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Tuesday's provincial election in British Columbia is setting up to be the most uncertain and closest vote in over 20 years, as polls show the B.C. Liberals and B.C. New Democrats nearly tied in public support a split that could give the edge to the Liberals' Christy Clark over John Horganand the NDP.

According to the CBC's B.C. Poll Tracker, an aggregation of all public polls that will be updated throughout the day as the final polls of the campaign are published, the Liberals and NDP are tied at 39 per cent apiece.

That's a significant reversal of fortunes from a little over two weeks ago, when the gap between the two parties stood at seven points in the polls to the NDP's benefit.

Click or tap for full projection details.

The Greens follow in third at 19 per cent support, while about three per cent of British Columbians are expected to vote for other parties and independent candidates.

With these levels of support, the Liberals are narrowly favoured in the seat projection, with 44seats to 41for the NDP and two for the Greens.

While that points to the narrowest of majority governments, the B.C. Liberals have a higher seat ceiling and thus a better chance ofwinning than the NDP running 10,000 simulations with these seat ranges gives victory to the Liberals 72per cent of the time, with the NDP winning the most seats 28per cent of the time.

The odds of a minority government stand at aboutone-in-five significant for a province that hasn't had a minority government since the 1950s.

The seat projection model favours the Liberals in a close race largely because the party's regional support is more efficient than the NDP's. But whilethe race is otherwise a toss-up two polls published Monday morning by Mainstreet/Postmedia and Ipsos/Global News give the NDP a statistically insignificantone-point lead over the Liberals there are reasons to believe the Liberals could have the edge.

In the polls conducted partially or entirely inMay, three have given the NDP the lead by a single point while two have given the Liberals a lead of two to four points. That suggests that the Liberals have the higher upside than the NDP. The Liberals have also been trending upwards at the tail-end of the campaign, while the NDP has stagnated or dropped.

The Liberals also potentially have a turnout advantage. Mainstreet finds that the Liberals have stronger supporters and give the party a three-point lead among those voters who are most likely to vote and least likely to change their minds.

Both Mainstreet and Ipsos give the Liberals a significant lead among older British Columbians, who also vote in larger numbers.

On leadership, in six polls conducted during the campaign that have asked who voters think would be the best premier, Clark has placed ahead of Horgan in five of them.

Nevertheless, the margin is close enough in the polls that the popular vote could go in theNDP's favour. Which party will win the most seats, however, will depend on how those votes break down regionally.

In 2013, the B.C. Liberals won both the regions of Metro Vancouver and the Interior/North the former by about five points and the latter by about 13.

The Liberals still look set to win the Interior/North again, leading with 48per cent to 33per cent for the NDP. The Liberals will thus be looking to hold onto the seats they have in the Interior and potentiallypick up a few at the expense of the NDP. The trend line has been heading in the Liberals' direction in the region.

NDP Leader John Horgan gestures to indicate two days until election day while addressing supporters during a campaign stop in Vancouver on Sunday. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

Metro Vancouver, however, is trending against the Liberals. The polls now give the NDP about 42per cent to 38 per cent for the Liberals, a swing of some nine points from 2013. That has the potential to move a number of seats from the Liberals over to the NDP.

But can the New Democrats win enough new seats in Metro Vancouver to make up for a lack of gains or losses in the Interior? Horgan's election hopes lie in a strong showing in and around Vancouver.

Additionally, the New Democrats will need to minimize their losses on Vancouver Island.

After flirting with the lead earlier in the campaign, Andrew Weaver's Greens have since fallen back, dropping to about 28 per cent and into a tie with the Liberals. The NDP still leads on the island with 40per cent. But both the Liberals and NDP are trending below their 2013 levels of support on Vancouver Island, opening up some opportunities for the Greens.

Support for the Green Party, whose leader Andrew Weaver is seen above in Nanaimo, B.C., stands at 19 per cent a day before the vote. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

Attaining four seats and official party status in the B.C. legislature is within reach of the Greens, but it is looking like a bigger challenge than it was earlier in the campaign.

How the Greens do is perhaps the biggest unknown going into tomorrow's vote. Polls put the party at between 15 and 23 per cent support provincewide and between 20 and 35per cent support on Vancouver Island. Within those bands of support lie everything from a breakthrough to a disappointment for Weaver and the Greens, with significant implications on the performance of the other parties.

