Can B.C. Premier Christy Clark win the next election?

Some might call B.C. Liberal Cabinet Minister Rich Coleman, the king of wishful thinking.

In the midst of an ethnic outreach scandal (aka 'Ethnic-gate') which suggests staffers from Premier Christy Clark's office were using government resources to woo ethnic voters for the Liberal Party, Coleman sounds as optimistic as a teenager ahead of the high school dance.

"We'll move forward with the 90,000 members we have in our party supporting us and we'll win the election [in May]," he told reporters on Monday.

[ Related: Ethnic outreach scandal could end B.C. Premier Christy Clark's career ]

If Coleman is sincere in his beliefs of victory, then he's dismissing the fact that the Liberals are 16 percentage points behind the NDP in the polls; he's somehow forgotten that that the leaked strategy and it's references to 'quick wins' has angered ethnic communities throughout the province; he's mis-remembering about the several riding association presidents that have resigned over the past month; and he's overlooking calls for Christy Clark's resignation.

[ Related: B.C. Premier Christy Clark deflects question about her own possible resignation ]

Nevertheless, Yahoo! Canada News went to one of Canada's most respected pollsters — Mario Conseco from Angus Reid — to see if a Liberal victory was possible.

Here's what he had to say:

Y! Canada: You've been around BC politics for a while. Do you see the Liberals recovering from this?

Conseco: Nothing surprises me about this province, and there’s certainly the possibility of the BC Liberals running a remarkable campaign and making the election closer than what it would be if it were held tomorrow. That being said, the main danger here is for voters to start to tune out the BC Liberals, and that makes campaigning a lot harder.

Y! Canada: Can the Liberals get the 'ethnic-vote' back?

Conseco: It will be difficult, particularly because it is better to be perceived as a party that does not care about ethnic voters, than to be perceived as a party that is pandering to ethnic voters. You may be vague about what you will do for a community, but having a document that sets out goals and targets designed for political advantage is something that is not easily forgotten. I was not surprised to see the resignations from riding associations.

Y! Canada: Who will benefit most from this? The NDP, the Green Party or the Conservatives?

Conseco: I think it ultimately makes people who voted for the BC Liberals uneasy. The group that we’ve been tracking lately is the 2009 BC Liberal voter. Many of them are facing a conundrum. They don’t like the NDP, don’t know the Conservatives, don’t really seem environmentally friendly enough to vote for the Greens, and are not motivated by the BC Liberal leader.

So what can they do? Do they stay home if the current leader of the party fails to inspire them? That’s ultimately what happened in the U.S. with Republicans in 2012. Once you look (as I had a chance to do when we covered that election) at the voting numbers by likelihood to vote, Mitt Romney was always two or three points lower than among registered voters. He was missing a connection with certain elements of the Republican base who saw him as aloof and arrogant. Ultimately, these voters stayed home, and it showed.

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