Article content

Late last week, four days before “E-Day,” pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos met senior members of the B.C. Liberal Party’s campaign team, including former MLA and finance minister Colin Hansen.

“We’ve got 48 seats,” Mr. Pantazopoulos told them. Popular support was in their party’s favour, enough to win a fourth consecutive Liberal majority government.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Why the Liberals were able to predict their victory in B.C. while public election polls missed the mark Back to video

They had information that no one else in the province — aside from their opponents — could have believed, at that point: A B.C. New Democratic Party defeat was looking certain.

Most media, meanwhile, were telling British Columbians something else. Their supposition — an New Democratic Party landslide was coming — was based on public polls, handed to them for free or at a nominal cost. The data on which most newspapers and TV stations relied and which formed conventional wisdom were off the mark.

Members of the Liberal inner circle were taken aback in that meeting with Mr. Pantazopoulos, retained by the party before the election period. Not by the news he was sharing, but the timing. His confident forecast of a Liberal majority came just a bit earlier than expected.