It’s a dead heat in British Columbia: Major parties tied for seats, BC Greens hold balance

Who will be the next Pre­mier of British Colum­bia? That’s a ques­tion we still don’t know the answer to, despite polls hav­ing closed across Canada’s west­ern-most province over three hours ago, because the results have been incred­i­bly close.

As of around 11:10 PM Pacif­ic Time, incum­bent Pre­mier Christy Clark and the gov­ern­ing Lib­er­als (who, despite their name, are actu­al­ly a right wing par­ty) were tied with the oppo­si­tion New Democ­rats at forty-two seats apiece, with the BC Greens lead­ing or elect­ed in three ridings.

(As of 11:45 PM, since this post was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten, the Lib­er­als led or had been elect­ed in 43 rid­ings, and the NDP was in sec­ond place with 41 seats. A rid­ing, inci­den­tal­ly, is what they call a dis­trict north of the border.)

These num­bers like­ly won’t hold. But if they did, the Greens would be the king­mak­ers. Whichev­er par­ty they choose to work with would get to form the gov­ern­ment, while the oth­er par­ty would become the offi­cial opposition.

The Lib­er­als and the NDP have been trad­ing the lead all night long. At times, the Lib­er­als have been lead­ing or elect­ed in 44 rid­ings, and at oth­er times, the NDP has been lead­ing or elect­ed in 44 rid­ings. 44 is the mag­ic num­ber need­ed to con­trol the 87-mem­ber British Colum­bia Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly, which meets in Victoria.

The large num­ber of too-close-to-call rid­ings is a result that not many peo­ple expect­ed — cer­tain­ly not the Lib­er­als, who were expect­ing a much bet­ter outcome.

In some bat­tle­ground rid­ings, the major par­ty can­di­dates are sep­a­rat­ed by only a hand­ful of votes, giv­ing fresh mean­ing to the mot­to Every Vote Counts.

The NDP has already knocked out sev­er­al key mem­bers of Christy Clark’s cab­i­net, stun­ning the Liberals.

Peter Fass­ben­der, the Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty, Sport and Cul­tur­al Devel­op­ment and the Min­is­ter Respon­si­ble for TransLink, has lost his seat, as has Suzanne Anton, the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice. Amrik Virk, Min­is­ter of Tech­nol­o­gy, Inno­va­tion and Cit­i­zens’ Ser­vice, and Nao­mi Yamamo­to, Min­is­ter of State for Emer­gency Pre­pared­ness were also defeat­ed by their NDP challengers.

The NDP did bet­ter than expect­ed in greater Van­cou­ver, which has his­tor­i­cal­ly been the linch­pin for the Lib­er­als, but it has also giv­en away some of its own seats to Christy Clark’s par­ty, jeop­ar­diz­ing its chances of secur­ing a majority. 

Final results aren’t expect­ed until May 22nd. It is impor­tant to note that absen­tee bal­lots have not been counted.

Key rid­ings we are watching:

• Van­cou­ver-False Creek (0.6% margin)
• Rich­mond-Queens­bor­ough (1.1% margin)
• Courte­nay-Comox (2.0% margin)

Com­plete results for all of the rid­ings are avail­able here.

Some rid­ings are so close that there will need to be auto­mat­ic recounts.

CBC and CTV are each pro­ject­ing a minor­i­ty government.

“Tonight is the begin­ning of some­thing very dif­fer­ent,” said Pre­mier Christy Clark, try­ing to put the best pos­si­ble spin on the lack­lus­ter results for her par­ty in a late night speech broad­cast at around 12:10 AM.

“We won the pop­u­lar vote,” Clark said lat­er, smil­ing weari­ly as her sup­port­ers chant­ed and applaud­ed. “And we have also won the most seats. And with absen­tee bal­lots still be count­ed, I am con­fi­dent they will strength­en our mar­gin of vic­to­ry. So it is my inten­tion to con­tin­ue to lead British Columbi­a’s government.”

“British Columbians did tell us tonight that they want us to do some things dif­fer­ent­ly,” she acknowl­edged, pledg­ing to work with the oth­er par­ties and con­grat­u­lat­ing John Hor­gan and Andrew Weaver on a hard-fought campaign.

Clark exit­ed swift­ly fol­low­ing her speech and did not shake hands with sup­port­ers after step­ping down from the stage.

Hor­gan and Weaver each walked out to speak to their sup­port­ers at the same time, forc­ing CBC to cut away from Weaver’s speech in order to air Horgan’s.

“Tonight, we have elect­ed an extra­or­di­nary group of New Democ­rats,” John Hor­gan declared to a packed elec­tion night par­ty, after not­ing it was too soon to know who would be form­ing the next gov­ern­ment of British Colum­bia. He pro­ceed­ed to reel off the names of the par­ty’s vic­to­ri­ous can­di­dates in bat­tle­ground ridings.

“This cam­paign has always been not about me, but about us, on the Us Bus,” Hor­gan said. “It is still focused on peo­ple tonight.”

“British Columbians vot­ed today to get big mon­ey out of pol­i­tics,” Hor­gan said. “British Columbians vot­ed today for pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion. British Columbians vot­ed for action on cli­mate change. And they vot­ed for an econ­o­my that works for every­one, not just those at the top.”

“Let’s hang tight… and get back to the par­ty,” he concluded.