This all leaves the outcome of the B.C. election uncertain. The Liberals have a regional and turnout advantage that should give them the edge in a close race. They could also benefit from incumbency and so out-perform their polls, as has often been the case in other jurisdictions. That would turn a slim majority into a wider one.

The New Democrats could benefit from a breakthrough in Metro Vancouver or a decrease in Green support that, polls suggest, would boost the NDP more than the Liberals. But they could also under-perform their polls as they did in 2013.

And the Greens could prove to be efficient in getting their supporters out exactly where the party has a shot at winning seats giving them official party status and potentially the balance of power in a minority government. Or the Greens could under-shoot their polling average, as the party has often done elsewhere in Canada.

Considering the margins of error in polls and the regional dynamics at play, such a narrow gapbetween the New Democrats and the Liberals could result in any of the above outcomes without the polls seriously missing the mark.

So surprises could be in store. All will be revealed after voting closes at 8 p.m. on Tuesday night.

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NDP, Liberals neck and neck in BC polls, but Christy Clark could have edge - CBC.ca

It'snot yet seven months since the territory's last trip to the polls but the Canberra Liberals have begun to outline their strategy for winning the 2020 ACT election.

Four years out from their next shot at the Legislative Assembly'stop floor, the party has started looking at ways to address the shortfalls that saw them once again consigned to Opposition.

A month after theirdefeat at last October's election, the Canberra Liberals asked assistant federal director Stuart Smith to undertake an external review of the party's election campaign - although presidentArthur Potter said it was a normal part of thepost-election mop-up and not a reflection on the drubbing they received.

After more than 50 face-to-face meetings, post-election polling research and analysis of financial information, Mr Smith handed down 30 recommendations, which appear to point to problems with understaffing, poor budget allocation, patchy communication between candidates and party officials, and candidates going off-message.

His recommendationsindicatean absence of grassroots engagement and poor organisation which could have cost the Libs their first shot at office since 2001.

Instead, the Liberals were hit by a 2.2 per centswing against them, despite a series of factors playing against the incumbent Labor government.

In the weeks after the election, Canberra Liberals leader Alistair Coe said the citywideresultwas close -Labor winning 92,000 votes and the Liberals 88,000 -but Labor's targeted communications with households bested the Libs' "Canberra-wide campaign" and they needed to learn from that.

To this point, Mr Smith called on the Libs to appoint a coordinator for each electorate from March 2020 onwards, to monitor candidate activity, resolve disputes and provide advice on which areas or demographics to target.

Mr Smith said the party should also analyse all of ACT Labor's failings since the 2001 election and create a dossier on both a chronological and portfolio basis of their stuff-ups.

He said all candidates needed to be armed with a complete and regularly updated set of talking points across all policy areas.

Candidates needed to make better use of social media and other "modern communication tools" and keep their corflutes simple with as little text as possible to make a maximum impact on people driving by too.

The management committee neededto come up a fundraisingcampaignfor 2017, 2018 and 2019 to bankroll pre-campaign research, staff and advertising.

Mr Smith advised that a bigger slice of the overall expenditure cap in 2020 shouldbe set aside for advertising and messaging.

He saidindividualcandidate's expenditure caps should be lowered and each candidate given acostedmodel campaign budget template upon preselectionwithsuggestionson how much they should spend.

Television ads should be syndicated on social media with a portion of the digital advertising budget set aside for sponsoring posts to reach a broader audience.

The Canberra Liberals also needed to hire more campaign staff, including those with design and publishing skills, as soon as possible after the Federal Election.

An extra bookkeeper should be brought on from August to October 2020 to help with internal accounting during the peak period and money should continue to be set aside for research during the whole election campaign.

A sub-committee should be formed next year to identify and approach candidates for the next election and a 'candidates expression of interest' period should be set up, so potential candidates can be trained up before pre-selection in February 2020.

All candidates and MLAs should meet with the campaign director once a month between March and August 2020 and after that have a daily teleconference through to election day.

The Liberals have already moved on at least one of Mr Smith's recommendation -they launched a dedicated community engagement websitelast week.

