Will Mail in votes mak a difference

mail in votes will have little effect

Though more than a half have yet to be counted, mail in votes will probably have little effect on the election. 

The final outcome in a handful of ridings could change after the final count is finished, on ‘Return Day’ – Monday, November 16th.

If the NDP hold on to Parksville- Qualicum, they will have swept the Liberals from Vancouver Island – graph by Roy L Hales

On Vancouver Island 

One of them is on Vancouver Island. In Parksville-Qualicum, Liberal MLA Michelle Stilwell is trailing her NDP challenger, Adam Walker, 6,366 to 7,308 votes. If Walker manages to maintain his lead, and he is already the projected leader, there will not be a Liberal MLA left on the island. 

On the Mainland

There are also tight races in three Mainland ridings.

The Liberals are ahead, by less than 200 votes, in two of these. It remains to be seen if Simon Gibson can hold onto Abbotsford-Mission, or Eric Foster to Vernon-Monashee. If they fail, these ridings will go to the NDP.

In Chilliwack-Kent, NDP candidate Kelli Paddon is less than 200 votes ahead of her Liberal challenger. 

Johnson street in Abbotsford, BC, by Philip Mallis via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

The outcome

Even if all of these ridings went Liberal, which seems highly unlikely, they would not stop the NDP from holding a majority of the won a majority 

Potential for upset in Nelson

While it is unlikely that Green candidate Nicole Charlwood will be able to catch up, she is less than a thousand votes behind the NDPs Brittny Anderson in Nelson-Creston.   

NDP MLAs heading for Victoria

There are 21 new faces among the NDP MLAs heading for Victoria. Three of them, Nathan Cullen (Stikine), Murray Rankin (Oark Bay-Gordon Head) and Fin Donnelly (Coquitlam-Burke Mountain) were previously MPs. 

Though Harwinder Sandhu ran in Kelowna-Mission during the 2017 election, none of the four NDP candidates from these still disputed ridings have sat in the legislature before. 

Top photo credit: John Horgan (r), Adam Walker, candidate for Parksville-Qualicum (c), and Josie Osbourne, candidate for Mid Island-Pacific Rim (l), meet with community members at Parksville Community Park.