the other hand, Green lower than expected in Cowichan-Valley with the NDP 13 points ahead. With margins of error, it does look like like a 3-way race, as predicted.

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.