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How the Canberra Liberals plan to win the 2020 ACT election - The Canberra Times

Is there any problem in America not the fault of liberal progressives? Has anyone actually ever met a liberal? What do these people do for fun? Sneer about cultural appropriation, burn American flags, and mock old women wearing crosses?

The idea that every political, social and financial crisis in the United States has a liberal origin is not only the propaganda of right-wing tantrums, but increasingly since the surreal election of Donald Trump, an obsession of liberals themselves. Myopically fixated on their own masochism and pathetic insecurity, they have wasted precious airtime, intellectual energy and freelance budgets of popular publications in attempts to explain how exactly they are to blame for 62 million Americans driving or walking to the polls to vote for a historically illiterate fool whose character actually appears in worse shape than his acumen.

Bernie Sanders, a leftist rather than a liberal, was one of the first to incoherently assign the presidential loss to the failure of identity politics, failing to recognize that Donald Trump is the most powerful practitioner of identity politics in the world. Mark Lilla, a Columbia University professor, acted as eloquent parrot to Sanders when he wrote that the Democrats fixation on diversity cost them the election. Recently, Bill Maher, whose derangement seems to advance with every television appearance, told Jack Tapper that the Democratic Party failed in 2016 because its leaders made white people feel like a minority.

Caitlin Flanagan, an excellent writer regardless of the inanity of her topic, blames Bill Maher for Trumps victory, or more broadly, late night comedy. When Republicans see these harsh jokes, Flanagan explained about the humor of Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee, they see exactly what Donald Trump has taught them: that the entire media landscape loathes them, their values, their family, and their religion.

One has to wonder: With liberals like these, who needs reactionaries? Trump voters told pollsters that diversity comes at the expense of whites and that the federal government, throughout American history, has provided too much assistance to black citizens. Maher, Lilla and Sanders would not identify the problem with the white electorate as racism, but insufficient coddling and pandering from Democrats. The crucial aim of American politics, according to the increasingly widespread view of opposition to identity politics, is to make white cowards and bigots feel that they have no need for growth, and that they are the center of the universe.

No one ever quite explains how even the most idealistic of Democrats could reach out to the 61 percent of Trump primary voters who believe that Barack Obama is an illegal immigrant born in Kenya and smuggled through customs as part of a Manchurian candidate conspiracy, but liberals will maintain that a large number of racists voting for a racist is somehow their fault.

Progressives were too politically correct or self-righteous, as a former Obama official phrased it for theAtlantic, and they are incapable of seeing beyond the blue bubble, to cite a boring bromide forever playing on repeat in television studios and radio stations across America.

All but the densest of observers will notice that all the self-flagellators share one common characteristic: they are white. People of color do not seem apologetic or stupefied over Trumps victory. Expertly, and often violently, acquainted with the anti-intellectual and resentful failures of white America, many black and Latino Americans are able to clearly identify the villain in the story.

When I asked a black friend and former coworker what she thought of Trumps triumph at the polls, just a week after the results, she expressed disgust and said, I wasnt surprised. I did not interpret her comprehension of Americas comfort with bigotry as an indictment of Clinton for not campaigning in Wisconsin or as criticism of overly zealous college students, satirical stand-up comics, or anyone else offered as a shield to deflect attention away from the real problems of American culture, and the refusal of white America to advance with an increasingly multicultural and multiethnic society.

In her essay on the evils of comedy, Flanagan writes, Somewhere along the way, the hosts of late night shows decided that they had carte blanche to insult not just the people within Trumps administration, but also the ordinary citizens who support Trump.

Emmett Rensin, writing for Vox, once crowned me the most smug of liberal essayists. So, as the smug liberal elitist out of touch with the real America, I would like to advance a radical notion: In a democracy where citizens are free to vote for their preferred candidate without coercion, the people most responsible for the outcome of an election, good or bad, are the voters.

Everyone is looking for someone to blame for the weird and dangerous reality of President Donald J. Trump. Well, here is a good place to start: the 62,904,682 people who voted for him. The Trump administration and the ordinary citizens who support him are not exactly disconnected. A Trump administration would not exist if not for the ordinary citizens Flanagan would like to romanticize.

