British Columbia’s election could finally be decided today with the counting of absentee ballots, after recounts and a tally of mail-in votes failed to settle the contest on the weekend.
Neither David Eby’s B.C. NDP nor John Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives emerged from the weekend with the magic number of 47 seats required to form a majority in the province’s 93-seat legislature.
But the counting increased the prospects for a majority NDP government, when the Conservative lead in Surrey-Guildford was cut to just 12 votes.
All eyes will be on that Metro Vancouver seat when counting resumes at 9 a.m. PT, with 226 absentee votes to count there.
Elections B.C. says it will provide hourly updates as more than 22,000 absentee ballots provincewide are counted today.
As of 6:30 a.m. PT, standings have the NDP leading or elected in 46 ridings, with the B.C. Conservatives leading or elected in 45 and the Greens with two elected members.
If the NDP wins Surrey-Guildford and hangs onto all other ridings where it leads, it will secure the narrowest of majorities with 47 seats.
Elections B.C. said there was no shift in the party standings after the weekend count of mail-in and assisted-telephone ballots was completed on Sunday.
A full hand recount in Surrey City Centre resulted in the NDP lead there being reduced by three votes, to 175, while a partial recount in Kelowna Centre saw the Conservative lead cut by four votes, to 68.
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.
The result of a full recount in Juan de Fuca-Malahat, where the NDP leads by 113 votes, will also be announced Monday.
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.