Sunday Update: Elections BC has provided an updated count of the outstanding votes tallied through Sunday morning. None of the races which could impact the outcome of the province-wide results have been updated. Final final results are due Monday.
Saturday Update:
More than half of the over 66,000 outstanding ballots being counted this weekend to help finalize this year’s provincial have been processed, with the clear advantage going to David Eby and the NDP.
The New Democrats now have at least one — possibly two — paths to a majority government, provided the outstanding ballot count continues to favor the NDP through Sunday.
Here in the BC Interior, any last-ditch hope the Kamloops-based parachute candidate had of flipping the Vernon-Lumby riding from NDP control to the BC Conservatives will go unrealized.
At the start of count this weekend, there was an outside, but unlikely shot that Dennis Giesbrecht could come from behind this weekend, as NDP incumbent Harwinder Sandhu held a 385 vote lead over him, with 602 ballots to be counted.
Saturday’s work by Elections BC saw the agency get through 437 of the 602 outstanding ballots, with Sandhu’s lead over Giesbrecht increasing to 487, ensuring she will serve a 2nd term in Victoria for the New Democrats.
Sandhu flipped the long-time BC Liberal safe haven of Vernon-Monashee — which was redrawn and renamed Vernon-Lumby for this year’s vote — to NDP orange in 2020.
Meanwhile, down Highway 97 in Kelowna, the battle to represent the new riding of Kelowna Centre is becoming even tighter, and has become one of the two possible majority-makers for the NDP.
BC Conservative candidate Kristina Loewen started out the final count with a 148 vote lead over the NDP’s Loyal Wooldridge.
With 225 ballots still not counted in Kelowna Centre, Loewen’s lead has already been slashed by more than half.
She now holds a 72 vote advantage over Wooldridge heading into Sunday, with final results for Kelowna Centre due out on Monday.
The trend in the Interior favoring the New Democrats was the theme throughout much of the province in the Saturday count, setting up the possibility of David Eby and the New Democrats walking away from Sunday’s final count with a much-coveted majority government.
The most likely gain for the NDP will be the race in Surrey-Guildford, where it has gone from an advantage of 103 votes for BC Conservative candidate Honveer Singh Randhawa, down to just 12 over NDP incumbent Gary Begg.
There are still 226 ballots left to count in that riding.
If the remaining votes continue to trend NDP, it could be enough to put Begg back in Victoria for the New Democrats for a 3rd term.
A flip of Surrey-Guildford, or any other ridings the BC Conservatives were leading after October 19th, would give the NDP the magic seat number of 47, provided none of the other seats are flipped by the BC Conservatives, which does not appear possible at this point.
Forty-seven is the number of seats required for a majority government, when ever the 43rd Parliament of British Columbia is able to convene.
Given how narrow the final count is likely to be in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna Centre, and possibly other ridings, a judicial recall could be a possibility.
Before the results of a narrow election can head to court, Elections BC has the option of putting tight races through its recall process, and is launched when the top two vote getters in a riding are within one-five hundredth of one another when the results are measured against the number of votes cast.
If judicial recalls are to be launched by the losing party in a race, the petition first has to be accepted by the courts.
The overall process — if launched — would likely push back the formation of next provincial government by at least two or three weeks — if not longer — depending on the pace of the cases themselves, and any subsequent appeal of the BC Supreme Court decisions.
NDP building on initial leads, but falling short in others
The two ridings which were put into automatic recount following October 19th — Juan de Fuca-Malahat and Surrey City Centre — have seen the Saturday count adding to the NDP’s initial leads in both electoral districts.
The gap in Juan de Fuca-Malahat has increased from just 23 votes in favor of NDP candidate Dana Lajeunesse to a 106 vote advantage over BC Conservative Marina Sapozhnikov.
A loss by Sapozhnikov would likely come as a muted sigh of relief for BC Conservative leader John Rustad, who has been facing calls this weekend for the Party to cut ties with her, after she gave an election night interview, where the former family doctor suggested 90 percent of BC’s Indigenous population does drugs, while also describing the Indigenous population as “savages” before Europeans arrived.
There is one riding in the Lower Mainland to watch for on Sunday.
Surrey City Centre has seen the gap widen even further against the BC Conservative candidate, with Zeeshan Wahla staring Sunday’s count 178 votes back of the NDP’s Amna Shah, who came into the weekend with a 93 vote advantage.
The NDP is also within 116 votes of flipping Courtenay-Comox back into the hands of two-term incumbent Ronna Rae Leonard, after BC Conservative challenger Brennan Day started the final count with a 234 vote advantage.
However, with just 226 votes left to count, the math suggests Courtenay-Comox will end up as a BC Conservative victory on Vancouver Island.
This would be a setback for the NDP, which has maintained a strong, historical foothold on Vancouver Island.
A similar scenario also appears to be playing out in a tightening Maple Ridge East race, where the gap favoring BC Conservative candidate Lawrence Mok has narrowed from 327 in the initial count, down to 163 at the end of Saturday.
But much like the situation in Courtenay-Comox, there aren’t enough outstanding ballots available to make the math work in favor of an NDP comeback in Maple Ridge East.
Of the 817 ballots to be counted in that riding this weekend, only 336 remain unsealed, meaning two-term NDP incumbent Bob D’Eith — who entered BC politics in 2017 after helping form Canadian rock bands The Watchmen and Rymes with Orange in his younger years — is unlikely to bridge the gap.
Elections BC is expected to provide another update on its continuing count on Sunday afternoon, with its final count results for all ridings due out on Monday.
With none of the ridings changing color through the Saturday count, the NDP still leads in 46 , followed closely by the BC Conservative Party with 45, while the BC Green Party to fill two seats in the Legislature.
If the status-quo holds on Monday, the NDP will be tapped with forming a minority government, with the BC Green MLA’s the likely swing votes to move legislation forward.
This scenario would be reminiscent of the governing situation which resulted from the 2017 BC election, where John Horgan’s NDP aligned with the three-member BC Green Party to form a unity government, despite the BC Liberal Party taking 43 of the 87 seats in the election, which was two more than the New Democrats controlled.