I, like most anyone else who was horrified at the turnout, know and love people within the Trump coalition, but personal affection should not preclude acknowledgement that something is amiss with someone in their right mind supporting a con man who boasted of committing sexual assault; proclaimed that women deserve punishment for abortion; routinely insulted African-Americans, Mexicans and Muslims; mocked a disabled journalist; and demonstrated profound ignorance of the basic tenets of American history, law and governance.

The internal ombudsman of most liberals, especially in comparison to the shameless right wing, is a healthy feature of progressive politics. It encourages contemplation and reflection, often leading to helpful self-criticism. Taken to an extreme, however, it becomes a liability it preventsmovement, cloudsjudgment and obfuscatesreality.

Maybe womens studies professors, civil rights activists and provocative comedians all of whom, with their own tactics, are attempting to civilize and humanize American life are not responsible for the behavior of people who chanted build the wall or shouted bitch when Trump mentioned the name of his opponent. Maybe some element of American culture should hold adults accountable for their own actions. Maybe the problem is not making racists feel bad, but racism itself.

An important consequence of the liberal humiliation ritual is that it not only obscures genuine understanding of American culture, but insults or ignores the Americans who, even with comics cracking jokes and the occasional leftist on Twitter making a stupid remark, managed to make the right decision.

Flanagan and many others believe that mockery of religion helped usher voters into the arms of Trump. Black women are the most faithful Christians in the country, but 94 percent of them supported Clinton.

The smug elitism of liberals did not prevent 91 percent of black women or 82 percent of black men without a college degree, or a large majority of Latinos without higher education,from voting for Clinton.

The dedication of American culture to protecting the fragile white ego in denial of widespread white mediocrity is without limit. According to this worldview, black crack addicts in the 1980s and 90s represented a grave threat to civilization, whilewhite heroin junkies are the human face of a medical crisis. Black and Latino poverty is the result of laziness and lack of discipline, but poor white people are the victims of a worldwide economic conspiracy. Donald Trump is not the problem of the tens of millions of whites who voted for him, but the liberals who opposed him.

The colorblind and racially illiterate view of Sanders, Maher and company amplifies an odd interpretation of politics and sociology. White Americans are worthy of criticism only when they commit the ultimate sin criticizing other white Americans.

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Stop blaming identity politics: With white liberals like these, who needs the right wing? An error occurred. - Salon

Historically, the party of the president gets a shellacking, as President Obama called it in 2010, in the first midterm that they face. There have been only two cases when the president's party gained in both houses of Congress since the Civil War: in 1934 and in 2002.

Besides the normal historical cycle of backlash against the White House, Democrats this time around are whetting their lips because House Republicans have just voted for a health care bill that rescinds benefits for millions of hard-working Americans.

This could prove to be a policy victory that ends in political defeat. Between the midterms' track record and the polarizing health care legislation, this week's events would seem to be a recipe for political disaster for the GOP.

Democrats, on the other hand, see a silver lining in the House vote. They are hoping that TrumpCare will become the Republican ObamaCare, producing the same flip of control of the House that Democrats suffered in 2010.

And according to one Republican political strategist who deeply dislikes the president, "What we've done here is political malpractice. Democrats will run ads with weeping parents who can't cover their premiums and Little Johnny dying ..."

But is a Democratic sweep in 2018 really so certain? Is it so obvious that Republicans are on the verge of total electoral disaster?

With the economy having reached full employment, the best conditions in more than 10 years, many voters will be in good spirits about the status quo. Notwithstanding all the talk about the impact of the health care legislation, the bottom line to Americans' pocketbooks will matter a great deal come the midterm campaigns.

If conditions don't change significantly, Republicans will benefit. President Trump and the GOP, whether they deserve it or not, will be able to claim credit for the recovery. (Presidents usually get the blame or credit for economic conditions, even if they don't have a big impact on them.)

Republicans will say that indeed he is making America great again. Trump's supporters will feel that he delivered. Many Republicans who never loved Trump will nevertheless be pleased with the state of economic affairs.

There has been much discussion about the current version of the House bill and its "losers" who will make their angry voices known. But there are winners as well who will support what the GOP has done: wealthy Americans whose taxes will be lower, upper-middle-class Americans without pre-existing conditions, younger middle-class people who don't want insurance or want more meager insurance, and large employers who don't face the the mandate to offer coverage as they did under Obamacare.

