The last few days have been something of a nail-biter for provincial politics on southern Vancouver Island.
While the winner of the B.C. election was expected to be announced on Saturday night, the B.C. NDP and B.C. Conservatives remain deadlocked on 40 seats each with 11 ridings too close to call — and Juan de Fuca-Malahat, in particular, is neck and neck.
The NDP candidate for the riding — which encompasses the communities of Sooke, Metchosin and Port Renfrew along with a swath of southern Vancouver Island west of Greater Victoria — is leading by just 20 votes, according to the latest information from Elections B.C.
The elections agency says 99.72 per cent of votes across the province have been counted. Final counts, including mail-in and absentee ballots, are scheduled for this weekend, so it will still be several days before British Columbians get any clarity.
B.C. voters will have to wait a while to find out the final results of Saturday’s provincial election. The B.C. NDP lead the Conservatives by just one seat. Currently holding that balance of power, as of the Monday after the election, is the B.C. Green Party, with two seats. What happens next? Meera Bains has more.
When a race is this close there will certainly be a recount of votes in some ridings, political science instructor Daniel Reeve said.
A vote difference of less than 100 triggers an automatic recount, Reeve told CBC’s On The Island host Gregor Craigie, adding that Elections B.C. will be looking closely at mail-in ballots to ensure every single vote was properly processed and no one voted multiple times.
“That’s actually a very rare case,” Reeve said.
Juan de Fuca-Malahat is one of many ridings provincewide that were reconfigured for the 2024 election.
The new boundaries could be what’s dividing the riding, Sooke Mayor Maja Tait said.
“It’s a challenging riding geographically, just given the distance from one corner to another,” she said. “While Sooke is sort of the more urban part of this riding, it’s largely rural with larger properties and a lot of ground to cover.”
She said the candidates — the NDP’s Dana Lajeunesse, the Conservative Party’s Marina Sapozhnikov and the Green Party’s David Evans — were all out door-knocking across the riding in the leadup to the election.
“They’ve been working really hard out here,” Tait said. “I thought it would be [close].”
If the current results hold up, the NDP would finish with 46 seats, the Conservatives would have 45 and the Greens would have two, where 47 is required for majority.
It means the final results for Juan de Fuca-Malahat and the other close ridings could change the outcome of the election.
“[It’s] going to come down to those mail-in ballots,” Reeve said.