Only months after Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party was mired in unpopularity and down double-digits in the polls, a rejuvenated party under Mark Carney is headed back to Ottawa at the helm of a strong minority government.
On Vancouver Island, where six of seven ridings were long viewed as NDP strongholds, just one orange riding remains 鈥� Courtenay-Alberni 鈥� while the other five shifted either Liberal or Conservative at the end of the night.
"Honestly, if anything, I was a little bit surprised that they were able to keep their one riding. I was sort of expecting it to go green, blue and red, without any orange at all," said Justin Leifso, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Victoria.
In the other north and mid-island ridings, voters opted for Conservative representation this time around, with Aaron Gunn taking the North Island-Powell River riding, Tamara Kronis taking Nanaimo-Ladysmith, and Jeff Kibble capturing the seat of Cowichan-Malahat-Langford 鈥� ridings that elected progressive candidates in the past three elections.
In those ridings, Leifso explained that the Conservatives' wins come as a result of the swift increase in support for the Liberals following Trudeau's resignation, splitting the vote of the three progressive parties.
He used the North Island-Powell River riding as an example of vote splitting causing a setback for more progressive candidates. While Gunn received 31,356 votes, or 38.8 per cent of the vote share, candidates from the Liberals and the NDP received a total of 47,402 votes, which was split between the two parties.
In B.C.'s Capital Region, however, two longtime NDP ridings 鈥� Victoria and Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke 鈥� turned red after Greater Victoria residents voted overwhelmingly for the two Liberal candidates. Will Greaves received 54 per cent of the vote and Stephanie McLean captured 49.4 per cent. Leifso says this is the predictable result of the surge in Liberal support after Trudeau left and Carney took the helm.
"It was just a full-scale switch from the NDP to the Liberals, to the extent that the Liberals could win, for example, the Victoria and Esquimalt ridings," he said. "So, I wasn't that surprised, actually, to see the NDP lose a bunch of seats on the Island. It was just sort of in the tea leaves in terms of the national polling."
In past years, B.C. proved to be a safe province for the NDP, with the party taking 13 B.C. seats in the 2021 election. This year, however, they only managed to take seven seats nationally, with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh notably losing his seat in Burnaby before announcing his resignation as party leader Monday night.
While they may have lost official party status, Leifso says the New Democrats likely won't be in the political wilderness forever. In the short term, they need to quickly find an interim leader and figure out what direction they will take over the next four years, especially considering the minority government will soon be looking to strike a deal with the other parties.
"They have been in this sort of position before and have always sort of come back, and I suspect that a lot of the people who switched their votes this election will be inclined to vote for the NDP once again," he said. "But the NDP as a party and as an organization, it's going to be important for them to think about what their overall direction is. Is it going to be a progressive, social democratic party that sticks to its social democratic roots? Is it going to try to move a little bit to the centre in order to appeal to that centre?"
Overall, despite the hiccups this year, the NDP could still be in a good position in the 45th Parliament, and they will likely have time to regroup and regain their support come the next election.