To be sure, Republican candidates will face the ire of hospitals, Medicaid recipients and elderly Americans who are furious about the impact of the reform, if it passes. But this is not a bill that only takes things away from voters. Indeed, the bill redistributes benefits to some very powerful sectors of the country.

The benefits of winning in politics are important. If a health care measure gets through the Senate, Republican voters will be energized about a watershed victory. On the campaign trail, Republicans will have something to brag about when discussing what they have achieved in the Trump Era.

It is also very possible that passing health care would open to doors to a major supply-side tax cut that would bolster the confidence of core Republican constituencies who have money to spend on campaigns.

Democrats who are counting on a backlash to Trumpcare should also be careful not to forget that we live in a political world where public perceptions of policy and government are not simply the product of rational calculations by voters.

They learned this in the 2016 election but seem to have forgot the lesson. Partisan forces, ranging from the president to biased media outlets, can have a profound impact on how voters interpret what is happening in the political world.

Republicans have proven to be enormously successful at shaping the narrative about government decisions and policy. President Trump is a master of spin.

As the impact of a health care bill becomes clear, statistics won't be the only thing that matters. Democrats will have to counteract the powerful public relations campaign that President Trump and Republicans will certainly mount to convince voters that all the positives in health care are a product of their efforts and all the problems are still legacies of President Obama's broken policies.

The midterms are more than 18 months away, and a lot can happen to shape how they will play out.

Yet Republicans can still count on gerrymandered districts to protect incumbents in a large part of the red map. While courts have forced some states to redraw districts put into place after 2010, many of them remain in place for 2018.

If they do, and Freedom Caucus Republicans in the House decide that they need to deliver some kind of legislation, even if flawed, this could fundamentally change the dynamics of how the bill is perceived in the near future.

The reality is that Democrats should not be too giddy about the recent vote and their prospects come 2018. It will be a long slog to retake control of Congress and even to put a significant dent in the size of the Republican majorities. And Republicans can make a credible case that they will retain control of Congress and carry out more of their conservative agenda in the years ahead.

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Democrats, don't get too giddy about 2018 - CNN.com

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, several alums of the Bernie Sanders campaign came together with media entrepreneurs from The Young Turks to chart their path forward. Disappointed with the performance of a Democratic Party they felt had chosen a too-centrist position, they decided to seek out and promote candidates from the left using some of the distributed organizing tools that had helped the Sanders campaign punch above its weight.

The group, called Justice Democrats, advocates for policy positions such as Medicare for all, regulating Wall Street, ending the failed war on drugs, and bringing about election reform, according to their platform. Meanwhile the group proposes electing individuals to replace corporate Democrats, and has criticized Cory Booker, Claire McCaskill, and other US senators on Twitter as #DemsVotingBadly.

These tools helped the Sanders campaign turn this digital grassroots media support into $33 million raised in three months alone

The Justice Democrats plan to organize in what executive director Saikat Chakrabarti calls a distributed fashion. As the director of Organizing Technology for the Sanders campaign, Chakrabarti worked alongside Justice Democrats co-founder Zach Exley and communications director Corbin Trent to create software to organize grassroots support. Among the platforms they pioneered was map.berniesanders.com, a tool which allowed volunteers to organize events, with planned events appearing on a map for other interested volunteers to locate. Volunteers organized nearly 60,000 campaign events using this software, according to Exley. The tech they developed also allowed for these teams of volunteers to organize without direct supervision from campaign staff, while being on call to assist in official field operations when needed.

These tools helped the Sanders campaign turn this digital grassroots media support into $33 million raised in three months alone. Internet-based campaigns tend to fail to achieve their objectives when they cant leverage the full capacity of all the people who raise their hands and say I want to be involved, Exley told The Nation.

The Justice Democrats are partnering with Brand New Congress, a similar endeavor aimed at electing non-career politicians in both major parties by using grassroots support. Their policy goals include getting money out of politics and investing trillions of dollars to rebuild and repair towns. The group, which intends to be a consolidated resource and fundraising entity for all of its candidates, shares many of its members with Justice Democrats, including Chakrabarti, Exley, and Trent.

I think that our ability to organize with technology and our ability to set up phone banks and distribute in an effective way is going to allow us to nationalize more effectively.

