Talk:2017 British Columbia general election

Names of participating parties - misleading
In the election information box, under Christy Clark, the party name shown as "liberal". That party is officially incorporated as "BC Liberal Party" (and shown by this name on the ballot), and the common name used is "BC Liberals" (by themselves on their website and publications). By using the word "Liberal" as their party name, the impression created is as if they're affiliated with the federal liberal party. That is not the case and that is why they're not using it themselves. I suggest changing the name in the box to "BC Liberals", as they use themselves. 70.67.56.84 (talk) 04:31, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
 * All 10 provinces and the Yukon have a liberal party. Other than those in the Atlantic provinces, they're all organizationally and politically independent of the Liberal Party of Canada. We don't say "BC Liberal" here for the same reason that other articles don't use "AB Liberal" or "QC Liberal" in this context. They are the British Columbia Liberal Party contesting a British Columbia general election; referring to them simply as the Liberals makes perfect sense. The initials "BC" are used twice in our listing of all parties in this article - in "4BC" because "4" wouldn't make much sense and in "BC First" to distinguish that party from "Citizens First" (another provincial party contesting this election). Neither of those conditions applies to the Liberals. Madg2011 (talk) 18:10, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * An Albertan's opinions on what BC political parties call themselves is meaningless, as is obviously your 'understanding' of BC politics at all. The BC Liberal Party call themselves that, it's not up to you to decide - or pronounce - that's it's like "AB Liberals" or "MB Liberals".  the BCLP is pointedly NOT affiliated with the federal party and that's one reason they're not "the Liberal Party of British Columbia", the original-but-dissolved-party who merged with the Socreds in 1975. WP:COMMONUSE] applies and the common use and current name in media and the public is the BC Liberals/BC Libs (I won't bother with the parody versions of that).  The BC media use it, the electorate in BC use it, t he parties themselves use it - who are you to pronounce that a Wikipedia style-driven change is necessary or correct.  It's not.  Your interpretation of "these conditions" is not correct or valid in any way.  Looks like there should be some BC wikipedians who know what goes on here and how BC people talk/use names as those who don't know just don't know.  I could be be a little more colourful in my use of language but that'll do for now; as for your "Other than those in the Atlantic provinces, they're all organizationally and politically independent of the Liberal Party of Canada." that is so wrong it's crazy....the BC Libs are NOT anything like ANY other provincial Liberal Party and so deep is the political chasm between the federal Liberals and the BC Libs (which is full of ex-Reform and ex-Tory members and politicians) that they don't go near each other not even close; it was joked around the Vancouver federal leadership convention that there was barbed wire around it, or a moat.  Your equivocations about other parties being the same are utterly ridiculous.2001:569:72C0:BC00:9D95:D6BD:BBFE:9E0D (talk) 06:20, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your feedback. You're right, I'm not the equivocator of these things, and I'm certainly open to any input from other users. However, I stand by the points I made in my first comment, and I remind you of WP:CIV and WP:PA when addressing other users. Both of our stances are in held in good faith, nobody's opinions are "utterly ridiculous," and my province of residence isn't relevant here. (And if it were, I spent many years in BC before relocating). Madg2011 (talk) 18:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Suffice to say that the BC Libs are an alliance of federal Tories and ex-Reform/CRAP and Socreds and only a smidgin of the historical pre-1975 Liberal Party of BC - namely Gordon Campbell and maybe David Mitchell. The party's logo is in sky blue, bright red, and bright yellow; although it's notable that Clark & Co's campaign colours were Tory blue with only a trim in red; its members/MLAs may be BC Liberal provincially, federally they are Tories or only sometimes Grits; the situation with the Socred era was similar.  Your years in BC apparently didn't educate you to this fact and it's clear from news forums a lot of other Canadians don't understand the difference.  Suffice to say myself and the other IP commentor are both in BC, today's BC, and referring to wiki-conditions instead of on-the-ground English-as-she-is-spoke in BC is without depth, without considering the political realities just pointed to.  Clark's inner advisers are Tories from the Harper camp; CANENGL does apply, when you take into account that there are different kinds of Canadian English....also self-identification per the BC Libs' own preferred self-styling and colour-branding.  The use of dark Liberal red for BC provincial politics is also a non sequitur; they are nothing like Liberals in other provinces (though McNeil in Nova Scotia seems similar of late) and nothing like federal Liberals.  In fact, they're pretty well enemies and have been a long time, though Trudeau has been sucking up to Clark of late.
