A beaming Christy Clark addressed her party’s surprising election upset Wednesday, attributing pollsters’ failure to predict the outcome to fickle voting intentions.
In her first post-election press conference, the Premier maintained she was not surprised by the sweeping BC Liberal victory that stunned pollsters and pundits alike on Tuesday.
“The polls do not tell us how people are going to vote, because voting day is the only day that they vote,” Clark said.
“It’s like me asking you what you’re going to have for dinner a month from now. Well, you know, maybe it’s chicken, maybe it’s steak. I don’t know. And you don’t know either. You might make a guess at it but your decision could change.”
The BC Liberals won a commanding 50-seat majority in Tuesday’s vote, despite trailing the NDP by nine points in the polls just a day earlier.
But Clark failed to secure her own seat in Vancouver-Point Grey, falling 785 votes behind New Democrat David Eby, the former executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association.
The Premier said she was too busy campaigning across the province to spend as much time as she would have liked in the riding, but that she has no regrets about the outcome.
If the results stand, Clark will have to ask one of the Liberals’ newly-elected MLAs to step aside so she can run again in a byelection, though she refused to speculate on the scenario Wednesday.
“I don’t know what the answer’s going to be to that, we’ll see what the results are,” she said. “In the meantime though we are getting back to work.”
Ralph Sultan, Clark’s 80-year-old Minister of Seniors, told CTV News he’s heard rumours that he will be asked to step aside in the Liberal stronghold of West Vancouver-Capilano.
The long-serving MLA insists he’s not going anywhere, though.
“I always listen carefully to whatever the Premier has to say but I repeat, I’ve been elected to serve these constituents for four years and that’s my intention,” Sultan said.
Clark said she’s confident the infighting that plagued her party after she took the reins in February 2011 is over now that she’s earned her mandate, and reiterated the Liberals’ promise to develop B.C.’s natural resource industries and eventually decrease its reported $56-billion debt.
Asked whether she will change her approach to the Northern Gateway pipeline project now that she has an expanded majority, the Premier said the five conditions she set out last year will stand.
“Any expansion of heavy oil is going to have to find a way to meet those conditions. That has not changed. But I’m hopeful other governments will decide they want to engage on this as well,” Clark said.
Clark's win made her the first woman elected to Premier in B.C. history, and delivered the Liberals' fourth majority in a row.
