With polls now closed and results due to start trickling in, North Vancouver-Lonsdale NDP incumbent Bowinn Ma is a little less nervous than she was on election night three years ago.
“I've learned to really control my nerves over the past few years. It doesn't help anybody for me to be nervous,” she said.
Ma said her campaign received a lot of warm support on the street, but she isn’t making any predictions about whether she’ll be returning as MLA for the riding, which she wrested from the B.C. Liberals in 2017.
“It's in (the voters’) hands now and until we have the ballots counted, we really don't know,” she said. “It may be another two weeks before we know the final count of all this mail-in ballot.”
Ma said it was an odd campaign in that her party did not engage in door knocking and there were very few all-candidates meetings (and those were all done online).
“Campaigns are normally very, very social. Politics is absolutely a team sport. And doing all of these campaign activities from separate homes and not being able to gather … it’s far more challenging to feed off each other's energy, even on the Zoom call,” she said.
The one and only time she’s met her Liberal opponent was by chance on the street, early in the campaign.
Regardless of the outcome, Ma said she is pleased how the local candidates conducted themselves.
“I think that most residents can be very proud of how focused all the candidates were on issues here in North Vancouver-Lonsdale. The same might not be able to be said across the province.”
