Voter turnout in B.C.’s provincial election was the lowest seen in at least 30 years, with each of the top two parties garnering fewer votes than they did in 2024. Heading into the election, the polls predicted a very close race between the governing NDP and the official opposition, but what happened was a landslide victory for Lorne Doerkson and his BC Conservatives party. Low voter turnout definitely had an impact on the stunning result, according to political scientist Hamish Telford with the University of the Fraser Valley. Preliminary voter turnout for the 2026 election sits at 48.12 per cent with 99.96 per cent of ballot boxes reporting. That’s a lower turnout than for all of the previous general elections listed on the Elections B.C. website, going back to 1996. Thirty years ago, voter turnout was 71.5 per cent. In 2024, it was 58.45 per cent. “The low voter turnout was largely attributable to people who had voted NDP last time not coming out this time,” Telford told CTV Your Morning Vancouver on Monday. The Conservatives swept the province, picking up a sizeable 63-seat majority according to the latest projections, but they actually received almost 50,000 fewer votes than the last election, when they won 44 seats, according to Elections B.C. The dip was much worse for the defeated NDP, whose share of the ballot count was down by more than 250,000 votes. “This is a serious number, and it certainly speaks about the inability of the party to motivate its base when it wasn’t really time for an election,” Research Co. president Mario Canseco said Monday. “This was ultimately a rejection of the way in which this election was called, and the fact that you had more than a quarter of a million NDP voters essentially looking at the map and saying ‘I’m staying home’, that’s a problem for the NDP.” Telford added that the Greens’ relatively strong performance may have helped the Conservatives break through in NDP strongholds in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island. “Arguably because the Green vote total went up in those ridings, splitting the vote with the NDP, allowing the Conservatives to take seats that they never imagined they would ever have,” he said. ‘Strategic blunder of epic proportions’ Former premier David Eby’s gamble to call an election two years early backfired catastrophically, something Telford says will go down as “one of the biggest strategic political blunders in history.” He said former Liberal premier of Ontario David Peterson was probably the happiest person Saturday night, as his snap election call in 1990 resulted in a win for the NDP. His name was associated with failed snap elections for decade. “Well, going forward it’s going to be ‘remember what happened to David Eby?’ It was a strategic blunder of epic proportions,” he said. Telford added the story may have ended differently if Eby called the election in August and let former Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay fight for a seat in a general election rather than a byelection. “As I say, timing is everything, and you got the timing wrong.”
