The Election Decided by People Who Stayed Home

Despite winning a large majority government under leader designate Lorne Doerkson, the BC Conservatives received 50,000 fewer votes than it did two years ago.

While 911,142 people voted for the Conservatives in 2024 under former leader John Rustad, according to preliminary results from Elections BC that dropped in this election to 861,258.

The “blue wave” that brought the Conservatives to power was in fact the tide going out on David Eby’s NDP government.

Under Eby the party received 944,463 votes in 2024, which was enough to form government with a slim majority. This time, with Eby struggling to explain why the election was needed and why the NDP deserved four more years, the party’s count dropped to 669,901. The BC Greens, running candidates in more seats than last time, increased its count by 20,000 to win 196,593 votes.

In his remarks on election night and to reporters on Sunday, Doerkson thanked British Columbians for putting their trust in him and pledged to govern for everybody.

“With the decision made by British Columbians last night I feel pretty compelled to say we’ve got a lot of support in this province,” Doerkson said. “I’m so thrilled with the support we’ve reached right across the province and absolutely excited to represent everyone in our party and everyone in British Columbia, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

People were looking for hope and voted for change, he said. “For whatever reason, they liked the platform that we put forward.”

The preliminary vote numbers tell a different story, however, with the Conservatives getting out of the way while the NDP fell. The collapse of NDP support left the Conservatives with 48 per cent of the popular vote, 11 points ahead of the NDP. That was enough to win 64 of the legislature’s 93 seats. The Greens won 11 per cent of the popular vote.

Even if everybody who voted Green had heeded Eby’s warnings on the campaign trail about vote-splitting and voted NDP instead, the Conservatives would still have won a majority government with a nine-seat margin.

Overall, the 48 per cent voter turnout for Saturday’s vote was about 10 per cent less than in the 2024 election.

While none of the major polling companies predicted the result, they did consistently identify a significant number of British Columbians who were undecided or unhappy with any of the options.

Mark Marissen, a long time strategist and organizer with the former BC Liberals and federal Liberal Party, expressed the discontent in a social media post the day before the election.

“I supported David Eby in the last election,” he wrote. “But I’ve been deeply disappointed by his record as premier and his performance throughout this campaign. Frankly, he’s given British Columbians very few reasons to re-elect him.”

Marissen said he voted NDP because he supported the government’s housing policies and there was no real alternative for Liberals. “The BC Conservatives, after all, were campaigning against Liberals as much as they were against New Democrats.”

The BC Conservatives now appear more credible than they did a few months ago, but many of their MLAs are far to the right and he remains “deeply concerned,” Marissen said. “There are still people in that caucus who clearly admired Donald Trump and his way of doing politics.”

(Following the Conservative victory Trump posted an article about the B.C. election result on social media.)

Marissen added that he had particular concerns about unnecessary confrontation with First Nations and the government’s relationship with the City of Vancouver.

“More than anything, I hope British Columbia will one day have a credible, centrist, Liberal-branded alternative that believes in economic growth, social progress and bringing people together,” he said. “We certainly need one.”

He may get that wish, eventually.

For the second election in a row, BC United ran no candidates, which under the Election Act should lead Elections BC to de-register the party. That means its name, as well as the BC Liberal name associated with it, could become available as soon as 2033.