OTTAWA — Precisely two years ago, incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative party won a majority government in the federal election.

Harper's win was followed by provincial elections in Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. In all cases but one, the winning party was the incumbent.

In just under two weeks from now, British Columbians will cast a ballot in a provincial election. For weeks, the Opposition NDP, led by Adrian Dix, has had a commanding lead in the polls. When the campaign started, Premier Christy Clark and her Liberals trailed by as much as 20 points in some polls.

But now, according to a Forum Research poll taken this week of more than 1,000 British Columbians, Clark's side has managed to shrink that deficit to just five points (the poll has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out 20).

The Liberals still have a lot of ground to make up in two weeks, but the B.C. campaign and all others stretching back to Harper's 2011 win surely tell us something about how politicians respond to an electorate in economically uncertain times.

From New Democrat Greg Selinger in Manitoba to Progressive Conservative Alison Redford in Alberta to Liberal Dalton McGuinty in Ontario, voters in every case but Quebec avoided the risk of giving the keys to government to new parties and instead stuck with a safe incumbent who was selling the same thing Clark is selling in B.C. right now. Here's the first line in her party's platform: "British Columbia stands tall as a safe harbour in a world marked with economic turmoil."

Every incumbent used a variation of that theme, possibly inspired by Harper's 2011 platform pitch: "Now is not the time for instability, or for reckless, opportunistic experiments. The global economy remains fragile...we need to stay the course."

Regardless of who was making the pitch, it hit voters' sweet spot every time but for Quebec and even there, Jean Charest and the Liberals lost by less than one percentage point of the popular vote with a campaign focused on economic stewardship.

In British Columbia, Dix and the NDP are offering a message of "change for the better, one practical step at a time." And yet, even with such a positive, non-threatening campaign motto, the power of incumbency in these "fragile" economic times may yet lift Clark back to power.

A new poll commissioned by Sun News Network finds that 27% of British Columbians trust Clark's Liberals the most to manage the economy while 21% trust Dix and the NDP. It is one of the few metrics in which Clark does measurably better than Dix.

Asked by pollster Abacus Data how the economy is doing in B.C., most think it's been doing OK. Not great, not lousy, but just all right. Most think things will likely stay that way for the next year.

"In making the argument that British Columbians should stay the course and re-elect their government, the B.C. Liberals and Christy Clark are contrasting their economic plan with that of Adrian Dix and the B.C. NDP," Abacus CEO David Coletto said. "One problem with that strategy is that few voters think the economy has improved much in the past year and few think things will improve in the next six months."

There's the choice, then, not only for B.C. but for political parties in other provinces and in Ottawa. If you are Thomas Mulcair's NDP or, in Ontario, Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives, the challenge is to convince voters to choose "change for the better" when Canadians have shown a clear preference time and again in the past two years for steady-as-she-goes with what they've got.