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Analysis
BC Election 2024
BC Politics

The NDP Won. Now What?

A look back at a divisive campaign and a narrow victory.

Paul Willcocks 29 Oct 2024The Tyee

Paul Willcocks is a senior editor at The Tyee.

The BC NDP will return to power with a majority government after winning a critical Surrey riding by fewer than 30 votes.

The win gives David Eby’s party 47 seats, the minimum required for a majority government. John Rustad’s Conservatives, a fringe party two years ago, won 44 seats. And the Greens held on to two seats, although leader Sonia Furstenau was defeated in her riding.

The outcome has been uncertain since election night on Oct. 19, with results in several ridings so close that they couldn’t be decided until mail ballots were counted.

The election-night tally gave the NDP 46 seats, the Conservatives 45 and the Greens two.

But the count of remaining ballots went in the NDP’s favour, giving it the chance to form government without relying on Green support.

Eby said he met with Lt.-Gov. Janet Austin Monday and was asked to form the next government. In a statement, Austin said Eby told her “he is prepared to continue as premier.”

He can proceed to name a new cabinet and set a date for the legislature to sit, likely in the next few weeks.

The NDP captured 45 per cent of the popular vote. That’s tied for the party’s fourth-best performance since 1972. (John Horgan’s 2020 victory — in the early pandemic, facing a weak BC Liberal leader in Andrew Wilkinson — came with 48 per cent of the vote, the highest NDP support in 52 years.)

Which might not be a good thing. The NDP faced an unproven, erratic opponent in the BC Conservatives. The new party had candidates and staffers who have been openly racist and Islamophobic.

The fact the New Democrats came so close to losing should prompt them to look at where they have failed to meet public expectations over the last four years.

Which in many cases was not so much in policy direction but in communication and implementation.

The move to decriminalize drugs to save lives and move people toward treatment was correct, for example. But the failure to anticipate problems, such as drug use in hospitals, and provide the needed resources to address them, was damaging and preventable.

The BC Conservatives’ big success was not in the election campaign.

The party’s real victory was in crushing the hapless BC United, formerly the BC Liberals, and becoming the only option for non-NDP voters.

Thanks in part to the bungles of BC United Leader Kevin Falcon, Rustad’s Conservatives climbed from less than 20 per cent in the polls a year ago to 44 per cent in the election, while BC United steadily lost support.

Which culminated in what Falcon acknowledged was his unilateral decision to shut down the BC United campaign, fire all its candidates and clear the way for the Conservatives.

Well, almost his decision. Business interests, he said, were clear they wanted United out of the way to prevent an NDP victory.

Norman Stowe, head of Pace Group Communications and a longtime political insider — with the BC Liberals, United and now the BC Conservatives — was even more explicit in a Globe and Mail interview.

“The business community made it very clear: We’re going to be going with the Conservatives,” Stowe told the Globe. “And we’d rather not split the vote.”

Falcon listened to them, without consulting the party’s candidates or members.

The Conservatives’ election results reflect the polarized B.C. political landscape, where voters tend to gravitate towards one of two sides.

The Conservatives’ 44 per cent support was a strong showing, but also the third-lowest for combined centre-right parties since 1972.

And not enough to form government.

In all, a messy, polarized election, where fear was the dominant theme. The Conservatives promoted fear about safety and crime and drugs. The NDP raised fears of extreme right-wing candidates and policies.

And neither offered much in the way of a positive vision for British Columbians to support.  [Tyee]

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