(Bloomberg) — An election in the Canadian province of British Columbia remains close to a winner until the final count, leaving the left-leaning New Democratic Party in power after a string of failed conservatives. ruled this region since before World War II.
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The NDP led or was elected in 46 provinces, while the Conservative Party of BC – which is not affiliated with the Federal Conservatives of Canada – led in 45, according to preliminary figures from the provincial electoral body. The Green Party was twice ahead.
A majority in the British Columbia legislature requires 47 seats.
But the final count scheduled from October 26 to October 28 has the potential to change those initial numbers. Automatic recounts will take place in two constituencies where the NDP currently leads by less than 100 votes. In one seat on Vancouver Island, the NDP candidate’s margin is only 23 votes.
In addition, about 49,000 more ballots — mostly mail-in ballots received after early voting closed — will be added next weekend across the state. These ballots require additional verification to ensure that a person is eligible to vote and can only vote once, according to a statement Sunday from elections agency Elections BC.
Given the few seats with results decided by a few hundred votes or less, that could mean changes in the final count.
If the current totals hold, however, the remaining power in Canada’s third-largest Province may depend on the small Green Party – whose leader, Sonia Furstenau, did not win her seat. The instability and lack of a clear mandate for any party may lead to another election soon.
“This election is not over,” said John Rustad, leader of the Conservatives, at a party rally on Saturday night. “If we are in that situation where the NDP forms a minority government, we will look at every opportunity from day one to destroy them, at the first opportunity, and then go back to the election.”
Most public opinion polls in the final week of the campaign showed a narrow victory for the NDP, which has dominated the resource-rich region of 5.7 million people since 2017.
The vote echoes the 2017 provincial election, in which the incumbent BC Liberals won by a narrow margin but failed to form a permanent minority government. The NDP formed an alliance with the Greens that allowed John Horgan of the NDP to become Premier.
Prime Minister David Eby, who took over from Horgan in 2022 and has been seen as a ally of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, voted for the center on key policies during the year. He has promised to end the state’s carbon tax if the federal backstop is removed and backed off a controversial drug withdrawal trial. But it was not enough for a decisive victory until the end of the voting day.
Eby said the result showed a “clear majority” of progressive values — the combined NDP and Greens vote was more than 50% — and acknowledged that cost-of-living issues are important to voters.
“There is another message in these small restrictions, and we have to do better,” Eby told fans. “We will support people with daily living expenses. We will support them with affordable housing and better health care, a strong and prosperous economy and safe communities.”
The Conservatives have not governed the province since the 1930s, but under Rustad they surged in popularity and replaced the centrist BC United Party, once the Liberals, which stopped campaigning in August.
Rustad may have benefited from the current popularity of the Conservative Party of Canada, with polls consistently showing it far ahead of Trudeau’s Liberal Party. The provincial and national Conservative parties are separate organizations, although many of their policy views are similar, including a focus on housing and economic development.
–Courtesy of Erik Hertzberg.
(Updates on the election BC update and statement in the fourth and fifth sections)
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