BC Election 2024 sees near deadlock leaving voters confused

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Typically, on an election night, a leader has been chosen, and a loser has given their concession speech, but due to a nail-bitingly close result in many BC ridings, the official word on who will be leading the province going forward has been put on pause.

Elections BC began tabulating the ballots after the polls closed at 8 pm on Saturday night, but despite more than one million people casting an advanced ballot (a record turnout), the turnout on Saturday and the out-of-district ballots appeared to be taking awhile.

It took so long that several voters likely went to bed, since there was no call as of midnight, which was the cutoff time for officials to count for now.

That means that the official word on the projected winning party, and who will form government, has yet to be determined.

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As of the time of writing, the estimated count seems to show that the BC NDP might finish with 46 seats, the BC Conservatives could get 45, and the BC Greens maybe end up with two. In order to form a majority government, a party needs 47 seats.

While many ridings had a clear winner, BC Conservative Leader John Rustad for example in his riding, there were some that appeared to be separated by only a few dozen votes, such as Juan de Fuca-Malahat and Surrey City Centre. Ridings like Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna Centre have gaps of over 100 votes apart, while ridings such as Courtenay-Comox, Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, Maple Ridge East, and Vernon-Lumby see differences in the low hundreds.

Some of the closest ridings throughout the night were primarily in Surrey, especially in Surrey City Centre. Surrey became a battleground area for the candidates throughout the campaign and saw the highest number of campaign stops for the BC NDP and the BC Conservatives. The only riding which wasn’t close was Surrey South, which went to Brent Chapman of the BC Conservatives.

Other tight ridings include: Langley-Willowbrook, Langley-Walnut Grove, Maple Ridge East, Richmond-Queensborough, and Vancouver-Yaletown (which is projected to go to Terry Yung with the BC NPD).

Maple Ridge East is projected to go to Lawrence Mok of the BC Conservatives over BC NDP and incumbent Bob D’Eith by only about 340 votes.

During his speech at the BC Conservatives’ headquarters late Saturday night, Rustad said that his party’s “grassroots movement” has changed the political landscape in British Columbia forever.

“We have not given up this fight yet and we are going to keep pushing hard,” said Rustad.

“This is what happens when you stand on values,” he added, explaining that he will do everything he can to take the NDP down. “It’s too important to give up.”

According to Elections BC rules, anything less than a 100-vote difference will trigger a recount in that riding and that could take weeks. A judicial recount, when the Supreme Court of BC is involved, could also be triggered if there is a tie vote or if the difference is less than 1/500th of the total ballots considered.

Additionally, while BC has seen minority governments before, there are many who project that the difference in just one or two seats will likely topple the ruling party, or create a coalition government such as the situation we saw in 2017 after Christy Clark won a BC Liberals-led minority government, but was quickly toppled by the partnership between BC NDP leader John Horgan and BC Green Party leader Andrew Weaver.

However, unlike 2017, current BC Green Party leader did not win her riding on Saturday night with the BC NDP capturing more than 47% of the vote, as of the time of writing.

BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau has vowed to keep fighting. If the official results do show that the BC Greens end up with two seats, it will allow them to remain an official party in the BC Legislature.

BC NDP leader David Eby said on Saturday night that he had spoken with Furstenau and congratulated her on her campaigning.

“There are many values that we share in common with the Green Party and we are committed to working with them,” he said, potentially hinting of an agreement in the days ahead.

“The campaign is over but the work has just begun,” Eby said.

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