 * Change the "Liberal" headings to "BC Liberals"; across all election (and bio) pages since 1996 or 1991. This is a case where a wiki-opinion on what should be used has proliferated across too many pages and inertia means they probably won't get fixed and the untruth left to stand - unless someone takes the initiative to fix up all those pages.  "First Party, Second Party, Third Party" look highly inappropriate btw.  This should also be noted in CANSTYLE somewhere.2001:569:72C0:BC00:DDE4:96AF:82E3:6A1E (talk) 18:46, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
 * my comment about Albertans is related to several times before when an Albertan's opinion on names used in BC wound up with huge processes to correct those opinions' changes to....dozens of page names and categories, some still unrepaired due to wiki-inertia; and cases where an Albertan has deleted a major history article because "they'd never heard of it".2001:569:72C0:BC00:DDE4:96AF:82E3:6A1E (talk) 18:50, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi. I've been invited to comment on this discussion because of my contributions to the polling section of the page during the election campaign. I'm admittedly not from BC, nor have I ever lived there, but I follow provincial politics throughout Canada fairly closely. My foremost comment is that this debate has become excessively heated by Wikipedia standards, and I encourage participants to maintain civility. Personally, I don't think it's tremendously consequential whether the party name is displayed as "Liberal" or "BC Liberal". But for what it's worth, if it was up to me, I would lean towards sticking with simply "Liberal", if only for the sake of consistency. The official name of the party is indeed the British Columbia Liberal Party, but then again that is the case for every provincial Liberal party in Canada (e.g. Alberta Liberal Party, Quebec Liberal Party, Nova Scotia Liberal Party, etc.) with the exception of NB, where the party is actually called the New Brunswick Liberal Association, and NL, where it's the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is also true that they are commonly referred to/stylized as the "BC Liberals", but this is also the case for the MB Liberal Party (manitobaliberals.ca) and the NL Liberal Party (nlliberals.ca). The real issue of contention here seems to be the common knowledge among British Columbians and anyone familiar with BC politics that the BC Liberals are particularly right-leaning/conservative in ideology compared other Liberal parties in Canada, including the federal party. Thus, there always seem to be lefter-leaning "small-l liberals" who feel that it needs to be made abundantly clear that the BC Liberals are really conservatives masquerading as liberals, and conversely right-leaning conservatives who want to make it clear that the provincial Liberal party they support in BC is the not the same as other Liberal parties. I would personally argue that at the end of day, the fact remains that the party is still called "Liberal", and that a right-leaning Liberal party is not actually unique to BC. The Quebec Liberal Party, for example, has long been recognized as the main right-of-centre option in that province, and was of course recently led by Jean Charest, who was previously the leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party. Like the BC Liberals, they are also not affiliated with the federal party, yet they are simply listed as "Liberal" in the infoboxes of Quebec election Wiki pages. A more extreme example than either the BC or QC Liberals is the main Liberal party in Australia, the Liberal-National Coalition, which has been known to be strongly conservative in ideology, for instance under the recent leadership of Tony Abbott. Anyway, just my two cents on the matter. Hopefully an amicable consensus can be worked out. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 02:36, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I've also been invited to comment here because of my comments with respect to Justason's attempt to remove their own polls from the polling section. I don't think there is a correct answer to this, but I lean toward "BC Liberal" rather than simply "Liberal". Subjectively, BC is the most extreme case of a disjoined "Liberal" party. In the case of the Atlantic Provinces, the Liberal parties are affiliated with the federal party and are ideologically aligned. In Yukon, the parties are not affiliated but aligned; same in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba where they are roughly aligned (except that they are minor political forces). The Ontario Liberal Party is unaffiliated and somewhat less aligned as they are arguably more left-leaning in policy and marketing (their logo is literally an "L" hanging off the left side of a dividing line). The Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) is broad coalition of federalists not aligned with the federal party; it tends to be more centre-right (although more centrist than the BC Liberals) but it is the provincial party that is most aligned with the Liberal Party of Canada on the