In the 2011 Canadian federal election, amidst the orange wave in Quebec, one of the seats was won by Ruth Ellen Brosseau. She won a riding in which she didn’t actually campaign and where, at the start of the election, she had never set foot in.
In the still to be finalized B.C. Provincial Election, there was no real wave. No party swept up a bunch of seats they had no business picking up. According to our latest tally, the Liberals won 40.84 percent of the popular vote with the NDP picking up 39.86 per cent — an absolutely razor thin margin. In fact, the riding with the closest initial count is separated by a mere nine votes.
Additionally, depending on your perspective, all three leaders failed.
Christie Clark and John Horgan failed to achieve a majority (at least in the current count) and despite the huge uptick for the Greens, Andrew Weaver didn’t get the four seats required to obtain official party status.
Evidently, none of the leaders created a strong enough vision for the future of B.C. to convince enough B.C. voters to give them a mandate to achieve their goals.
For many voters, this may mean they’re indifferent, dissatisfied or disenfranchised with the current leadership choices and, ultimately, the election results.
However, there is also plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the election outcome.
With such a thin margin between the two main parties, and the Greens strongest showing yet, many ridings were won not because the candidate happened to be Liberal, NDP or Green (with the possible exception of a few “safe” ridings).
Rather, with such thin margins, in many ridings, the outcome will have been determined on who was the strongest candidate.
Our riding of the Cariboo-Chilcotin, which has been razor thin in the past and has gone to both the Liberals and the NDP, is an example of that.
With 58.75 per cent of the vote this time around for the winning candidate (with 70 of 71 ballot boxes reported), this is not a strong vote for the B.C. Liberals.
Rather, looking at it objectively, this a testament to the confidence the majority Cariboo-Chilcotin voters have in Donna Barnett.
In her first election, in 2009, Barnett narrowly defeated NDP candidate Charlie Wyse by less than one percentage point and only after the official count — a scenario that may play out this year in other ridings across the province.
This year, according to initial counts, at press time Barnett had increased her vote count over her already strong showing from 2013.
Similarly, in many other ridings across the province, the strongest local candidates were elected.
This is a reason to be optimistic. While British Columbians may not have bought into the messages of the party leaders, the consequence is that they’ve elected a field of outstanding MLAs across the province.
