How vote splitting works in BC

Vote splitting happens because BC elects its MLAs by first past the post. If you want Eby out, or a right-of-centre MLA in your riding, you have to back the one challenger most likely to win. Put three right-of-centre candidates against one NDP candidate and the NDP candidate takes the seat by finishing first, even if 70% of the vote went to the other three. Helping you avoid that result is what this site is for.

BC is divided into 93 ridings, and each one elects one MLA.^⁠[1] Elections BC's own description of the system runs to one sentence: "The candidate with the most votes in the district wins and represents the district in the legislature."^⁠[2] There is no second round and no requirement to pass 50%. Finish first by one vote and the seat is yours.

Whatever its merits, it is the system in force on October 24. A 2018 referendum on replacing it with proportional representation failed, 61.3% to 38.7%.^⁠[3]

What a split vote looks like

Vernon-Lumby, 2024. The NDP's Harwinder Sandhu took the seat with 11,837 votes. Conservative Dennis Giesbrecht had 11,361. Independent Kevin Acton, Lumby's longtime mayor, had 4,266.^⁠[4] Acton had been BC United's candidate and stayed on the ballot after his party suspended its campaign.^⁠[5] Sandhu won with 42.7% of the vote. The other 57.3%, 15,892 people, voted for someone else and got nothing for it.

Richmond-Steveston went the same way. Kelly Greene of the NDP won by 484 votes over Conservative Michelle Mollineaux, and 2,354 people voted for Jackie Lee, an independent who had been BC United's candidate in the riding until the party quit.^⁠[4]⁠[6]

Nobody can say how Acton's or Lee's voters would have marked a ballot with one fewer name on it. Some would have gone Conservative, some NDP, and some would have stayed home. Under first past the post the question never comes up. The returning officer declares whoever finished first, and the 4,266 votes for Acton and the 2,354 for Lee played no part in that declaration.

How close 2024 was

Province-wide, the NDP took 944,579 votes to the Conservatives' 911,153, which is 44.9% to 43.3%.^⁠[4] That gap of 1.6 points gave the NDP 47 seats, the smallest possible majority in a 93-seat house, against 44 for the Conservatives and 2 for the Greens.^⁠[4]

The 47th seat was Surrey-Guildford. On election night the Conservatives led by 102 votes. A judicial recount finished on November 8 with the NDP's Garry Begg ahead by 22, and David Eby had his majority.^⁠[7] In that riding, 370 people voted for an independent, Kabir Qurban.^⁠[4]

Of the NDP's 47 seats, 17 came with less than half the vote.^⁠[4] In six of them, the NDP candidate had fewer votes than the Conservative and the other non-Green candidates combined.

Ladysmith-Oceanside's independent, Adam Walker, was an NDP MLA the party had expelled, so his 5,559 votes were not a conservative bloc.^⁠[8] The table shows which seats a divided opposition put within reach. Losing any one of the six would have left the NDP at 46 seats and a minority.

Eby made the same argument

On October 13, 2024, at a campaign stop in Squamish, Eby asked Green voters to vote NDP, saying Green and NDP voters should stick together to defeat John Rustad's Conservatives. Green leader Sonia Furstenau called it a bid to woo her voters and told them to vote for the candidate they wanted.^⁠[9] The NDP's own leader made the vote-splitting case in public, with his majority on the line. The same count runs on October 24, whichever party is doing the asking.

It happened before, in 1996

In 1996, 42% of British Columbians voted Liberal and 39% voted NDP. The NDP won 39 seats to the Liberals' 33, and Glen Clark became premier.^⁠[10] Reform BC elected two MLAs in the Peace country.^⁠[10] CBC's 2017 look back at that election says Jack Weisgerber's Reform party is widely blamed for having "split the vote on the right and contributed towards the NDP's narrow victory."^⁠[11]

Why this is not fear mongering

Fear mongering means inventing a threat or inflating one. The 2024 numbers above come from Elections BC's published results, the 1996 numbers from Maclean's reporting at the time, and the rule from Elections BC's own voter's guide. What happened in 2024 and in 1996, and the rule that produced both, are matters of record.

Calling the vote split is a comment on the count. Kevin Acton had been Lumby's mayor for years.^⁠[5] A voter in Vernon-Lumby could think him the best candidate running, and the count would still have come out the way it did, 11,837 to 11,361 to 4,266.^⁠[4]

The 2026 ballot

Elections BC's final candidate list has a Conservative in all 93 ridings, CentreBC in 35, OneBC in 33, and 15 independents.^⁠[12] In 68 ridings, two or more non-Green candidates are competing for the vote against the NDP.^⁠[12] This year three parties have each nominated a slate, and the overlap covers most of the province. In 2024, by contrast, the split came from BC United quitting the race weeks before the vote,^⁠[6] and its leftover independents ran third in Vernon-Lumby and Richmond-Steveston, two ridings the NDP won by 476 and 484 votes.^⁠[4]

What this site does about it

We built this site so that people who want Eby out do not split the vote. Each riding gets one named candidate, chosen by a fixed rule from the published riding projections and the 2024 result, and every claim links to its source. The rule is on the methodology page, and whether to vote strategically at all is your decision. Your riding page has the pick, the 2024 count, and the projections behind it.