(Bloomberg) — An election in Canada’s British Columbia province was to close to call on polling day, leaving the left-leaning New Democratic Party’s majority in doubt while support soared for a party that has not ruled the region since before World War II.
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The NDP were leading in 46 ridings, while the Conservative Party of BC — unaffiliated to Canada’s federal Conservatives — led in 45, according to the latest from electoral agency Elections BC. The Green Party was in front in two, with 99% of ballot boxes reporting. A majority in British Columbia’s legislature requires 47 seats.
If current totals hold, the balance of power in Canada’s third-largest province could lie with the tiny Green Party — whose leader Sonia Furstenau didn’t win her own riding. The instability and lack of clear mandate might also lead to another election before the four-year term is up.
“This election is not over,” John Rustad, leader of the Conservatives, said at a party rally on Saturday night. “If we’re in that situation of the NDP forming a minority government, we will look at every single opportunity from day one to bring them down, at the very first opportunity, and get back to the polls.”
Margins in some seats are within dozens of votes, according to Elections BC, setting up the potential for recounts over the coming days. It said automatic recounts happen when the margin is 100 votes or fewer, and they won’t take place until the final count, scheduled from Oct. 26-28.
During that time, officials will also count vote-by-mail ballots received after the close of advance voting. Sixteen districts are still counting out-of-district ballots. It wasn’t immediately clear how many ballots are expected across these categories.
Most public polls in the final week of the campaign pointed to a narrow victory for the NDP, which has governed the resource-rich region of 5.7 million people since 2017.
Saturday’s vote has parallels with the 2017 election, when the Liberals failed to establish a lasting minority government, and the NDP went into a supply-and-confidence deal with the Greens.
Premier David Eby, the NDP leader who has generally been seen as an ally of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had pivoted to the center on key policies during the year. He pledged to repeal the carbon tax if a federal backstop was removed and rolled back a controversial experiment with drug decriminalization. It wasn’t enough for a decisive victory as of the end of polling day.
The Conservatives haven’t governed the province since before World War II, but soared in popularity and supplanted the center-right BC United Party, formerly the Liberals, who forfeited the race back in August.
Rustad may have benefited from the current popularity of the Conservative Party of Canada, which polls consistently show is far ahead of Trudeau’s Liberal Party. The provincial and national Conservative parties are separate organizations, though many of their policy ideas are similar.
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