Count continues in tight BC election race

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The NDP has pulled ahead again in the tightest riding in the province, but the race isn’t over yet as counting continues for the provincial election.

After the May 9th election, preliminary vote counts had the BC Liberals with 43 seats, the NDP with 41 and the Green Party with 3.  A party needs 44 seats to govern in majority.

Absentee votes are being counted from all 87 ridings, and two ridings have been subject to recounts.

In one of those ridings, Courtenay-Comox, the NDP’s Ronna-Rae Leonard has extended her lead to 101 votes over the Liberal incumbent Jim Benninger. After the election night count, Leonard was leading by just 9 votes.

With the results in some ridings so tight, Andrew Watson with Elections BC explains what would trigger a by-election.

“A judicial recount has to be requested by the district electoral officer if there’s a tie or if the difference between the top two candidates is less than 1/500th of the ballots considered in the election. And if after judicial recount there’s a tie, a by-election would be held. ”

The other riding that was subject to a recount, Vancouver-False Creek, currently shows Liberal incumbent Sam Sullivan with a lead of 10,162 votes over the NDP’s Morgane Oger, who is on 9,756.

The count of absentee ballots continues at 10 a.m.

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