Nearly 1.2M people have already voted in B.C. election
Polling shows NDP have a good shot of turning minority into a majority
VANCOUVER— As British Columbians line up for the polls Saturday, it’s possible the votes deciding the provincial election were cast days ago. Elections B.C. reported nearly 1.2 million people had voted in advanced polls or through the mail by Friday morning.
That amounts to 58 per cent of the ballots cast in the 2017 vote.
The staggering figures are a side-effect of the COVID-19 pandemic as voters look to avoid large crowds at polling stations.
Throughout the campaign, the NDP have remained front runners by a wide margin in the polls. Simon Fraser University political scientist Stewart Prest said if the pandemic is the biggest election concern, the NDP appear to have the public’s approval for their handling of it.
“We have to wait and see how the actual vote turns out, but polling has been pretty consistently showing a very strong turnout for the NDP,” he said. “So, their message and their efforts to manage the pandemic remains top of mind.”
Recently, New Brunswick voters returned Conservative Blaine Higgs to power with a majority government in a vote held during the pandemic and, polls show, the NDP may achieve the same goal.
Apoll by Vancouver-based Research Co. released Friday afternoon suggested half of decided voters in the province will support John Horgan’s New Democrats. In second place was the B.C. Liberals led by Andrew Wilkinson with 35 per cent of support followed by the B.C. Green Party, headed by new leader Sonia Furstenau, at 13 per cent.
(Results were based on an online survey of 750 likely voters in the province, 705 of those were decided voters. The margin of error for likely voters was 3.6 per cent and 3.7 per cent for decided voters 19 times out of 20.)
The NDP took criticism for even calling the election during a pandemic, with opposition parties accusing them of trying to turn their small minority government into a majority rather than safeguard public health.
The New Democrats had been governing the province since 2017 after joining with the Greens to overthrow the Liberals shortly after the election. They then formed a minority government.
But Horgan said the ongoing pandemic means the province needs a majority government to take on the economic and financial challenges ahead.
“We can either delay that decision and create uncertainty and instability over the next 12 months,” he said at the election’s outset, “or we can do what I believe is always the right thing and ask British Columbians what they think.”
As the campaign went on, the opposition parties’ inability to offer a solid big-picture alternative for dealing with the pandemic likely helped the NDP maintain its lead in the polls, Prest said.
“We didn’t really seem to end up with a strong debate over differences of view on how to proceed,” Prest said. “To some extent that is indicative of the fact we, until this election started, had a relative consensus among the governing party and the opposition about how to approach the pandemic situation.”
As the campaign went on, no party could really present a different view on how the province can go forward, he said. Instead they presented different variations of how to accomplish the main goal.
Other issues in the province, such as the always-present concern over the cost of living in Vancouver, tent encampments in cities across the province and the ongoing opioid crisis were discussed, but were “somewhat muted” against the backdrop of COVID-19, Prest said.
Mario Canseco, president of polling firm Research Co., said because of the massive shift to online campaigning caused by the pandemic, straightening out party messes quickly was vital during the campaign.
“Not having the ability to put out those fires could cost you even more because that’s what people are focusing on,” he said.
“Nobody is having big events, whatever happens on social media and gets reported, that is how people will remember your campaign.”
Canseco said there wasn’t a specific issue dominating the campaign, but the public’s approval of the NDP’s handling of COVID-19 gave it the “emotional edge.”
With more than 700,000 mail-in ballots requested in the province and almost 500,000 returned by Friday morning, the results of the election may not be known for almost two weeks.
Elections B.C. takes the time to double check the integrity of ballots, such as making sure people did not vote by mail and in person.
In the province’s 2017 election just 11,000 mail-in ballots were requested.