EveryVote
CountsVille
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Update: Monday morning...In the original post written Sunday morning below, I mention two ridings, Juan De Fuca (Dipper up by 23) and Surrey-Guildford (Con up by 102) where things could still change...I had missed one, Surrey Centre (Dipper up by 96)...That changes the analysis a little because, in the unlikely event that those two orange seats were to go Con we would be in real base-bent crazy town territory...I'm starting to hold my breath again.
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There are now 93 provincial ridings in British Columbia.
Which means that you need 47 to form government.
As you can see from the screenshot, taken this morning from the Elections BC website, the Dippers and the Cons both fall just short.
Which, of course, means that, if things stay the same, the Greens will hold the balance of power.
Of course, that was also the case in 2017 when John Horgan and Andrew Weaver made their deal that, in my opinion at least, gave us a pretty darned good government.
Could the same thing happen again?
Well, luckily, given his recent comments in support of the climate change denier Mr. Rustad, Mr. Weaver no longer leads the provincial Greens.
But the big question is - who will actually lead the Greeniacs going forward?
Will it be Sonia Furstenau, who lost her race, not in Cowichan, but instead in Beacon Hill?
It's going to be interesting to see what happens there, given the potential for both the power and the glory, not to mention good policy, down the road.
And it looks like the Greens and Mr. Eby might have a little time to sort things out because, as you can see from the image above there are still 0.23% of the votes to count. This small sliver represents out of district votes and mail-in ballots which, apparently, will take about a week to collect, collate and count.
Do those votes matter?
Potentially, yes, but it is unlikely.
By my reading the two ridings that could flip are Surrey-Guilford, where the Con is currently up by 102, and Juan de Fuca, where the Dipper is up by just 23.
So.
Let's say, worse case scenario, the Cons hold Surrey-G and the Dippers lose JDF...That would make it 46 Cons (not enough to win) vs. the Dippers 45 (enough to hold on if they make a deal with Greens to go to 47).
Thus, I for one am now able to exhale and almost relax while we wait for the final numbers to be posted by Elections BC next Saturday.
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One of the big surprises was the Greens winning handily in the fully vote split riding of West Van Sea-to-Sky...That, I think, is ironic given how the riding that GordCo's development bund built, may very well have saved us...Somewhere, I'm pretty sure the ghost of Rafe Mair has a little smile on his face this morning.
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13 comments:
Supply and Service Agreement 2.0
GarFish--
Here's hoping.
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Lets hope Valeriote and Bottrell have more political savvy than Furstenau.
She could have found better, easier, ridings to run in than Beacon Hill.
With Rustad vowing to force an election re run before the final results are in is disturbing.
TB
TB--
Good point about the Greens. I hope that Adam Olsen is involved. If that happens, part of the deal, I suspect, would be to bring the Land Act reforms back to the table that Con/Soccer Party duopoly worked so hard to de-rail.
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Time for an actual coalition?
Chuck--
Yes.
But, to be fair, wouldn't that actually be a 'back to the future' (i.e. 2017-20) kind of thing?
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Agree, but if it was an actual coalition with the Greens it would make the Cons crazy?
I prefer the ,at least, three party system.
We are , hopefully, too diverse to suffer the constraints of a two party state with it's ; your with us or against us!
Just look south of the 49th and shudder at the thought?
TB
sometimes having a third party makes for more deliberation or should we say, deal making and usually the saw off works fairly well for the voters. The NDP and Greens as one party? The parties are different enough that seperate is better. It took the NDP decades to get where they are in various provinces and federally. The Greens maybe able to do something similar.
Yes, the results in West Van, nice.
Fursteneau is toast as she made some very bad politcal decisions and one of the sitting Greens will be leader.
The Greens provincially, like the Greens federally, instead of picking local issues to run on and win a few seats, instead tried to take on the big boys and girls to win the brass ring.
No such luck.
She should have made the E&N an election issue instead she opted for the non starter "free transit".
The "Eye" knows something about transit and "free transit" tends to be unworkable except for heavily subsidized small systems such as we see in US university towns or aged out systems that are no longer expanding and are again heavily subsidized.
The model does not work for either TransLink or BC Transit.
If Rusy wants another election, soon, that may work against him but tells me he has ample money in his war chest, who is his sugar daddies?
What scares me is the MAGA influence in both the NDP and Cons, as that putrid electoral ooze from down south is making its way to pollute the great white North.
Chuck--
I don't know if that can happen given the electoral asymmetry but I would hope that they make a couple of hard-nosed deals that the Dippers have to stick to.
I would love to hear from readers about what such deals could/should entail so that we can make a list.
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eaf--
But....Re: my response to TB, above... Don't you think it was that one big health care thing that put put the Sask, then Fed, CCF/NDP on the map back in the day?
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EE--
Thanks for weighing in on that free transit issue. As much as I wish it could be so, I, too, raised an eyebrow when I saw it on the front page of the Victoria Times-Colonist Thanksgiving weekend.
As for the ooze...
This is something I meant to write about pre-election but got waylaid by the day job and life and all that...I paid attention to the responses when Mr. Rustad went on his half-hearted Nuremberg 2.0 walk back. While some of what I saw was clearly online trolling, it appeared that the base really turned on him there. The upshot? I fear the money men and the pols have deluded themselves into thinking that they can control the rabid base they have fomented when push comes to shove. Of course, all that happens in a case like that is that the base just goes looking for/is willing and waiting to be hooked by something/someone even crazier.
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I just about choked on my morning coffee when Fursteneau offered the "Free Transit" trope as an election platform.
This is about as daft as Rustand's "SkyTrain to Newton" promise, which our consultant on transit, pointed out that the cost of this, due to many complications with an automatic railway, would be about $3.5 billion.
By the way, notice the NDP keeping somewhat quiet about both the Langley extension to the Expo line and the Broadway subway?
Well the 16km extension of the Expo Line to Langley is now past $7 billion (this includes OMC#5, which is needed to handle the new MK.5 trains) and the cost increases every six months. I understand this project is $3 billion underfunded and most likely to be deferred or cancelled, lest the ghosts of the "FastFerries" resurrect themselves and haunt the corridors of parliament.
But, as you live in the heart of "Lotus Land", your Broadway subway is now going to cost $4 billion and change and that is just to Arbutus!
To complete the subway to UBC will cost $8 billion and counting, with the cost rising 2 or 3 times the rate of inflation every 6 months.
As funding for the SkyTrain mega projects is now short of $3 to $4 billion funding and the Feds not putting a penny more into our local transit scandal -oops - meant scene (BC is now considered a lost cause electorally), the Broadway subway may terminate at Granville and/or Burrard, until funding is secured to finish the job.
There is even talk of making the subway stop near McDonald and have it built on an aerial guideway, just like East Van and Surrey, to UBC to save up to $4 billion in costs.
That will make the locals happy and why it is somewhat quiet on the transit front, except for Vancouver's version of Pravda, the Hive.
EE--
I'm sure the fine folks of the pointiest grey overhang would love to have that EL run right up the 8th Ave bike way going right to, and past, all those new Jericho condos!
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