Candidate on both civic and provincial ballots gives B.C. Conservatives an extra seat | Daily Hive

Burnaby candidate on both municipal and provincial election ballots gives B.C. Conservatives an additional MLA seat

David Xie. (David Xie)

Premier-elect Lorne Doerkson and the Conservative Party of British Columbia have strengthened their incoming majority government, after a narrow victory in Burnaby South-Metrotown delivered the party its 64th MLA seat.

Elections BC’s final results following this past weekend’s final ballot counting process put Conservative candidate David Xie ahead of BC NDP incumbent Paul Choi by just 64 votes.

The change increases the Conservative party’s total from the 63 seats recorded in the hours after the Oct. 24, 2026 provincial general election, while reducing the BC NDP from 28 seats to 27 seats. The BC Greens remain at two seats in the 93-seat legislature.

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Xie finished with 6,570 votes, compared with Choi’s 6,506 votes. Green Party of British Columbia candidate Bryan Fockler received 1,268 votes, while OneBC’s Andrew Rose secured 419 votes.

The outcome reverses the initial count, which showed Choi ahead with 5,811 votes to Xie’s 5,747. Mail-in and absentee ballots were among the ballots set aside for the final count beginning on Nov. 6.

With Xie’s win, the Conservatives have now captured three of the five provincial ridings covering Burnaby. He joins Joshua Domnich in Burnaby Centre and Simon Chandler in Burnaby North, while the BC NDP retained Burnaby East with Rohini Reah Arora and Burnaby-New Westminster with Raj Chouhan.

Xie’s election also caps a highly unusual campaign in which his name appeared on both the City of Burnaby’s civic election ballot and the provincial election ballot, with the two voting days held just one week apart.

He originally entered the Oct. 17 civic election as a Burnaby City Council candidate with the New Burnaby civic party, before switching his focus to provincial politics following the snap election call.

As previously reported by Daily Hive Urbanized, Xie confirmed on Oct. 1 that he was no longer seeking a City Council seat. However, he said it was too late to remove his name from the civic election ballot, leaving voters able to select him even though he had stopped pursuing the position.

The City’s final civic election results tally pegs Xie at 5,598 votes, putting him at 28th place among the city councillor candidates — well behind the 13,209 votes of Kiran Singh of the Burnaby Citizens Association (BCA) party, who secured the eighth and final city councillor seat. He also won the fewest votes among all six New Burnaby city councillor candidates, with just one New Burnaby candidate elected into office. Richard Lee of New Burnaby is the only elected city councillor who is not under BCA, coming just 48 votes ahead of Singh.

Across the province, Elections BC’s updated turnout after the final count is now 52.2 per cent, with 1,950,193 ballots considered, including rejected ballots. That is up from 48.1 per cent and 1,798,960 ballots at the initial count on election night, representing an increase of over 151,200 ballots as the remaining votes were processed.

The Conservatives finished with 928,027 votes across the province — 47.7 per cent of the overall popular vote. This is followed by the BC NDP with 730,952 votes or 37.6 per cent. The Greens received 216,808 votes, representing 11.2 per cent.

Although the final count is now complete, two other closely contested ridings are subject to automatic judicial recounts. The Conservative’s Kristina Loewen leads by just 43 votes in Kelowna Centre, while the BC NDP’s Stephanie Higginson leads by 50 votes in Ladysmith-Oceanside.

The Conservatives’ newly elected MLAs are scheduled to be sworn in next week on Thursday, Nov. 19, followed by the announcement and swearing-in of Doerkson’s cabinet on Friday, Nov. 20, formally bringing the new provincial government into office.

As one of his first moves, Doerkson has pledged to legislate a 60-day buffer between future civic and provincial elections, including snap elections, through a new “Respect Local Democracy Act.” The separation would help avoid situations such as Xie’s name appearing on both ballots and reduce the voter confusion caused by October 2026’s overlapping campaigns.

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