The B.C. NDP has won the riding of Surrey City Centre, CBC News projects, as Elections B.C. continues to count absentee ballots for the 2024 provincial election.
The NDP is now elected in 45 ridings and leading in one. Forty-seven seats are need for a majority.
The party has also narrowed the gap on the Conservative Party of B.C. in Surrey-Guildford to just nine votes. The gap between the two parties was 12 after mail-in ballots were counted Sunday. If the NDP manages to overturn that difference, it will have a majority.
The Kelowna Centre riding, which the Conservatives are leading, also had its vote gap narrowed from 68 to 63.
Elections B.C. is posting new results from the absentee ballots every hour.
Results are being posted to CBC News B.C. Votes 2024 page as they are available.
WATCH | Elections B.C. explains today’s count:
British Columbia’s chief electoral officer, Anton Boegman, breaks down how vote-counting in B.C. works, from mail-in ballots to judicial recounts.
Elections B.C. began counting more than 22,000 absentee ballots Monday morning, after recounts and a tally of mail-in votes on the weekend failed to settle the election’s outcome.
Neither David Eby’s B.C. NDP nor John Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives have yet scored with the magic number of 47 seats required to form a majority in the province’s 93-seat legislature.
The winner of the 2024 B.C. election will be decided on Monday, with the tallying of around 22,000 absentee votes, after an updated count of mail-in ballots over the weekend failed to produce a clear winner. Officials spent Saturday and Sunday counting the approximately 44,000 mail-in ballots that were sent in after the close of advance voting, but said they weren’t enough to give a definitive answer.
While the makeup of the legislature could become clear, judicial recounts could still take place after that if the margin in a riding is less than 1/500th of all votes cast.
For example, in the closest race of Surrey-Guildford, where an estimated 19,306 votes were cast, the margin for a judicial recount is about 38 votes or fewer.
Judicial recounts are overseen by a B.C. Supreme Court justice and, according to the B.C. Election Act, must take place within 15 days after the declaration of the official election results.
How does the CBC make projections in an election? Well, let’s go behind the scenes and find out what goes into calls and managing coverage on election night. The team works hard to ensure that results are brought to you accurately every time.