they are saying that people will be writing books and analysing the results for decades.

All I can say is that I'm shocked heh.

Yeah, a lot of shock and surprise over here about the results.

This is also the first time that I have seen the leader of the winning party not win in their own riding.

Bonus

did an Eskimo win?

@H4: yes. The question is was it due to people changing their minds, lower voter turn out, or a quirk of FPTP? We seem to have seen all recently

@Paladine: The last I can remember is Don Ghetty of the Alberta PC Party in the mid 1980s I think he actually lost a bi-election after that before finally winning a seat (not sure on that one).

magellaan: it's a canadian election, i didn't think non-eskimos were allowed to run... :D

there's also the "PQ effect" where some francophones in quebec don't want to admit to supporting the liberal party so the liberal support in quebec (provincially) tends to be understated. That might be the effect here as well.

The final thing to consider is that polls are not 100% guarantees of the future even if conducted 100% correctly and no one lies.
threehundredeight.com gave the ndp a 90% chance of winning and even if those odds were correct seeing a liberal win is not completely unreasonable given the model. We observe events with less than a 10% chance of success all the time (for example getting missiles in earth :P).

Nate Silver touched on this the day before the US presidential election, that even giving Obama a 75% chance of winning, his loss wouldn't necessarily invalidate the model.

In any case, just be happy we live in a country were contesting election results at most ends up in a short court hearing although I don't think there is going to be any of that here:P

for all you americans: lets see

1) everyone votes with the SAME MACHINE
2) you usually don't have to wait hours in line to vote
3) it's easy to vote in advance
4) we don't have people messing with the voters lists for political purposes or generally at all. we all agree on the rules as to who can and cannot vote.

A lot of speculation as to what lead to the result, I think it was a combination of a lot of those advanced theories.

Youth dont turn out. Youth favor left parties generally. NDP also didnt say anything to counter the Liberal argument that they would be terrible for the economy. That is my personal guess anyways. fluff.

It's also proof that the only counter to negative campaign is a negative campaign (or to outsmart your opponent).

If you repeat a something enough times people will believe it.

I think it has a lot to do with the NDP flip flopping on moderation.

They had the support of a lot of tentative people based on the image they were projecting about being a "more moderate" NDP.

However, they decided to start taking some political risks given how far they were ahead in the polls (and due to support leakage on the left to the green party) that they started to move to the left in the final weeks of the campaign, which I think scared a lot of those moderates into realizing that the NDP may not be as moderate as they were letting on.

Drastically changing their stance on Kinder Morgan was the beginning of the end for them, I think.

I was actually really shocked by the results. At least the ndp won the riding l live in. I think the 28 days smear campaign the liberals employed against dix actually swayed a lot of people.

the liberals either had more money or spent it better, cause I heard a lot from them and nothing from the NDP.


IMO the protest vote never showed. In total numbers I believe everyone had less support then last time. It's just that everyone pissed off by Gordon Campbell and the HST weren't sufficiently inspired by Dix to vote for them, and Christy didn't raise sufficient ire in that protest vote to inspire them to show up for the guys they didn't really like in the first place.

I actually tended to support the Campbell-Liberal party, but I can't stand Clark. But even though I can't stand Clark I never once considered voting orange.

I still don't get it, around here almost everyone I know voted for NDP, even I tried over in kamloops where I got turned away because I wasn't from the area or something. I didn't have too much time to stick around and find out why.

There are just too much unanswered questions from NDP.

To be honest, I might like NDP's platform better, but Dix has too many questionables around him, and I would not want him to lead our province.

I think there may have been a lot of complacency as well from NDP supporters. All of the polls pointed to an NDP majority so I think some of their supporters didn't bother to turn up to vote.

I voted NDP but apparently I live in the only Green riding in Canada, first Elizibeth May now Andrew Weaver...

As long as people continue making more money and house costs keep going up... generally people vote for the status quo.

The NDP in BC has been noted for spending a lot of money... to their own detriment.

and bonus

liberals focused on economy and jobs

NDP said we'll see

yeah NDP said "we'll see" to a lot of things.

Made their claims of moderation hard to swallow. When you aren't making promises it is usually because you don't want to break them, and you know promising to do what you really want to do won't go over well.

Don't know that much about BC politics, but I should point out that that province receives a lot of federal transfer payments:P