After the writ dropped this weekend, Monday marks the first full official week of the provincial election campaign.
BC NDP Leader David Eby will be in Burnaby making a health-care announcement on Monday morning. BC Conservatives Leader John Rustad is starting his day in Surrey, while BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau is spending the day in Victoria.
“The BC NDP and the BC Conservatives really do appear to be neck and neck,” UBC Political Scientist Stewart Prest told 1130 NewsRadio Vancouver.
He says voters can expect the campaign to be “active, vigorous and sharp” and says things will likely become increasingly intense, and possibly nasty, in the coming weeks.
“I think we’re going to hear conversations about each leader trying to define the other party in very sharp terms and so we may hear that kind of polarizing language that we’ve seen elsewhere as well. Voters are going to have to listen carefully to hear the actual substance behind that rhetoric.”
Prest says the campaign is on now, but really, it’s been ongoing all year. He explains it’s on voters to really pay attention to every announcement being made as there will be a lot of them. Is the NDP saying anything new? Is previously announced funding getting a refresh?
“This is going to be a stay-the-course kind of election for the [NDP] and asking for a reaffirmation,” he explained.
“With the BC Conservatives, voters really do need to spend quite a bit of time, I think, getting to know what this right-of-centre option is,” Prest added.
“It is not the same party as the BC United. It has many of the same members, at this point. We know it’s a party that’s led by someone who is much more skeptical about issues of gender equality, of learning about the realities of human-caused climate change.”
Prest expects things will get nasty soon enough, as they typically always do in an election campaign.
This is also a test, he stresses, for NDP Leader David Eby, who despite being the premier, didn’t run an election campaign for it. He was handed the job at the suggestion of former premier John Horgan who stepped down in 2022 due to health reasons.
“An important subtext of this election is [Eby and Rustad] introducing themselves to voters and voters deciding how comfortable are they with these two leaders in that role of the salesperson, the comforting presence we see voters expecting from leaders,” he explained.
“This is something Mr. Horgan was very good at getting voters to empathize with him, to identify with him, and to see him as their champion and I don’t know if we’ve had that process play out with Mr. Eby to this point and certainly, we haven’t with Mr. Rustad.”
The BC United Party is not running any candidates in this election, while some key members of the NDP have chosen not to run again, like high-profile MLA Rob Fleming, who’s currently the transportation minister.
“It might require a little more work on the part of the NDP, but at the same time that can represent an opportunity for renewal, so there’s a chance there for the NDP to try and rebuild trust with younger voters.”
When it comes to voter apathy, Prest predicts turnout at the polls will be similar to 2017 levels, which hovered around 60 per cent. He thinks, if anything, the younger generation will opt not to vote. He thinks they’re frustrated with the ongoing affordability crisis and if they don’t believe any leader will fix it, they won’t vote at all.
The election is on Oct. 19.