Adrian Dix must resign immediately.
He has to bear the mantle of political leadership and surrender his post as leader of the B.C. NDP. His failure to lead the party into power has nothing to do with faulty opinion polls and everything to do with the inability to attract support beyond that regular 35 per cent of the electorate that will always vote NDP.
The embarrassingly incorrect polling numbers aren't the fault of poor methodology but of misinterpretation by the people who conducted them and then sloppy reporting by reporters and editors who took the numbers at face value. Far too much emphasis was placed on the numbers the NDP and Liberals received {ital}among decided voters{ital}, which naturally begs the question of how many undecided voters were polled. In the Oraclepoll Research survey conducted exclusively for The Citizen and CKPG News during the third week of April in the two Prince George ridings found Shirley Bond and Mike Morris holding small leads for the Liberals over their NDP opponents. In both ridings, however, 19 per cent of respondents said they had not decided who they were voting for yet.
Locally and provincially, that bloc of voters easily accounts for what the real results actually were and it makes perfect sense why so many Liberal voters hid their intentions from pollsters. For many people older than 40, political affiliation is a private matter, not to be discussed with family or friends, never mind a perfect stranger who has called on the phone to ask. Rather than be rude, their response is to say simply that they haven't decided yet.
This bloc of voters gave Dix and the NDP long and careful consideration, as the polling data shows, backed up by the anecdotal reports of NDP candidates and volunteers who worked the phones and the doorsteps. What those voters found, however, was a party that talked about being practical but a leader that still put principle over common sense.
If there was one single turning point in the campaign, it was Dix's rejection of the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver. After first saying he would wait until Kinder Morgan actually filed an application and provided details on its plans before deciding where he stood on the development, Dix announced on Earth Day, April 22, that he opposed the idea on principle. While it appeased the environmentalists and the hard left members within his party, it put doubt in the mind of moderate voters and the undecided whether Dix was really about practicality.
Dix's failure stands in sharp contrast to Clark's victory. As a leader, she put the needs of her team ahead of her own, carrying the party on her back all the way to victory, even though it meant sacrificing her own riding. The NDP put in a ridiculous amount of energy into winning Vancouver-Point Grey to humiliate Clark and the Liberals. They got what they wanted but paid a ridiculous cost for it.
The B.C. NDP now have a choice to make. They can continue to remain true to their founding principles and keep the same 35 per cent or so of the electorate in their camp. They'll be faithful to their beliefs but they won't be chosen to govern. Or they can follow the lead of the Labour Party in the U.K. and the Democratic Party in the U.S. and take a distinct turn right, towards the political centre. The acceptance of the radical agendas of many (but not all) trade unions, environmentalists and social activists in exchange for their support must end if the NDP ever wants to win an election on their own merits, rather than as a protest vote against a corrupt regime.
Political hardball not only means being tough when needed on your own supporters, it demands cruelty towards your opponents. Dix should have been a broken record on the HST, the ethnic voter scandal and every Liberal misstep of the last 12 years. Some might call that negative campaigning, others call it stating the obvious and doing what it takes to win.
Dix may be proud of running a principled campaign but it was his job to get the NDP 43 or more seats in the legislature, not to feel good about himself. He was unwilling to make decisions where political reality trumped his self-righteousness. In other words, he failed to lead.
In politics, being right only counts if you win.
He has to go.
