ELECTION – Final count confirms BC Liberal minority government

The final count is in and B.C. has a minority government for the first time since 1952.

Elections B.C. announced today (May 24, 2017) that the standings are the same now as they were on election night: The B.C. Liberals hold 43 seats, the NDP 41 and the Greens 3.

Most of the attention has been on the extremely tight Courtenay-Comox riding in which NDP candidate Ronna-Rae Leonard held a lead of only a handful of votes over the Liberals’ Jim Benninger on May 9.

As a recount progressed along with counting of absentee ballots, Leonard extended her lead slightly and finished with 10,886 votes compared to Benninger’s 10,697.

While the results of Kamloops area ridings weren’t in doubt, the final count puts exact numbers to them. Mayor Peter Milobar officially wins Kamloops-North Thompson with about 48 per cent of the popular vote, while incumbent Todd Stone swept past all opposition in Kamloops-South Thompson with almost 56 per cent.

Overall, the Liberals receive 796,672 votes (40.36 per cent), the NDP 795,106 (40.28 per cent), and Greens 332,387 (16.84 per cent).

What does a minority government mean for B.C.?  We’ll have an editorial on that for Thursday morning.

 

UPDATE: Statement by Green party leader Andrew Weaver on confirmation of a minority government:

“The B.C. Green caucus is committed to ensuring that British Columbians will have a stable minority government.

“With this historic result, British Columbia can finally put the ineffective two-party system behind us. It has led to a divisive legislature that primarily benefits special interests. This is an incredible opportunity for B.C.’s political leaders to put partisan differences aside and work for the common good. I look forward to working with both other parties so that we can finally get big money out of politics, move towards electoral reform and implement good public policy on a wide range of issues that puts people first.”