NDP, Conservatives neck and neck in provincial election

We still are waiting to find out who will form government in BC.

In what was anticipated to be a tight battle lived up to its billing on election night (Saturday) with the NDP leading or elected in 46 out of the 93 ridings, one ahead of the Conservatives who sit with 45.

The BC Greens sit a distant third with two.

The Greens need to secure two seats in order to maintain official party status.

Incumbent NDP leader David Eby won his riding in Vancouver-Point Gray with 56.75% of the vote defeating Paul Ratchford of the Conservatives (34.64% of the vote).

Conservative leader John Rustad won handily in his Nechako Lakes riding claiming 67.70% of the vote – the next closest was Murphy Abraham of the BC NDP who tallied 27% of the vote.

Lastly, BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau (33.54% of the vote) was beaten in Victoria-Beacon Hill by Grace Lore (47.24%) of the NDP.

Voter turnout was just over 57 %.

As of 12:30 a.m. Sunday (Oct 20th) the results look like this:

• NDP: 46 seats, 895,763 votes, 44.56%
• Conservatives: 45 seats, 874,550 votes, 43.48%
• Green: 2 seats, 167,180, 8.31%

47 seats are needed to form a majority government.

Elections BC issued the following statement on the initial vote count at 12:10 a.m.:

99.72% of preliminary results have been reported and counting will continue for the next hour. Any electoral districts that are unable to complete initial count tonight will continue counting tomorrow morning. Due to election official availability and weather-related disruptions, we will not have complete preliminary results tonight for Cariboo-Chilcotin, Surrey-Newton and North Coast-Haida Gwaii.

Sixteen districts are continuing to count out-of-district ballots. These ballots take longer to count for several reasons. With B.C.’s vote anywhere model, some districts are reporting out-of-district results from dozens of other contests. Write-in ballots also take longer to count than ordinary ballots. 

Automatic recounts will take place in electoral districts where the margin between the top two candidates is 100 votes or fewer at the conclusion of initial count. These recounts will take place during final count, scheduled for October 26 to 28.

Some types of ballots must be counted at final count and were not counted tonight. These include vote-by-mail ballots that were received by mail after the close of advance voting or dropped off in person at a voting place or district electoral office. We will report the number of ballots that will be considered at final count and will provide this information as soon as possible.

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