Given the last 2 British Columbia elections, the pandemic election turned out to be relatively boring. The results are leaning in a direction but there are at least 500,000 mail-in ballots still to count and that won't happen soon.
The New Democratic Party was leading or elected in 55 of the BC ridings to 29 for the Liberals and 3 for the Green Party. If this pace continues after the full count, Premier John Horgan becomes the only 2-time NDP premier and the party gets its first majority government since 1996.
The NDP won seats in the Lower Mainland (Vancouver and suburbs) away from the Liberals on election night, based on the current results. The party only needed 44 seats for a majority.
The Liberals under Andrew Wilkinson ran under the idea of getting rid of the 7% provincial sales tax (PST) for a year. The BC HST consists of 5% federal and 7% provincial for a combined 12% rate. Wilkinson had to deal with issues over candidates. A prime example was when Liberal MLA Jane Thornthwaite was caught making sexist comments about NDP MLA Bowinn Ma on a Zoom call. Ma won her riding Saturday night while Thornthwaite lost her seat.
BC Liberal MLA Laurie Throness resigned from the party caucus after controversial statements. The action came too late to take his name off the ballot. Throness said if he wins, he will sit as an independent in the legislature.
Sonia Furstenau — who became Green Party leader just 7 days before the election was called — and Adam Olsen both won their seats. The Greens were at 2 when the election was called. Former Green Party leader Andrew Weaver had stepped down as leader and left the party to sit as an independent. The Greens have reportedly won a third seat, the first on the BC mainland. Jeremy Valeriote is expected to win the West Vancouver-Sea to Sky riding.
The Greens had 74 candidates in the 87 ridings.
Even with the Green Party adding a new MLA to Victoria, the huge loss is no longer being able to directly influence the NDP government as the Greens had done since 2017. This departure will be felt most significantly on environmental issues such as pipelines and other climate crisis concerns.
The 2017 election gave Christy Clark and the Liberals 43 seats versus 41 for the NDP and 3 for the Greens. Clark was unable to form government and the NDP and Greens formed an unofficial coalition. Clark ran an amazing come from behind election in 2013 to beat out then NDP leader Adrian Dix. Clark's Liberals won the election but Clark lost her seat and had to win a by-election to get into Parliament in Victoria.
Clark's 2017 election win is still the only time a female provincial premier won re-election in Canada, even if only for a short time.
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We won't know the proportion of vote count for the parties until all the votes are counted. The Green Party has argued for proportional representation as opposed to the current first-past-the-post system. A proposal to switch to proportional representation lost by a 61.3% vote in the 2018 referendum.
The Greens had at about 16% in the vote tabulated on Saturday night but only won 3 seats.
Elections BC is aiming for November 16 to have a complete count of the ballots.
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We like to track female party leadership in Canadian provinces since sadly there aren't that many of them these days. Sonia Furstenau has been the Greens leader since September. The party's performance was quite solid so Furstenau should remain in leadership. The Liberals will wait until all the votes are counted for a possible change in party leadership.
photo credits: CBC News
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