adam zivo: could mail-in votes unseat the b.c. ndp?
rural mail-in voters could tie or flip the results
4 minute read
b.c. ndp leader david eby and b.c. conservative leader john rustad speak to their respective supporters after voting closed in the provincial election on saturday, oct. 19, 2024.
richard lam/postmedia; ethan cairns/the canadian press
the b.c. election will remain undecided until the final vote count next week, when an estimated 49,000 residual ballots, which could not be processed on election day, will be added to the overall results. while many conservatives seem hopeful that these extra votes could swing the election in their favour, they should temper their expectations. last weekend’s election was unprecedentedly tight, with the b.c. ndp elected or leading in 46 seats, the b.c. conservatives in 45, and the greens elected in two. no party was able to meet the 47-seat threshold needed to form a majority government.
eight ridings were won by razor-thin margins of less than 1.5 per cent, and, in two cases, the b.c. ndp won by fewer than 100 votes, which triggered mandatory recounts. the final vote count, which will occur on oct. 26-28, will include these recounts as well as the processing of the aforementioned extra ballots.
according to elections b.c., these are predominantly mail-in ballots that were received after the deadline for advance voting had passed, but before the final election polls had closed. however, a small but unspecified number are from individuals who cast their ballots in lower-tech voting stations that they were not assigned to.
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could these ballots, which represent roughly 2.5 per cent of the total vote, hand b.c. conservative leader john rustad a premiership? that’s certainly possible, but also somewhat unlikely.
elections b.c. has promised to provide, before the final count, a breakdown of the residual ballots by electoral district. as we do not have this data yet, let us imagine, for the sake of simplicity, that these ballots are evenly distributed across the province. that would give us an average of 526 votes per riding.
according to mainstreet research’s election-day polling, 47.5 per cent of mail-in voters said that they supported the b.c. conservatives, while only 39.2 per cent said that they supported the b.c. ndp. that 8.3 points gap is quite large, but mainstreet’s polling methods, in general, were slightly (and unintentionally) biased towards the conservatives this election. once you correct for that, rustad’s lead among mail-in voters shrinks to around 4 points.
the unadjusted percentages translate into an average of 250 extra conservative votes and 206 extra ndp votes per riding. this already small 44-vote lead shrinks to just 21 votes when you adjust for mainstreet’s slight inaccuracies.
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these numbers would be enough to flip only one riding (juan de fuca-malahat) from orange to blue, which would give the b.c. conservatives a slim minority government. however, it is almost guaranteed that such a government would immediately be toppled by the b.c. ndp and greens, as happened when the b.c. liberals won a similar minority in 2017.
so no real path to victory there.
but that’s only an imaginary scenario where ballots are distributed equally. real life is much messier, of course — but in this case, that might not be helpful.
according to a 2021 journal article published in parliamentary affairs, which used british data, postal voting is more popular in rural communities, where barriers to in-person voting are higher (i.e. longer travel times). a 2022 report produced by secure democracy usa, a nonpartisan election policy organization, found similar results among american voters.
it seems plausible that this trend would apply to canadian voters, given our cultural similarities.
if this hypothesis is correct, then that would mean that the residual mail-in ballots are disproportionately from rural ridings that the b.c. conservatives have, for the most part, already won. in other words: the potential effects of these ballots could be wasted consolidating gains, instead of shifting seats.
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while this could mean fewer extra votes to flip surrey city centre, an urban battleground riding where the ndp are currently leading by 96 votes, it could, conversely, mean more votes to flip juan de fuca-malahat, a predominantly rural riding where the ndp are currently leading by only 23 votes. vernon-lumby, a rural-ish riding where the ndp are leading by 384 votes, could also be in play in this scenario (in an evenly-distributed model, there simply aren’t enough extra votes to change the results there).
a rural bias could also help explain why the mail-in ballots seemingly skew towards the conservatives compared to other voting methods. it may be that mail-in voters are not actually more conservative throughout the province per se, but rather that areas that vote conservative are simply more likely to vote by mail.
this is a subtle but important distinction. if the overall right-wing skew in the mail-in system is simply a product of rural overrepresentation, then that would mean that urban mail-in ballots may not heavily favour the conservatives, and thus may not give rustad the vote boost he needs to flip surrey city centre.
further complicating things, the aforementioned secure democracy usa report found that mail-in ballots are often used by elderly voters. as mainstreet’s data suggests that this population strongly prefers the b.c. ndp, it’s possible that the extra ballots next week could actually threaten to turn a few urban battleground ridings orange.
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there are too many variables and unknowns to know what will happen, but, at the very least, it should be clear that these 49,000 extra votes may not be the panacea some want it to be.
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