Rob Fleming of the NDP was declared re-elected as MLA in Victoria-Swan Lake in a majority NDP government according to preliminary results.
Fleming had received 7,192 of 12,818 counted votes (56.11 per cent) with 112 of 112 polls reporting. Mail-in ballots have yet to be tallied.
Annemieke Holthuis of the Green Party sat at 3,831 votes (29.89 per cent), while David Somerville of the BC Liberal Party had 1,550 (12.09 per cent). Jenn Smith, an Independent, had 183 votes, while Walt Parsons of the Communist Party of BC had collected 62 votes.
“It’s just an honour to have that confidence and trust placed in me by constituents. I take the business of representing them in the legislature very seriously,” Fleming said.
The majority the NDP gained made the night “much sweeter” as it means they will be able to govern the province more consistently and take action to address issues of importance to constituents, such as creating more health clinics, protecting people from renoviction and building hundreds more child care spaces.
Due to the pandemic, more British Columbians opted to vote by mail-in ballot than ever before. Election results won’t be finalized until after Nov. 6, when those mail-in ballots are counted. An estimated 12,978 mail-in ballots were requested by Elections BC within the Victoria-Swan Lake riding where there are 40,590 registered voters.
Across B.C., a total 724,279 mail-in ballots were returned to Election BC, as of Oct. 23.
Fleming didn’t expect the mail-in ballots to change any winners on the South Island, but said they may cause close ridings in B.C. to flip.
On the snap election call, the party essentially said, “look, we can run out the clock on a mandate that does have some uncertainty, or we could reset the clock, run an election safely and let our decision making chart the forward course,” he said. “One thing that emerged tonight was that, with all the uncertainty we face in our lives, people voted for a degree of certainty in their lives.”
Fleming won this riding in the three previous elections and once before that when it was known as Victoria-Hillside.