Courtenay-Comox recount gives BC NDP candidate lead of 12 votes

After one day of the BC election’s final count, two recounts have been completed in Courtenay-Comox and Vancouver-False Creek.

In Courtenay-Comox, a recount was requested by at the request of BC Liberals candidate Jim Benninger, who was trailing by just nine votes after election night.

However, after a recount, the lead of his opponent, BC NDP candidate Ronna-Rae Leonard, actually increased to 13 votes.

Then, after a review on Tuesday morning, this was revised to 12 votes.

Results updated in CRC based on review of yesterday’s recount. Absentee ballot count updates to come.

— Elections BC (@ElectionsBC) May 23, 2017

Meanwhile, in Vancouver False-Creek, a recount was requested by Phillip James Ryan, a candidate for the BC Citizens First Party.

Before the recount, BC Liberals candidate Sam Sullivan was beating his BC NDP opponent Morgane Oger by 560 votes.

After a recount, Sullivan’s lead grew slightly to 569 votes.

In both Courtenay-Comox and Vancouver-False Creek, absentee ballots are yet to be counted. That will take place on Tuesday and possibly Wednesday as part of the final count.

Two more days of final count to go

As of election night, Parliament is hung; the BC Liberals hold 43 seats, the BC NDP hold 41, and BC Greens hold 3, meaning no one has a majority.

However, five ridings are extremely tight and could go either way depending on absentee ballots, so the final count is going to be decisive.

Those ridings include Courtenay-Comox and Vancouver-False Creek.

By the end of day Wednesday however, Elections BC should have confirmed how many seats each party won.

According to Elections BC, the final count will add 179,611 extra absentee and special votes, which were not counted on election night, to the results so far in all ridings.

As of 10:30 am on Tuesday morning, the final count had only been completed in 28 out of 87 ridings. None of these are the ridings too close to call.

Daily Hive is your home throughout the BC election. Find all of Daily Hive’s BC Election 2017 coverage, including the latest results, here: Battleground BC.