British Columbia election hangs on a handful of votes as Conservatives surge

A election in the Canadian province of British Columbia is too close to declare a winner, leaving the left-leaning New Democratic Party’s grip on power in question after support soared for a conservative party that hasn’t ruled the region since before World War II.

The NDP was leading or elected in 46 ridings, while the Conservative Party of BC — unaffiliated with Canada’s federal Conservatives — led in 45, according to the latest tally from the provincial electoral agency. The Green Party was in front in two, with more than 99% of ballot boxes reporting as of Sunday morning Vancouver time.

A majority government in British Columbia’s legislature requires 47 seats.

Some districts are so close that they will automatically be recounted, which has the potential to change the final result. The NDP holds a lead of less than 100 votes in two constituencies. In one seat on Vancouver Island, the NDP candidate’s lead is just 23 votes.

If current totals hold, the balance of power in Canada’s third-largest province may lie with the tiny Green Party — whose leader, Sonia Furstenau, didn’t win her own seat. The instability and lack of clear mandate for any party might lead to another election soon.

“This election is not over,” John Rustad, leader of the Conservatives, said at a party rally on Saturday night. “If we’re in that situation of the NDP forming a minority government, we will look at every single opportunity from day one to bring them down, at the very first opportunity, and get back to the polls.”

The elections agency said automatic recounts happen when the margin is 100 votes or fewer, and they won’t take place until the final count, scheduled from Oct. 26 to 28.

During that time, officials will also count vote-by-mail ballots received after the close of advance voting. Sixteen of the 93 districts are still counting out-of-district ballots. It wasn’t immediately clear how many votes are still to be counted across these categories.

Most public polls in the final week of the campaign pointed to a narrow victory for the NDP, which has governed the resource-rich region of 5.7 million people since 2017.

The vote has parallels with the 2017 provincial election, when the incumbent BC Liberals won by a thin margin but failed to establish a lasting minority government. The NDP struck an alliance with the Greens that allowed the NDP’s John Horgan to become premier.

Premier David Eby, who took over for Horgan in 2022 and has generally been seen as an ally of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had pivoted to the center on key policies during the year. He pledged to repeal the provincial carbon tax if a federal backstop was removed and rolled back a controversial experiment with drug decriminalization. But it wasn’t enough for a decisive victory as of the end of polling day.

Eby said the result showed a “clear majority” for progressive parties — the combined vote of the NDP and Greens was over 50% — and acknowledged that cost-of-living issues were key for voters.

“There is also another message in this narrowest of margins, and that’s we’ve got to do better,” Eby told supporters. “We’ll support people with the cost of daily life. We’ll support them with affordable housing and better health care, and a strong and prosperous economy and safe communities.”

The Conservatives haven’t governed the province since the 1930s, but under Rustad they surged in popularity and supplanted the center-right BC United Party, formerly the Liberals, which gave up on campaigning in August.

Rustad may have benefited from the current popularity of the Conservative Party of Canada, which polls consistently show is far ahead of Trudeau’s Liberal Party. The provincial and national Conservative parties are separate organizations, though many of their policy ideas are similar, including a focus on housing and economic development.

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(With assistance from Erik Hertzberg.)

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