Nearly two weeks into the B.C. election campaign and Gordon Campbell's strategy seems to be paying off. If the voters can only see him through carefully stage-managed events the only message they'll get is the one the Liberals want to get out.

And that will assure that there will be no potentially embarrassing news that will have voters wondering just who they are electing to a second term. Or whether they want Campbell as premier again at all.

You see, what the Liberals know -- and a recent poll by The Strategic Counsel, for CTV and the Globe and Mail showed -- is that a high percentage of voters believe the Campbell government's performance has been mediocre.

Only one-quarter of voters believe Campbell has done a good job. Only a third of British Columbians rate the Liberals performance in government as strong. Two-thirds don't believe Campbell understands the concerns of British Columbians.

But this voter anxiety has gone unreported amid the other polling news: that the Liberals lead the NDP 46 per cent to 39 per cent. That this number has not changed much through the campaign. That the undecided are pretty small -- at only 12 per cent. It all points to a Liberal win, although nowhere as great as 2001 when they pretty well wiped the floor with the NDP. Unless voters find something to make them mad enough to think about the other guy.

And the Liberals can rest assured that B.C. history is on their side -- governments here are not so much elected, as un-elected. When voters get mad, they go looking for alternatives.

It goes way back to 1972, when Social Credit under W.A.C. Bennett was trounced from office. After 20 years in power the Socreds were seen to be tired and it was time for a change. Un-elect them!

Bennett was followed by Dave Barrett and the NDP. But the first socialist government in a rich province in Canada was met with huge resistance on the right. It even attracted attention from the United States -- who rated the B.C. NDP up there with Fidel Castro and Chile's Salvadore Allende, whom they'd just helped to overthrow.

When B.C.'s economy slid into recession, voters were riled up to believe the NDP incompetent managers. It didn't help that Norman Levy, the welfare minister, overspent his ministry's budget by $100-million. With fears of even worse economic news ahead, Barrett called a late autumn election and in December 1975, voters passed judgment. Un-elect them!

Replacing the NDP were again the Socreds. This time under Bennett-the-younger, as Wacky's son, Bill, became premier. They too angered voters, with tax increases and service cuts, and when Bennett went to the polls in May 1979 the voter mood was foul. I recall covering both the NDP's Barrett and Bennett on that campaign, thinking the NDP were going to get back into office.

But it wasn't to be. While voters may have been thinking "un-elect them" Bennett's government had an ace in hand. A redistribution of ridings had been carefully managed by Socreds to ensure critical ridings remained in the party's hand.

Having survived their first re-election, the Socreds' Bennett II settled into office and British Columbians never got mad enough to toss them from office. Until Bill Vander Zalm became premier.

Flamboyant and charismatic the former mayor of Surrey mixed personal business with politics -- feting a Taiwanese multi-millionaire who, on the face of it, was buying the premier's Fantasy Gardens theme park in Richmond. But it appeared Tan Yu wanted more from the premier and, when he slipped Vander Zalm an envelope stuffed with cash, voters didn't buy the premier's protestations that he'd been given the money for "safekeeping."

Vander Zalm turned over the party to another Socred, Rita Johnston. But the damage had been done. Voters were angry. And in true B.C. fashion they passed judgment. Un-elect them!

The NDP's turn

Next up were the NDP. Under Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark they held power for 10 years. Then Clark gave voters reason to get angry. Not long after his first election, it was revealed that Clark's government had cooked the books and a pre-election budget surplus was really a small deficit, carefully hidden from voters.

Clark's popularity took another big hit when RCMP raided his house in East Vancouver, looking for evidence that he had been trying to influence a casino application made by a neighbour. While the neighbour was eventually convicted, Clark was cleared. But the damage was done.

As the NDP went into election of 2001 the socialists had actually balanced the budget -- as certified by the provincial auditor. Not only that, they'd run up a huge surplus the year before and had actually paid down the provincial debt. But voters were so mad they didn't believe them. Un-elect them!

Which brings us to the current campaign -- according to the polls B.C. voters apparently don't like Gordon Campbell and the Liberals, but they're not mad enough to vote for the other guy or, in this case, gal -- Carole James and a revitalized NDP.

The carefully managed Campbell campaign has limited access to the Premier to photo opportunities with happy Liberal supporters. The other day the premier actually waved at a real British Columbian and this made headlines.

In Salmon Arm on Friday another real voter got into a Liberal campaign office which Campbell was about to visit. That Shawn L'Henaff got through the door was a miracle itself because the premier's rallies are by-invitation-only gatherings.

The former Forests Ministry worker had lost her job in Campbell's 2002 civil service cutbacks, along with 46 other staff members in this Interior town. When party officials discovered the interloper in their midst, they harangued her until she fled and the premier was spared any embarrassing questions -- possibly looking uncomfortable or his golden leadership challenged on the evening news.

So Campbell avoided answering questions about how a balanced budget in 2001 became a Liberal deficit, that forced huge civil service cuts and government restructuring that hit ordinary British Columbians like Shawn L'Henaff. She, incidentally, proclaimed that she is not an NDPer.

In fact, this campaign-in-a-bubble has let Campbell avoid his record -- a cut services, hammer unions, fire workers, sell the provincial railway-even-when-he-said-he-wouldn't record.

And there's been no true debate about the Liberals' fiscal management. Are they truly strong stewards of the provincial economy? Or did they run the province into the red, rack up the provincial debt by billions and then find their way out of this mess only when commodity prices spiked up, filling provincial coffers with royalty revenues.

But keeping with tradition unless Campbell faces some sort of challenge or some sort of disaster, the image-handlers and the friendly-crowds mean that British Columbians won't be angered enough to go to the polls on May 17th with vengeance on their minds. They'll vote not un-elect them.

That said, Campbell's biggest test will come during the leaders debate May 3. It may be the only time he steps outside his protective wall and has to face, for an hour anyway, not friendly faces but tough questions about his government and his performance. The questioners will be his challengers: Carole James, the NDP leader, and Adriane Carr, the Green Party leader.

It may be B.C. voters only chance to decide if that slight discomfort with Campbell should turn into something more.

• Anton Koschany is Senior Producer of CTV W-FIVE. He also runs the network's Election Results team. Raised in Vancouver he began his journalism career there. He has covered nine B.C. premiers and has buried one.