| Commentary |
| Saanich North and the Islands: By Peter Kelly |
| The BC Liberals have a problem. Saanich North and the Islands was one of the 17 seats in
1991 that bypassed the NDP and voted BC Liberal under Gordon Wilson. The longtime Social
Credit bastion stayed politically right of centre all this time with one exception when the Federal
NDP’s Lynn Hunter won the area’s federal district in the 1988 election. Saanich North is home
to many farmers and more affluent residents of the Victoria area. This is not an area that typically votes NDP. |
| This poll underlines a great disconnect the BC Liberals have with “their” people. Most people
don’t have a problem with paying taxes, so long as they agree with how the revenue is spent
and that the government is truthful in how they spend their tax money. But the way the HST has
been handled and dropped on BC has infuriated voters and turned otherwise safe seats into
swing ridings that the BC Liberals will have to aggressively defend. With upstart parties forming
on the BC Liberals right flank, they will challenge them right where the HST has made them weak - taxes. |
| This provincial seat is one that BC Liberals must keep in order to have any chance of holding on to power and for the locals in this sample to be so completely fed up with MLA Murray Coell-- and so
completely at odds with a central economic policy of the government-- can only mean that if this
trend continues, the BC Liberals will be facing their own “2001” type of scenario. |
| 104 (net) respondents who declare they are registered voters, originally derived from 260 random telephone solicitations, and not from lists September 29- October 3rd, 2010.
Question 1 is unadjusted from areas of the riding of Saanich North and the Islands, where no respondents were derived from any of the Islands in the ridings, save for Vancouver Island.
The 2009 election outcome from the entire riding of Saanich North and the Island estimate was BC Liberals (45%), BC NDP (44%), and BC Green (11%).
Margin of error 9.6% |
