ANALYSIS: How British Columbia Voted in the Federal Election
(Image courtesy of CBC)
The 2025 federal election has concluded, with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party forming a minority government. So, how did Canada’s westernmost province vote?
The election that took place on Monday was a key moment in the history of Canadian politics. Both the Liberals and Conservatives received record-breaking amounts of votes nationwide, standards that haven’t been met since the 1930s, when two parties each received over 40 percent of the national vote at the same time.
In addition, the seat shares of parties like the NDP and the Bloc Québécois were heavily reduced, showing Canadians are moving into a more polarizing political environment with their voting choices.
How BC Voted
(Image courtesy of CBC)
These trends played out in BC, with that 40 percent figure correlating to the provincial number of votes and the NDP going from 13 ridings down to three. Party leader Jagmeet Singh was defeated in his riding of Burnaby Central, losing to the Liberal candidate Wade Chang. Green Party leader Elizabeth May was able to hold on to her riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, and she is now the only Green MP in federal parliament.
There are a few ridings that could be used to show this polarization at a local scale. Vancouver Quadra had a massive ratio of Liberal voters to Conservatives, 35,306 votes for candidate Wade Grant versus a mere 17,008 for Ken Charko, a 33 percent margin of victory. Meanwhile, in Surrey-Newton, Conservatives were able to secure 44 percent of the vote, a 28 percent increase from the prior 2021 election.
Richard Johnston, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at UBC, says that this makes BC’s politics “more like Ontario and the East than we care to admit.” Johnston points out that historically, the federal Liberal party hasn’t always enjoyed this much success in BC, compared to the NDP.
Elections Canada found that BC had one of the highest advance voting turnout rates per province, along with Ontario and Quebec. Almost 300,000 more people than the 2021 federal election showed up to cast their advance votes in BC.
Other developments in ridings around BC are noteworthy as well. On Vancouver Island, the ridings of Nanaimo-Ladysmith, Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, and North Island-Powell River were all flipped from NDP to Conservatives. Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke and Victoria, traditional NDP ridings as well, have changed hands to the Liberals.
The Skeena—Bulkley Valley riding in northern BC also voted for a Conservative candidate to represent them for the first time, historically being an NDP stronghold. Kelowna has flipped to Liberal candidate Stephen Fuhr, who previously represented the riding from 2015 to 2019, replacing Conservative MP Tracy Gray.
The Metro Vancouver area also saw the Richmond Centre–Marpole riding flip from Liberal to Conservative, which breaks away from the region’s overall trend of strongly voting Liberal this election.
Larger Implications
(Image courtesy of CBC)
Stewart Prest, a PhD lecturer with the Department of Political Science at UBC, says that this federal election is a larger-scale translation of what happened in BC’s provincial election in the prior fall. “In both of these elections, we saw heavy polarization in voting bases, and the death of the less popular party [BC United and the federal NDP party],” said Prest.
Prest believes that in the future, parties will have to continue to focus on the cost of living and housing as primary policy points to entice future voters. He notes an overall trend of Canadian “progressive” parties starting to lose two key demographics in elections: young people and blue-collar labourers.
Prest also pointed out that the provincial NDP and federal Liberal governments will be in general alignment, as was the case in the past with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. Johnston is in agreement, stating that “David Eby’s NDP government and Mark Carney’s Liberal government would be the most aligned governments in the country.”
Johnston believes that with the current polarization in provincial and federal politics, BC will “continue to be deeply divided on topics like social issues and climate change.”
He also adds that with the minority Liberal government, polarization and divides in the country might get worse, unless US President Donald Trump continues his threats of tariffs and annexation, which would unify the voting population. “With the current political deadlock at multiple levels of government,” Johnston says, “politics across the country are becoming synchronized in terms of short-term variation, but still with long-term regional differences.”