While Justice Democrats is still developing their own versions of these strategies and has not had much of an opportunity to put them into play yet they formed in January and just announced Cori Bush as their first candidate Cenk Uygur, the CEO of The Young Turk Network and a Justice Democrats co-founder, has already started to use his platform to promote the group. His show alone has over 3 million subscribers, with The Young Turks Network drawing in 80 million unique views monthly and being the most-watched online network among 1834 year olds, according to Esquire.

Our goal is to nationalize those races and to really frame a narrative around these representatives that they arent just representing their district, which is a very big part of it, but theyre also representing the rest of America with their votes, Trent said in an interview with The Verge. So I think that our ability to organize with technology and our ability to set up phone banks and distribute in an effective way is going to allow us to nationalize more effectively. And then hopefully thatll be something that supports the field operations on the ground of those candidates in those districts.

On their website, Justice Democrats is soliciting nominations directly from supporters, and have so far received over 8,000 potential candidates. Many of these nominees, who may also be nominated by a team of Justice Democrats researchers, have little experience in the political process.

They may be civil engineers, they may be activists, they may be nurses, they may be librarians or teachers or principals, but they dont necessarily have the skills to run a winning campaign, Trent said. Chakrabarti says theyre looking for people with a good life record, such as participating in various forms of activism, or just being well-liked community members.

The group had garnered 217,651 supporters and raised a little over $1 million by mid-March, just two months after they launched

In order to address the lack of political experience, they have established a vetting process that includes a candidate training program and interviews with the Justice Democrats leadership, according to Trent. At least 70 individuals have gone through the process. Among the nominees that the Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress have publicly endorsed are Ronjonette Harrison, a foster mom and social worker in New Yorks 26th congressional district, and Chardo Richardson, ACLU president of Central Florida and an Air Force veteran.

So far, one candidate has officially taken up the cause of Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats: Cori Bush, a teacher, nurse, civil rights organizer, and preacher who ran for US Senate in 2016, and is now running to represent Missouris 1st congressional district in the US House of Representatives. Justice Democrats initially tweeted their support for her on March 13th, and she was announced as a Justice Democrats / Brand New Congress joint candidate running as a Democrat on April 20th. They initially aimed to raise $10,000 by her launch rally on April 30th to get access to the voter file they need to contact voters, soliciting $3 and $7 donations in emails to supporters. By April 24th, however, they had already raised $20,000, and succeeded in getting the file.

But their goals of beating establishment Democrats and electing a new slate of candidates necessitated aggressive fundraising and organizing. The group had garnered 217,651 supporters and raised a little over $1 million by mid-March, just two months after they launched, but Chakrabarti says it costs about $1 million to run competitively in a congressional race.

Right now, theres one basic path to Congress for candidates, and that path goes through big donors and PACs and lobbyists and were trying to create an alternative path.

If Bernie can raise $232 million in a primary, we think if we can raise somewhere around a little bit more than that for primary season that we can be competitive, says Trent.

The group is working on growing their slate of candidates in hopes of eventually running in over 300 races, further developing their platform, and growing their infrastructure of distributed teams and campaign staff, according to Trent. A large focus of their endeavors, however, will be fundraising.

One of the biggest things that weve got to do is provide an alternative source of fundraising, Trent said. Right now, theres one basic path to Congress for candidates, and that path goes through big donors and PACs and lobbyists and were trying to create an alternative path.

The teams next major project is launching the campaigns of eight more candidates with Brand New Congress, the identities of which they have not yet disclosed, other than that they are from states including New York, Florida, Arkansas, and West Virginia. Theyre looking to raise $187,574 to buy voter files for the candidates, and they plan on accomplishing that goal by continuing to solicit small donations. They also plan to use their tech-based strategies to run a presidential style campaign in these congressional races, which Trent says allows them to mobilize people from New York to California and everywhere in between to be impactful in campaigns they generally wouldnt even be aware of, let alone be able to be involved in.

We saw this campaign that was grassroots fueled, Chakrabarti said regarding the Sanders campaign when Justice Democrats first launched. Were going to do that same thing, but were going to take it forward to Congress.

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Meet the tech-savvy activists trying to take over the Democratic Party - The Verge