BC election 2026 · Results
BC Conservatives lead 62 of 93 ridings, a bigger lead than any final poll showed
The Conservatives lead in 62 ridings with 47.8 per cent of the votes counted, a 10.1-point lead over the NDP. The final polls averaged 5.0. Twenty ridings have moved from the NDP to the Conservatives.
Unofficial election-night results from Elections BC as of 10:10 p.m. Pacific on Oct. 24, with 85.5 per cent of ballot boxes reported and about 1.5 million votes counted. Riding leads under a few hundred votes can still change. Elections BC plans its final count for Nov. 6 to 10.
BC Conservatives lead in 62 of 93 ridings on the election-night count, 15 more than the 47 needed for a majority. The NDP leads in 29 and the Greens in 2. The Conservatives have 47.81 per cent of the votes counted, the NDP 37.75 and the Greens 10.97, a Conservative lead of 10.1 points.
That is a reversal of 2024, when the NDP won 47 seats with 44.9 per cent and the Conservatives 44 with 43.3. The NDP's share is down 7.1 points, the Conservatives' is up 4.5 and the Greens' is up 2.7.
The Conservatives are led by Lorne Doerkson, named interim leader on Sept. 20 after Kerry-Lynne Findlay resigned, 34 days before the vote. The last party to win a BC election without a permanent leader was Social Credit in 1952. Ernest Hansell, an Alberta MP who did not run in BC, led its campaign, and W.A.C. Bennett became leader after the vote. If the count holds, it is the first outright Conservative win in BC since 1928.
How far off were the BC election polls?
Every final poll had the Conservatives ahead, but by less than the count shows. The latest poll from each of nine firms put the Conservative lead at 5.0 points on average, from 3 for Angus Reid to 6 for Pallas Data and Liaison Strategies. The count so far shows a lead of 10.1.
That is a miss of about 5 points on the lead. Late movement in the polls does not explain much of it: five firms were in the field until Oct. 22 or 23, and their polls averaged 5.1. The count is not final either, but the lead held between 10.0 and 10.1 points as reporting rose from 71 to 86 per cent of ballot boxes.
Which BC ridings changed hands?
Twenty-two ridings have a different leader than the party that won them in 2024. Twenty moved from the NDP to the Conservatives. Two moved the other way: Courtenay-Comox, which the Conservatives won by 93 votes in 2024, and Bulkley Valley-Stikine in the northwest.
| Riding | Won in 2024 | Leading now | Lead (votes) | Lead (points) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bulkley Valley-Stikine | Conservative | NDP | 98 | 1.9 |
| Kootenay Central | NDP | Conservative | 326 | 2.1 |
| Vancouver-Fraserview | NDP | Conservative | 370 | 2.3 |
| Juan de Fuca-Malahat | NDP | Conservative | 453 | 2.6 |
| Surrey City Centre | NDP | Conservative | 322 | 3.2 |
| Saanich South | NDP | Conservative | 936 | 3.8 |
| Courtenay-Comox | Conservative | NDP | 1,122 | 4.5 |
| Port Moody-Burquitlam | NDP | Conservative | 1,063 | 4.7 |
| Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows | NDP | Conservative | 601 | 5.0 |
| Burnaby North | NDP | Conservative | 406 | 5.4 |
| Burnaby Centre | NDP | Conservative | 664 | 5.5 |
| Vancouver-Yaletown | NDP | Conservative | 749 | 6.2 |
| Coquitlam-Maillardville | NDP | Conservative | 1,597 | 8.4 |
| North Vancouver-Seymour | NDP | Conservative | 2,449 | 9.4 |
| Surrey-Guildford | NDP | Conservative | 1,462 | 9.6 |
| Vancouver-Langara | NDP | Conservative | 1,411 | 11.5 |
| Coquitlam-Burke Mountain | NDP | Conservative | 2,222 | 12.4 |
| Surrey-Fleetwood | NDP | Conservative | 2,142 | 12.6 |
| Delta North | NDP | Conservative | 2,374 | 13.0 |
| Vernon-Lumby | NDP | Conservative | 3,118 | 13.2 |
| Surrey-Newton | NDP | Conservative | 1,721 | 13.8 |
| Richmond-Steveston | NDP | Conservative | 3,172 | 19.9 |
Election-night count, closest first. Points are the leader's margin as a share of valid votes counted in the riding.
The pre-election riding analysis listed the 22 ridings won by under 5 points in 2024. The Conservatives now lead 18 of them. It named nine NDP seats that its 3.7-point poll average would flip. Eight have flipped. The ninth, Cowichan Valley, has the NDP ahead by 90 votes.
Seats ran ahead of votes. The Conservatives have under half the vote and two-thirds of the seats. Quebec showed the same gap this month, when the Parti Québécois took 59 of 127 seats on 28 per cent.
Did every riding swing the same way?
The gap between the two big parties moved toward the Conservatives in 87 of 93 ridings, by a median of 12.6 points.
Apply the counted province-wide shares to every riding's 2024 result and the same uniform-swing method gives the Conservatives 63 seats, the NDP 28 and the Greens 2, one seat off the count. That near-match hides 13 ridings where the method picks the wrong leader, and the misses run in two directions.
The NDP leads seven ridings the method gives to the Conservatives, four of them on Vancouver Island: Cowichan Valley, Ladysmith-Oceanside, Mid Island-Pacific Rim and Courtenay-Comox. The others are Burnaby East, Burnaby South-Metrotown and Bulkley Valley-Stikine. The Conservatives lead six ridings the method keeps with the NDP: Burnaby Centre, Coquitlam-Maillardville, Delta North, North Vancouver-Seymour, Vancouver-Fraserview and Saanich South. The two sets of misses nearly cancel out in the seat total. Sixteen of the 20 ridings the NDP lost to the Conservatives are in Metro Vancouver.
When will the final BC election results be known?
Elections BC plans its final count for Nov. 6 to 10, and Return Day is Nov. 18. On election night, 18 ridings had a lead under 5 points and 5 had a lead under 1 point. The NDP leads 10 of those close ridings and the Conservatives 8. If all 8 Conservative leads switched, the party would still hold 54 seats, 7 more than a majority.
Toronto votes on Oct. 26: see the Toronto mayor polls and the 2023 map.
