B.C.’s electoral history would suggest the NDP enters this year’s election as a decided underdog, but make no mistake: there is a definite path to victory for a party that rarely tastes champagne on election nights.
And this premise is not based on polls. Instead, it’s based on actual, previous election results.
The party has to hold all of its existing seat count, and beat the B.C. Liberals in 10 others. It may sound like a tough slog, but a close examination shows that nine B.C. Liberal-held ridings were won by less than 700 votes in 2013 which makes them toss-ups in this campaign.
Seven of those “swing” ridings are all located in Metro Vancouver and include: Burnaby North, Vancouver-Fraserview, Delta North, Port Moody-Coquitlam, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, Surrey Guildford (a new riding the B.C. Liberals would have won by less than 300 votes had it existed in 2013) and Surrey-Fleetwood (which the NDP would have actually won in 2013 if the new riding boundaries were in place then).
And there are two ridings in the southern Interior that were also very close races in 2013 that may still be in reach for the NDP: Fraser-Nicola and Cariboo North.
So it is entirely conceivable that the NDP can win all nine of these ridings, which would put it tantalizingly close to power.
But the hard part for the NDP may not actually be winning these ridings, but holding on to some of the seats they currently hold. Any bleeding from their current standings will require the party to win in less competitive places, such as North Vancouver-Lonsdale, Penticton, Boundary-Similkameen and Courtenay-Comox.
The NDP holds about six ridings they cannot take for granted and, in fact, may be hard-pressed to keep all of them. The shakiest one is Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, which it picked up in a 2016 byelection but which is a traditionally strong area of support for the B.C. Liberals.
Other tenuous ridings include Burnaby-Lougheed, Coquitlam-Maillardville, Skeena, Saanich North and the Islands and Cowichan Valley. The chief threat to their reclaiming the latter two ridings is an apparent rise of support for the Green Party on Vancouver Island.
Nevertheless, the path to power for the NDP is clear. Hold on to existing territory and add 10 ridings where it has won before or has come very close to winning. One would think with the mounting controversies dogging the B.C. Liberal government, that this is a winnable formula.
The B.C. Liberals can likely afford to lose as many as five of their existing allotment of seats (to form government, a party has to win at least 45 seats to achieve a majority, since one MLA on the winning side has to become the legislature speaker).
They had 48 seats going in, but can safely count on winning back Delta South (now that two-term Vicki Huntington has retired from politics) and the new seat of Richmond-Queensborough would have easily been won by the party if it had existed in the 2013 election.
And the B.C. Liberals will also likely benefit from the collapse and near-disappearance of the B.C. Conservative party, which drew more than 85,000 votes in 2013. It will only field a handful of candidates in this election, and it is a leaderless bunch.
Still, this election will be won or lost in the 20 or so battleground swing ridings.
Expect both NDP leader John Horgan and B.C. Liberal leader Christy Clark to visit these ridings repeatedly during the 28 day campaign, and to tailor their policies with an eye to voters who live in them (for example, both the NDP and the B.C. Liberals have already tried to seize the issue of tolls on the Port Mann Bridge, positions that are clearly designed to woo voters in the swing Surrey ridings).
And Green Party leader Andrew Weaver – with visions of holding the balance of power after May 9 no doubt dancing in his head – will be spending a lot of time on Vancouver Island. There, several NDP-held seats – Saanich North and the Islands, Cowichan Valley and possibly North Island – are definitely in his party’s crosshairs.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC. Keith.Baldrey@globalnews.ca
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