One long-time political consultant calls the outcome of the 2024 B.C. election a "wake-up call" for David Eby, who must now deliver results with a smaller caucus that depends on support from the B.C. Greens — if the results hold up.
The initial count by Elections BC shows Eby's B.C. NDP leading in 46 seats, the Conservative Party of B.C. under Leader John Rustad in 45 and the B.C. Greens in two seats. Forty-seven seats are needed for a majority and two seats are subjects of recounts Oct. 26-28. That is also when Elections BC will count some 49,000 outstanding absentee and mail-in-ballots.
Geoff Meggs, who was chief-of-staff for former NDP Premier John Horgan from 2017 until 2022, said Eby failed to convince the public that tremendous investments made in health care and other fields were making a difference.
"The election is a wake-up call and he needs to execute," he said. "Finish some hospitals, finish some rapid transit lines, open more schools," Meggs said, adding Eby needs to narrow his priority list.
"The challenge for him now, if he's successful in forming a government, is to figure out ways to demonstrate he is making headway on those fronts, so that people have confidence in what he's offering, as opposed to Rustad, who was promising upheaval in most areas. That's why we got the dead heat."
Meggs specifically points to the visible impacts of the opioid crisis.
"Whatever people believed needed to be done on that front, they all agreed that there was a problem," he said. "It was a sign of a province that was facing real difficulties."
Other issues that likely benefited the Conservatives were health care shortfalls, especially in the rural parts of the province, where emergency room closures in smaller communities contradicted claims of improvement.
Mary Polak of Maple Leaf Strategies and former environment minister under the B.C. Liberals said Conservatives did well because they successfully framed the election as a 'time for change'.
"Eby failed to frame a ballot question much like we B.C. Liberals in 2017," she said. "It was not enough because they did not have the time or resources to develop a ground game capable of confronting the superior (NDP) deployments in the close ridings."
Meggs agreed.
"David Eby's view is that he was taking action and he did take action on many, many fronts," he said. "When he did so, he triggered as much opposition as support in some cases. So I think that people wanted change. They were not convinced it was the change that he was offering or that he was doing it fast enough."
This raises the question of Eby's role in the election.
"I fear I am not close enough to comment with unique insight, but it appeared Eby was convinced by his own rhetoric rather than effectively analyzing the public mood objectively," Polak said. "As I understand it from my contacts, Eby runs the show and is not given to seeking wisdom from his caucus. Potentially, they could have helped create a more successful narrative. So, overall, I think he was a hindrance. I think the change message was more impactful, than either leader in this election."
Not everybody agrees. Kareem Allam, a partner at Fairview Strategy, said Eby hugely helped his party's campaign. Allam said this was a "change" election, but in the end, British Columbians were not willing to hand over the keys to the Conservatives because they just did not look like a government in waiting.
Eby had one of the highest approval ratings among premiers heading into the election and that personal popularity rating ultimately "stemmed the tide of change...that we would have expected in a normal election," Allam said.
So it could have been much worse for the B.C. NDP if he had not been leader?
"That's 100 per cent accurate," Allam said. "He looked like a premier every step of the way, he had command of the issues."
But Eby now also faces a very different legislature, one borne out of polarization and deeply divided.
Allam predicts that B.C. will enter a period of permanent campaigning with governance becoming an after-thought.
"The danger is we don't campaign on policy anymore, we campaign on personality, we campaign with negative ads, we campaign on creating a lot of feelings and emotions," he said.
Legislation will be less about policy, but more about cornering opponents, he added.
"A lot more political tactics will find its way into legislation," he said. "That is what we have seen in the United States, that is what we are going to see here."
This development will ultimately have what Allam calls a "deleterious effect" on the quality of legislation coming forward.
"The other thing, it will have a dampening effect on elected politicians and their desire to take on a big, visionary, nation-building projects, whether it is large energy projects, whether it is large transit projects. Everything now is going to be weighed within the context of a political risk as opposed what is right or wrong for British Columbia."
Early analysis points to the emergence of what political scientists call tribalism -- the concept that loyalty to any political party trumps other considerations and evidence.
Exit polls by Research Co. found that more than half of voters in British Columbia (53 per cent) said they made up their minds for which party or candidate they would vote prior to the official start of the campaign on Sept. 21. That segment includes majorities of those who supported the B.C. NDP (57 per cent) and the Conservative Party of B.C. (54 per cent).
Research Co. also found that almost two-thirds of voters in northern B.C. (65 per cent) were set on their choice before the campaign began, "making things significantly more complicated for independent candidates."
Many former B.C. United MLAs running as independents ran in ridings north of Kamloops.
