B.C. election results: Mail-in ballots heavily favour NDP, only absentee ballots left to count

The majority of mail-in ballots tallied this weekend for the final count in B.C.’s nail-bitingly close 2024 provincial election went to the NDP, increasing the party’s chances of clinching a third term.

Of the approximately 43,500 mail-in and assisted telephone ballots counted Saturday and Sunday, 55 per cent went to David Eby’s incumbent B.C. NDP, while just 32 per cent went to John Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives.

The B.C. Greens took 10 per cent of the votes, and the rest went to a mix of Independent and third-party candidates.

No ridings have changed hands, though the NDP has strengthened its lead significantly in several close ridings, and nearly eliminated the gap with the leading Conservative candidate in another. 

Elections B.C. will not be updating the final count again until Monday, when roughly 21,500 additional absentee ballots will be tallied.

The agency is expected to announce the final results the same day – after a long week for politically engaged B.C. residents, who have been left without a clear picture of who will form their next government.

Recounts underway

Two ridings where the NDP has taken a more comfortable lead are Juan de Fuca-Malahat and Surrey City Centre, where automatic recounts were triggered because the party’s candidates were ahead by fewer than 100 votes in the initial count.

Those recounts – which only include the same votes that were tallied on election night – began Sunday afternoon, along with a partial recount in Kelowna Centre.

The NDP’s Dana Lajeunesse was initially beating Conservative candidate Marina Sapozhnikov in Juan de Fuca-Malahat by just 23 votes, but the mail-in ballots counted this weekend have increased his lead to 106.

In Surrey City Centre, it was a similar story for NDP candidate Amna Shah, who extended her lead over the Conservatives' Zeeshan Wahla from 95 votes to 178 votes.

Elections B.C. approved the partial recount in Kelowna Centre due to a “transcription error of one vote” that was identified between a ballot account and a tabulator tape, the agency said in a news release this week.

“This discrepancy is likely due to election official error,” the release said. “While the tabulator in question passed all testing and produced results accurately, a recount of the ballots counted by that tabulator will be conducted as a result of the ballot account error.”

Conservative candidate Kristina Lowen led the NDP’s Loyal Wooldridge by 148 votes in the initial count, but saw her lead shrink to 72 votes after mail-in ballots were included this weekend.

Recount results from Surrey City Centre and Kelowna Centre are expected Sunday night, while the results from Juan de Fuca-Malahat won’t be released until Monday.

NDP catching up in Surrey-Guildford

The closest race in the province heading into Monday was Surrey-Guildford, where Conservative candidate Honveer Singh Randhawa led NDP incumbent Garry Begg by just 12 votes.

In the initial count after election night, Randhawa's lead was 103 votes.

Two other races – Courtenay-Comox and Maple Ridge East, each led by the Conservatives – were within one percentage point as of Sunday afternoon. Similar to Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna Centre, both saw the leads narrow in this weekend's final count.

In Courtenay-Comox, Conservative Brennan Day remained ahead of NDP incumbent Ronna-Rae Leonard by 116 votes, roughly half the 234 he led by on election night.

In Maple Ridge East, where Conservative Lawrence Mok led NDP incumbent Bob D'Eith by 327 votes in the initial count, Mok's lead decreased to 163 votes.

Notably, hundreds of absentee ballots remain to be counted in each of these close ridings.

Final count schedule

The three-day final vote count – which includes approximately 66,000 mail-in ballots, assisted telephone ballots and absentee ballots from the province’s 93 electoral districts – began Saturday morning.

Elections B.C. concluded the count of mail-in and assisted telephone ballots Sunday afternoon, and will begin tallying absentee votes at 9 a.m. Monday, with updates expected hourly until the process is complete.

It’s unclear when the final results might be announced.

As of Sunday evening, party standings remained the same as they did on election night, with the NDP leading in 46 ridings, the Conservatives leading in 45 and the B.C. Greens leading in two.

Forty-seven seats are required for a majority, so a gain of one seat for the NDP or two seats for the Conservatives in the final count could give that party the ability to form a government without help from another party's MLAs.

If the riding tally ends up unchanged, the Greens will hold the balance of power in a minority legislature, with either Eby or Rustad needing support from Green MLAs to become premier.

Data released by Elections B.C. Friday afternoon shows a total of 66,074 "certification envelopes" accepted for the final count.

Some 43,470 were counted on Saturday and Sunday, in a process that involves opening the envelopes and separating the ballots inside from the envelopes themselves, and from their security sleeves.

Any envelopes that contain no ballot or multiple ballots will be set aside and not counted, Elections B.C. said.