Premier Christy Clark is now a sitting member of the B.C. legislature after winning a nail-biter byelection in Vancouver-Point Grey.
Clark defeated her NDP rival David Eby by a narrow margin of just under 600 votes, capturing 49 per cent of the popular vote compared to his 46 per cent. For full preliminary results, visit Elections BC.
Clark made a speech to reporters around 10:30 p.m., appearing to chants of "Christy, Christy, Christy" from the crowd.
"Some people are going to call this a squeaker," she said. "But when Henrik Sedin is holding the Stanley Cup over his head, and he's doing it on Game 7 after the third overtime, not a single one of us is going to complain that he won."
She congratulated Eby for an "incredibly professional campaign," but also got in a dig at past New Democrat governments. Clark said that in her discussions with Point Grey voters, she learned that, "they don't want to go back to a day where the economy was so bad you couldn't get a job in this province."
Eby conceded the race in a speech earlier in the night, thanking his team for a campaign well run. Clark said he also called to congratulate her on her win.
Clark's win marks the lifting of a curse on sitting B.C. governments, which hadn't won a byelection in 30 years before now.
The two rivals traded leads back and forth after the polls closed at 8 p.m. Wednesday, and the race was too close to call until all 134 ballot boxes were counted. At one point, with 87 of 134 ballot boxes counted, Clark was leading by just one vote.
The scramble to declare a winner was complicated by the fact that Elections BC added 33 ballot boxes to its total count about an hour-and-a-half after polls closed, pushing the total number of boxes to 167. Before 9:30 p.m., the elections body's official results page listed just 134 ballot boxes in the entire riding.
Clark has already received congratulations from John Cummins, leader designate of the BC Conservatives, which currently holds zero seats in the legislature and did not run a candidate in the Point Grey race.
"The Premier should have a seat in the legislature, which is why the BC Conservatives did not run a candidate in the riding," Cummins said in a release. "I look forward to squaring off with Ms. Clark in the next general election."
The byelection campaign was marked by a complaint from the NDP to Election BC, alleging that Clark was using public funds in her campaign.
Eby and his party also criticized Clark for refusing to appear at all-candidates' debates throughout the campaign. She said that she was too busy and preferred to focus on speaking directly with constituents.
The riding was previously held by former premier Gordon Campbell, but he vacated the seat to make way for Clark after she was elected leader of the BC Liberals in February.
The Green Party vote apparently collapsed in Wednesday's byelection, with candidate Francoise Raunet earning about three per cent of the vote. Raunet's roughly 500 votes would likely not have been enough to catapult Eby past Clark to victory.
Danielle Alie of the upstart BC First party gained less than three per cent.
Anti-HST campaigner Eddie Petrossian ran as an independent in the riding, as did William Gibbens. Both earned less than one-per-cent support.
