An ongoing count of absentee ballots in British Columbia’s election has seen the NDP cut the B.C. Conservatives’ lead in a key riding to just nine votes.
If the NDP wins Surrey-Guildford and holds onto other leads, it will be elected or leading in 47 seats, which is the threshold for a majority in the legislature.
Monday’s count of more than 22,000 absentee and special ballots provincewide could finally produce a winner in the election, nine days after the Oct. 19 vote.
Recounts and a tally of mail-in votes failed to settle the contest on the weekend, with neither Premier David Eby’s New Democrats nor John Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives emerging on Sunday with a majority.
But the mail-in count increased the prospects for an NDP government when the Conservative lead in Surrey-Guildford was cut sharply.
All eyes have been on that Metro Vancouver seat since counting resumed at 9 a.m., with 226 absentee votes to count, and results are being update hourly on the Elections BC website.
In the first hour of counting, the Conservative lead in Surrey-Guildford was cut from 12 to 9 votes.
The party went into the weekend’s count of mail-in and assisted telephone votes with a lead of 103.
The current standings have the NDP leading or elected in 46 ridings, with the B.C. Conservatives leading or elected in 45 and the Greens with two elected members.
While the makeup of the legislature is expected to become clear on Monday, judicial recounts could still take place after that if the margin in a riding is less than 1/500th of all votes cast.
In Surrey-Guildford, where an estimated 19,306 were cast, the margin for a judicial recount is about 38 votes or fewer.
A full hand recount on Sunday in Surrey City Centre resulted in the NDP lead there being reduced by three votes, to 175, while a partial recount in Kelowna Centre saw the Conservative lead cut by four votes, to 68.
That has been a further cut to 63 in the absentee count.
The result of a full recount in Juan de Fuca-Malahat, where the NDP lead by 113 votes, is also to be announced Monday.
Aisha Estey, president of the B.C. Conservative Party, said she spent the weekend in a warehouse watching the counting of mail-in ballots.
In a post on social media, she said: “Elections BC staff have been working tirelessly and doing their best within the confines of the legislation that governs their work.”
“Would we have liked mail-ins to be counted closer to (election day)? Sure,” she added. “But I saw nothing that caused me concern.”
