Talk:2001 British Columbia general election/Archive 1

Archive 1

Colours

Let's try to keep the background colours as background. The previous edit that changed the Liberal colour to "blueviolet" almost completely obscured the text. We're not making art here, we're conveying information. Blocking out the text may make a chart "pretty", but also meaningless if people cannot read the information easily. Maybe "lightcoral" isn't the right colour for the Liberals, although I don't think it make much sense to spend a whole lot of time mucking around with these things, but "blueviolet" makes as much sense as "black". If we don't care about people being able to read the text, why not make the whole chart "black"? It would be very cool because they say that "black" is the new black. Thanks to Michaelm for taking the blueviolet out. Kevintoronto 14:33, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Lopsided result in 2001

The 2001 election certainly has a lopsided result!

Fixup

Thinking I might need some help on this page with the 2001 Riding by riding results. Jack Cox 22:54, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To start, the BC Liberals did not have any cabinet ministers going into the 2001 election. Earl Andrew 00:41, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Table Design

Er, I know it's a lot of work to make tables, 'cause I've made a bunch in the earlier elections in the last while, adapting a template I found on the Elections template page, which is British in origin; there's different seat-composition charts used at the federal level, too. I just wanted to suggest you have a look at the bi-columnar format I've used throughout the historical elections, which is easier to read and also shows the government-opposition division visually; the colour columns could be narrower but I don't know how to tweak them. Ridings are still listed alphabetically, or are meant to be, in each column, and where necessary multiple-member ridings are split between the columns or different opposition parties if different seats went to different parties. And have a look at each of the individual riding results, which are lists of tables of another type which I've also thought of for a by-riding list; basically I took that and doubled it for gov/opp and flanked it with colour bars flying party flags.

The main reason I'm suggesting it as a standard, though, is because one thing I noticed right away with your table is it "drags" my browser, i.e. when I try to scroll down over/past it, as I guess it's data-heavy-per-line or whatever the technical term is for that; like a big-byte JPG or TIF in the way it drags the scroll. I know it's a lot of work to switch over the entered data, but all that need be done is copy a recent election - since the ridings are the same (unless redistributed in some cases, so you tweak the table) and then switch around the names, and the parties if needed. I won't do it without discussion, but for me it takes about 15 minutes as I've done so many of the damned things. I haven't been around in the electoral Wiki project for a bit - distracted by other things, including my own writing and some blogging - but while dropping in to find a plurality larger than the BC-STV vote for something I'm writing on Tyee- Boss Johnson in 1949 61.35% - but that was in a co-Premiership with Royal Maitland, technically, since it was the Coalition (and therefore a complete left-right split in the vote, with the centre voting near-completely right; before that it was Richard McBride in 1912, 59.65%) - I came across your table; why I noticed the "drag" is because I'd just visited and scrolled down, in rapid order, the series of elections from 1912 upwards. So I noticed the difference. See any one of List of British Columbia elections.

There's a fair bit of difference between the more recent elections and earlier ones in both federal and provincial formats, and I'd suspect probably between different provincial formats (I haven't looked). Should we all worry about a standard here? Or the systematic use of sequential lists in the succession boxes, and so on? That particular device I've wondered about somehow intelinking between member/candidate pages and election/riding pages, i.e. using "sequence" but I don't understand its code enough to know how to structure the data to get it to do what I'm thinking of. Not that all the formatted pages and data aren't already in place. It's not that I'm a systematizer; I just know that data conservation is a good thing (a long-lost cause, perhaps) but it's the content that really matters, not the format. I haven't had time to research and write up the historical elections - the commentaries and major bios to go with the elections and ridings, and the many candidate/member bios that should be written at some point. Wiki's pretty interesting in the way it accumulates input from all over; hopefully there's some other amateur/professional historians out there who might see fit to contribute some bios on their local historical members, or ones who strike there interest. I wish I had time to do more, but life, alas, demands other duties for the most part right now (such as they are).

Anyway, back to The Tyee to finish whatever I was looking for the plurality comparison for. Look for me in the comments at the bottom of the Emerson-related pages, or in the archives of the elections blogs; same username. Around here I'm really neutral, but always watching for skulduggery on the part of "historical spin doctors" and enhancing what sometimes only is pablum or partisan gobblery; as far as the data tables go I like the fact that we're probably all from different political parties but are operating fairly coherently and more or less as a cohesive public collective, with no boss, no hierachy, working to provide electoral histories and current information to the inquiring public, who of course are the discerning Wikipedia readers sent here so faithfully by that big multi-coloured doggie, Google. Data rules the world, we all know that; what's interesting in Wiki is that we can make sure the data is right; and in the long run much will get recorded and correlated here than in any other written work "ever"; it is a summation of such works already in some areas; often bizarrely so. That it can also be a useful tool for public political and electoral resources and open, yet fairly civilized, democratic discussion, is rather interesting.

UseNet had been such a disappointment because of all the rabid freakies and yellers and name-callers and all that, and spammers and flamers of all very stupid kinds; just this last couple of days, in the wake of the Emerson Affair, the intelligent discussions that typified the Tyee, usually, have been stampeded by a small but very loud herd of gabble-babbling mongrel flamers; trolls; possibly also balrogs, we haven't been able to find out yet. To be expected of course that constructive discussion must be made unconstructive by those seeking to halt it; I've seen it before. I think we'll survive, but the nice thing in Wiki, unlike Blogspace or UseNet, is that you can delete what is wrong, inoffensive, puerile, and so on; and restore junk/porn that gets put in. Wondrous. It's scarily like the emergence of a common memory, a place where minutiae of given events and personalities and other entries can accrue over time, and from different quarters and angles, and the non-POV stuff makes it an interesting exercise in research, because of the validation/citation requirements (when observed). Anyway, just philosophizing on the wonder of Wiki; and wondering how long it'll take the Googleplex to absorb it, and also to speculate that it must necessarily be banned in the People's Republic (?).Skookum1 06:19, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I reject this notion

The article claims "The defeat was attributed to massive vote splitting with the Greens, which in many cases allowed the Liberals to sneak up the middle and win" This claim is nonsensical when compared to the fact that the Liberals won 57% of the popular vote province wide. Even if the remaining 43% had all voted for one party, the Liberals would have likely won anyways. I personally went through the article and added all the vote totals for the NDP and Green candidates. (exlcuding the richmond and delta ridings because there was no totals) I could only find 7 cases where, had ALL the voters for the Greens AND ndp voted for the same party, they would have defeated the Liberals. If this had been the case the Liberals STILL would have had 65 of 72 (the legilature minus richmond and delta) seats versus only 9 for the NDP. The NDP would still have lost 76.92% of their total seats in the legislature.

So as a consequence I'm removing that sentence.

TotallyTempo (talk) 04:01, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Well I agree that vote splitting played a role, to attribute the NDP's defeat to this is ludicrous.