British Columbia is off to an early election. The province’s NDP premier, David Eby, saw an opposition in disarray, a working-majority in the legislature that was too close for comfort, and a Trump card of diminishing value, and he took his shot. It’s hard to believe a political party in a similar circumstance would do otherwise. Political parties are, after all, full of politicians. But god, oh god, are we ever going to hear about it for a few days.
Yes, like all early elections, the first few days will be spent discussing whether the election should have been called. Very meta, as in self-referential, not as in the makers of the pervert glasses.
We’ll here a lot of chatter asking whether calling the election was a dirty move, or whether it was even legal. Was calling the election constitutional? Absolutely. Yes, next question. It wasn’t illegal and it’s kooky to suggest otherwise. Don’t be a kook.
But was it ethical? Maybe not the most ethical. Especially given that the BC Conservative Party had just lost its leader. But as observers and NDP supporters point out, it’s possible former leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay quit to preempt a call (if so, it was a bad gambit). Moreover, if the government was expected to wait on the BCCP getting it’s affairs in order, it would be waiting a long time indeed Still, the move feels…greasy. But that’s an ethical concern that voters can weigh for themselves.
So far, Eby leads in the polls, but he’s lost four Cabinet ministers who aren’t running again. At least so far. By the time you read this, it could be more. It’s a fluid time. It’s common for parties to cycle through candidates, including high-profile ministers, ahead of or at the outset of an election. At what number it goes from common to disconcerting and even on to catastrophic is a question of perspective — and partisanship — but so far the BC NDP is hovering around normal territory.
More worrying for the party, perhaps, was that the NDP’s campaign launch was uninspiring, low-energy, and focused on explaining why an election was necessary (which is a task to say the least). Spoiler: Trump, Donald Trump, president Trump, and the Orange Menace are the ostensible reasons. Rough start, maybe, but election day is a month away, on October 24th, so there’s time to work out the messaging, fine tune the attacks, and find some pizzazz or something like it.
Commentators warn that the election call could rebound on Eby and cost him not only a majority, but his government itself. Maybe. But I’m not convinced. On Twitter, David Portier revisited seven early election calls and found that governments had a better than even chance to return, including five of seven that wound up in majorities. I’d have thrown Stephen Harper’s 2015 marathon federal election call into the early category (we can debate the finer nuances of this, if you insist), but you get the idea. It’s a risky election call, but fortune favours the central tendency.
If I had to wager — and I won’t, because I’m not a Polymarket stooge — I’d say the election call will pay off for the NDP. The opposition parties, all 700 and counting of them, don’t scream government-in-waiting. The BC Greens might enjoy a modest gain in the legislature, and they’d deserve it. Hopefully party leader Emily Lowan will win a seat. She’d be a welcome and refreshing addition to the legislature. But the balance of probability points towards the Eby ministry living on.
In the case of a hung parliament, it will be a shit show. I’ll save writing about that for later, because it’s way too late in the evening at the time of writing for me to drink six cocktails and take a handful of bennies.
Even if the NDP wins, there will be a cost for voters and democratic institutions alike. Early election calls are cynical almost as a rule. Sometimes they’re necessary, but this one will be a tough sell as an utterly non-negotiable, must-do-now, life-or-death call. Voters clock this, even if they hold their nose and reward the incumbent party. It’s a recipe for distrust and cynicism, and the dish is cooking at the worst possible time.
A week from now, however, voters aren’t likely to be talking or caring that much about the election call as an issue. They might support it, they might not, but most voters rank the call itself far down the ladder of issues that matter. A vocal few might make it seem otherwise, but watch for the revealed preferences of the average voter. They just aren’t going to care that much.
Good. BC, like Canada, has plenty of serious issues to talk about, and an early election isn’t ultimately one of them. It’s worth talking about, surfacing and judging, but it’s worth engaging with for a few days at most and then moving on to the essential issues that shape lives in the province.
By all means, take a day or two to rage, defend, judge, and pontificate. You’ve earned it. But then the real election begins. And the question on ballot isn’t whether it was mean or unfair to call an election, but who is best suited to sit as a member of the legislature in each of the province’s 93 ridings and who among those present is fit to govern the province itself. That question seems to me to have an obvious answer.
Not that I'm wanting the nutbar flock to triumph - because I live in BC and would have to put up with them - but there would be a certain karmic justice if Eby lost due to a lot of unlucky vote splits. After his designed-to-fail electoral reform referendum in 2018, it would be just too perfect!