It was a strong win for Lorne Doerkson of the BC Liberal Party Saturday night (Oct. 24), who has been elected as the new MLA in the Cariboo-Chilcotin.
Doerkson kept the seat for the party almost doubling the votes of his closest competitor, the NDP.
Doerkson won 2,013 out of 3,825 confirmed counted votes (52.63 per cent) with 46 of 71 polls reporting.
Scott Andrews of the NDP won 1,144 votes (29.91 per cent).
David Laing of the Green Party won 389 votes (10.17 per cent).
Katya Potekhina, an Independent, won 198 votes (5.18 per cent).
James Buckley of the Libertarian party won 81 votes (2.12 per cent).
Doerkson, who watched the results come in at his campaign office in Williams Lake, along with his partner Shelley Wiese and co-campaign manager Bryan Withage, said he will work hard for the riding and all its residents, and named land use and access, long-term care for seniors and lack of available childcare as the top issues for the Cariboo Chilcotin.
Although cautious to declare a victory Saturday night ahead of the mail-in ballot count, Doerkson said he was eager to get to work representing the riding despite the fact that the NDP captured a majority government.
In Cariboo North, incumbent B.C. Liberal Coralee Oakes reclaimed her seat with Elections BC showing she had 48.91 per cent of the recorded vote, as of 10:03 p.m.
The NDP’s Scott Elliott has 30 per cent of the reported vote.
Conservative candidate Kyle Townsend has 13.21 per cent of the vote, while the Greens’ Douglas Gook has 7.21 per cent.
No advance polling or mail-in ballots, which could total over 6,000 votes, have been counted yet. Oakes has an 855-vote lead. If she retains this lead until mail-in votes are counted, Elliott would need to win seven of every 10 mail-in ballots to make up the difference.
As of Oct. 23, 3,121 vote-by-mail packages had been issued to registered voters in the riding. There are a total of 23,360 registered voters in Cariboo-Chilcotin.
Province-wide, 724,279 mail-in ballots have been sent out, and there are 3,485,858 registered voters.
Mail-in ballots will be counted by hand, starting in 13 days.
– with a file from Canadian Press and the Quesnel Cariboo Observer
READ MORE: Horgan, NDP head for majority in B.C. election results
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