federalist-sovereigntist spectrum. The PLQ also doesn't need to and doesn't actively differentiate itself from the federal Liberals in the same way that the BC Liberals do; it has for all of Quebec's history been a contender for government in a province where many residents consider themselves part of a distinct society. The BC Liberal party has been unaffiliated since the 1980s when it was a minor political force and unaligned since 1993-1994 when Gordon Campbell led thousands of former BC Social Credit supporters to buy enough memberships to make him the leader. Since then, it is my observation that they never refer to themselves as "Liberals" without the preceding "BC". In 2009, they frequently used logos which simply read "BCL", but the "Liberal" is never used without "BC". I agree that consistency is important. However, I think that by using simply "Liberal", wikipedia has opted to maintain internal consistency with other provinces rather than consistency with common usage, including by the parties themselves and Elections BC. IMO, Wikipedia should reconsider the general rule for provincial parties. The line should probably just be either affiliation with the federal party or universal provincial modifier, but the status quo in the case of BC leads to confusion, reinforces misconceptions, and overrides common, near universal usage. Mmulroney (talk) 15:18, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I think this is a terrible idea. Does that mean we are going to change NDP to BCNDP as well? What a mess that makes. Also note the distinction of colouring made in the example at Template:Canadian party colour between the federal and provincial parties. Jon Kolbert (talk) 15:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * More often than not, the BCNDP uses the provincial prefix when advertising or referring to itself. I don't understand how doing so on Wikipedia would make a "mess". In any case, the BCNDP is also affiliated with the Federal NDP - if the decision were to use a provincial modifier only where a provincial party has no affiliation with the federal party, we wouldn't have to use the BC prefix for the NDP. Provincial PC parties would not need to be distinguished because there is no longer a federal Progressive Conservative Party. You also pointed out the distinction of colouring. Are you implying that a subtle colour difference is sufficient to distinguish the parties? Are you thereby also implying that there is merit to distinguishing them? If you are, then I think that subtle colour differences are not enough - most casual users won't even notice. As mentioned above and on the BC Liberal talk page, the party now uses more blue than red, but the consensus on Wikipedia to date (or status quo at least) seems to just be to use a darker red. If the consensus is that a subtle colour difference is justified for the BC Liberals but not for the ON or QC Liberal parties, I think this just reinforces that the BC Liberals are sufficiently different from the Liberal Party of Canada that it is important to more clearly distinguish them. Mmulroney (talk) 17:15, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Justason Market Intelligence removing its own polls
User "JustasonMarketIntelligence" just deleted all of the Justason polls, stating "Removed Justason Market Intelligence polls. The firm conducted a methodology experiment; reported several scenarios. No prediction was presented." Aside from this explanation making no sense, if a firm conducts polls and releases the results publicly, do they have any right to remove them from Wikipedia? Mmulroney (talk) 21:16, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I was also irked by this; glad to know I wasn't the only one. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to your question, though I find it curious that the so-called poll aggregators (e.g. Too Close to Call and CBC Poll Tracker) have made unfettered use of these polls for the purpose making actual election predictions, yet JustasonMarketIntelligence doesn't want them shown in this harmless Wikipedia table that simply lists polls. If I wasn't willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, I would postulate that they've become self-conscious that their numbers are a bit out of step with the other pollsters and are worried that having them on display in this table will somehow harm their reputation should the election results fall closer to the other pollsters' numbers than theirs. If you go to their website and look at the releases for these polls, they are indeed repeatedly referred to, front and centre, as "polls" rather than "experiments", and are overall presented in much the same way as the other pollsters present their respective polls. Most of the other pollsters also go out of their way to qualify their results and warn that the actual election results could differ from their numbers for various reasons, given what happened last election in BC. So yeah, I think it's pretty silly that Justason removed their own polls. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 21:53, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I had a discussion on twitter with Barb Justason and one of her employees about them removing the polls, and was clear I did not agree with it.

