How will Wilkinson and his party retool after loss?
Party's appeal seems to be fading as B.C. becomes more diverse, multicultural
Andrew Wilkinson and the Liberals appear to have lost 12 seats in Saturday's provincial election and find themselves almost routed in southwestern B.C.'s urban ridings and diverse suburbs.
The coalition of free enterprisers and social conservatives got awkward when Liberal candidate Margaret Kunst was accused of anti-LGBTQ bias after voting against a rainbow crosswalk at Langley Township council.
Things stayed awkward as Liberal candidates were alleged to be sexist and transphobic and finally blew up when Chilliwack-Kent candidate Laurie Throness was forced to resign from the party after comparing free birth control to eugenics for “poor people.”
Throness and embattled Liberals Lorraine Brett and Jane Thornthwaite all lost to NDP candidates.
Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson said he would have more to say “going forward,” but urged supporters to be patient and respect the democratic process.
“As the results stand tonight, the NDP is clearly ahead,” Wilkinson said Saturday night. “But with almost half a million mail-in ballots still to be counted, we don't know what the final seat count will be.”
The NDP is elected or winning in 55 seats, the Liberals 29 and the Greens three, but some of the races have thin margins.
A record 500,000 British Columbians voted by mail during this pandemic election, and those ballots won't be counted for at least 13 days. But equivalent numbers of NDP and Liberal supporters told pollsters they used mail-in ballots, so these ballots are unlikely to change any but a handful of ridings.
Liberal seats are now largely confined to the Interior, the northeast and a strip of agricultural communities south of the Fraser River.
The party's share of the popular vote has declined in three consecutive elections, down 1.7 percentage points in 2013, 3.8 in 2017 and another five points on Saturday.
“B.C. voters finished what they started in 2017,” said Jas Johal, a Liberal incumbent who lost his Richmond- Queensborough seat.
“The B.C. Liberals had three years to renew, and we didn't. Now, change has been inflicted upon us.”
The party needs to speak to a new generation of voters, he said.
“We are in an era of generational change,” he said. “Today, Gen X and millennials — those 52 and under — outnumber baby boomers.”
In B.C.'s biggest cities, the Liberals were reduced to just two of 11 seats in Vancouver, zero of five in Burnaby, one of four in Richmond and two of nine seats in Surrey, he noted.
“The average age in Surrey-Cloverdale is 37 years old, with young families moving in,” Johal said. “We shouldn't have lost that, but we did.”
The Liberals' key campaign promise, the PST cut, failed to resonate with voters and Wilkinson was never able to find his footing as the NDP successfully weaponized his candidates' controversial views.
The party's appeal may be fading as B.C. becomes a more diverse, multicultural society, said UBC political scientist Max Cameron.
The marriage of fiscal and social conservatives has historically been a problem for conservative parties, but “one that I have never seen so badly tarnish the B.C. Liberals.”
Even Premier John Horgan's cringeworthy response to a question about his white privilege during the leaders' debate couldn't distract voters from the “series of self-inflicted wounds caused by Liberal candidates that seem out of step with where the public mood is on these kinds of questions,” said Cameron.
Richard Johnston, UBC professor emeritus of political science, believes there will be a change in leadership.
But he noted Wilkinson is a “victim of history” because he supported the NDP's response to COVID-19 allowing the NDP to become the party that voters considered the strongest to handle the pandemic.
“Is there someone who can bind them together or are they going to go through a period of soul searching that may not end well?” Johnston wondered.
Where the Liberal party goes from here is a perplexing question with Horgan and the NDP apparently occupying the political middle ground through their support of megaprojects that have traditionally been in the Liberals' bailiwick.
The NDP's pro-energy stance has opened up their flank to the B.C. Green party — which won three seats and finished second in 14 others — but Horgan nonetheless punted them out of his power-sharing alliance.
In a stunning upset, the Greens' Jeremy Valeriotte unseated Liberal incumbent Jordan Sturdy in West Vancouver- Sea to Sky, while Green leader Sonia Furstenau and MLA Adam Olsen were returned to office.
“Horgan has put himself in the centre and the NDP are starting to look more like a natural governing party in a way that the Liberals have historically in B.C.” said Cameron.
Wilkinson's mid-campaign pivot on the creation of a municipal police force to replace the RCMP in Surrey appears to have failed.
Despite his offer of a non-binding referendum, the Liberals made up no ground in Surrey and saw popular incumbent Marvin Hunt go down to defeat in Surrey-Cloverdale.
Liberal strongholds across the region went down to defeat as former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan was defeated in Vancouver-False Creek and Mary Polak was soundly beaten in Langley.