BC election: BC NDP re-elected with a bare majority
BC election: BC NDP re-elected with a bare majority
47 seats for the NDP, 44 for the Conservatives, 2 for the Greens
The BC election was a photo finish. Elections BC completed their final count yesterday: the BC NDP were elected in 47 seats, the BC Conservatives in 44 seats, the BC Greens in two seats. There’ll be judicial recounts in Surrey-Guildford (where the margin is 27 votes) and Kelowna Centre (38 votes), but it seems unlikely to affect the outcomes.
Housing policy and the election results
Owen Brady on Twitter:
Safe to say this wasn't a housing election, but it's interesting that in Vancouver-Point Grey, with maybe the most organized NIMBY opposition in BC, they seem to have had basically no impact at all.
Was also surprised to see this.
Turns out, even the folks that hate density the most still don't care enough to vote against NDP reforms to allow more infill housing.
In Oak Bay the anti-infill candidate got no discernable boost.
Matthew Yglesias, writing back in 2022, noted that you get a different answer if you ask people about more housing in their local area, vs. more housing across a wider area:
The real issue is that the upsides to housing growth accrue across a city, a metro area, or even a state, while the nuisances of new construction (parking scarcity, traffic, aesthetic change) are incredibly local. So if you ask a very small area “do you want more housing or less?” a lot of people will say that they think the local harms exceed the local benefits, and the division will basically come down to aesthetic preference for more or less density. But if you ask a large area “do you want more housing or less?” the very same people with all the same values and ideas may come up with a different answer because they get a much larger share of the benefits.
More
B.C. lieutenant-governor asks NDP Leader David Eby to continue as Premier. Karin Larsen, CBC News.
The next step is choosing a Speaker to oversee the legislature. The Speaker is politically neutral, and doesn’t vote on most legislation. So if the Speaker is from the NDP, they’ll need the cooperation of the two Green MLAs. In 2017, BC Liberal MLA Darryl Plecas accepted the position of Speaker.
Previously. The BC election: a photo finish.