Her answer (to who deleted the polls was "That was us. We presented several potential scenarios in a research-on-polling experiment. We offered no single prediction."

Her employee also said "Many firms don't release their experiments. We shared ours."

The other answers were similar, saying these are experiments, etc.

Mikemikem (talk) 02:03, 14 May 2017 (UTC)Mikemikem


 * Haha, what? That doesn't make sense - not even a little. Factually, they were opinion polls. The published results were described as such. Their explanation doesn't pass the smell test. Mmulroney (talk) 17:23, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Official popular vote result
The chart at the very top of the page, and lower down the "results" section, have different percentages for total popular vote.

What is the official link we want to use (when all counting is done) so we do not have different results? Mikemikem (talk) 23:12, 22 May 2017 (UTC)


 * The official results will be here:


 * http://electionsbcenr.blob.core.windows.net/electionsbcenr/GE-2017-05-09_Party.html


 * http://electionsbcenr.blob.core.windows.net/electionsbcenr/GE-2017-05-09_Candidate.html


 * The info box totals were easy to update quickly, while the more detailed results requires more work for parties other than the BCL, NDP, Greens and Libertarians). Mmulroney (talk) 21:26, 24 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Ok, thanks for that!


 * Mikemikem (talk) 01:35, 25 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I've updated the totals for all parties, as well as for each riding. Enjoy! Madg2011 (talk) 21:58, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Resulting Premier
The Party results box should change Premier-designate to Resulting Premier which at this moment is TBD because elections are about who becomes Premier from these results not who is the Premier in the meantime.

The articles for Australian federal elections 1922: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_1922

and the Irish general election 1948: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_general_election,_1948

have done the same in this regard.

122.108.156.100 (talk) 01:32, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

To further emphasise on this the incumbent Premier at an election is also the caretaker Premier and is still the caretaker Premier if he or she chooses to test the confidence of the government if the election in question does not provide immediately the answer on who will form the next government. 122.108.156.100 (talk) 01:47, 22 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Christy Clark was sworn in as Premier and with a new cabinet on June 8th. A caretaker government is an incumbent government operating in a kind of skeleton mode until its successor can be sworn in; the BC Liberals have moved beyond that stage and are operating as a full-fledged government. The swearing-in gives them a mandate from the crown to do so.


 * I agree, this is an election article and should display the Premier who took office as a result the election - Ms. Clark. Whether she is succeeded by Mr. Horgan during this parliament is a topic for another article.


 * Our previous consensus on this was drawn from Ontario general election, 1985, not foreign elections from generations ago. It's not really cool to edit it as well to prove your point.


 * Madg2011 (talk) 14:41, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

This is not about when the events of those other elections took place, it is about how recent those two articles were written. If as expected and as Clark herself has conceded that it is likely John Horgan will become the next premier than he not Clark is the winner of this election. Elections are not about reappointing a caretaker head of government which Clark is now but who will become the head of the government for the new term of government. 122.108.156.100 (talk) 00:37, 23 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Ultimately it's the legislature that decides who the premier is, and so far the new legislature has not yet had the opportunity to do that, so I would tend to agree with the IP user. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 01:55, 23 June 2017 (UTC)


 * With respect, the Premier, as head of the government, serves at the pleasure of the legislature, but is appointed to his/her post by the Crown. Clark and her new ministry have been sworn in by the Crown with full mandates and are serving as a completely legitimate government until the legislature decides otherwise. Madg2011 (talk) 14:39, 23 June 2017 (UTC)


 * I think this could probably turn into a bit of a debate over semantics, but I accept your point. Still, I can't help but wonder, if Clark only ends up serving as premier for less than a month with Horgan then taking over at the first possible opportunity for a presumably much longer period of time until next election, whether it would indeed make more sense (in a 'common sense' sort of way) to ultimately put Horgan as "resulting premier". Same goes for the '85 Ontario election for that matter. Either way, my feelings over the matter aren't particularly strong. Cheers, Undermedia (talk) 15:17, 23 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Fair points. It's probably not important enough a distinction to worry much about. Madg2011 (talk) 15:52, 23 June 2017 (UTC)


 * It is the Lieutenant Governor who decides who is Premier and she appointed Clark on June 12 as Premier with this order In this case Guichon asked Clark to form a minority government and Clark said yes and Guichon appointed her premier with the above order in council. As Premier she has appointed a new cabinet, convened the legislative assembly, and gave a throne speech. And the proper term is "Premier-designate" (same thing as Prime minister-designate). Where did this "Resulting Premier" come from? maclean (talk) 03:58, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
 * There should not be a "resulting premier" or "premier-designate" identified in the info box. Clark remains the premier, because, as maclean noted, the Lieutenant Governor Guichon says she is.  This could change if the Liberals are not able to maintain the non-confidence of the legislature, but this has nothing to do with the election.  We do not elect premiers (or prime ministers) in Canada.  They are appointed by the crown on the advice of Parliament or the Legislature.  In other words, it is our representatives which select the premier not voters.  As such, the terms "resulting premier" or "premier-designate" are wrong because they suggest that the election is what determines who is premier.  Also, it is odd to call Clark a "premier-designate" because she never ceased being premier.  She will remain premier until death, resignation or dismissal by the Lieutenant Governor.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 21:04, 23 June 2017 (UTC)


 * PLEASE look to Ontario general election, 1985 article, as the reason we use Christy Clark & Liberals. GoodDay (talk) 00:52, 30 June 2017 (UTC)