Elections BC has released the poll-by-poll vote counts from the provincial election and they show much of the growth in the Green vote in Powell River-Sunshine Coast came from the Sechelt and Roberts Creek areas.
The winner, Nicholas Simons of the NDP, who finished the final count with 12,701 votes, or 50.9 per cent, was the top vote getter in the advance polls as well as the majority of the election day polls. He also captured a significant portion of the mail-in vote, with about 57 per cent.
Green candidate Kim Darwin had the best performance ever recorded by a Green in the riding, fishing second with 8,104 votes (32.5 per cent).
When she ran in 2017, Darwin was the top vote getter in three Sechelt polls and one in Halfmoon Bay. Of the votes cast on election day this year, Darwin had the most at one polling station in Lund as well as 26 others on the lower Sunshine Coast, mainly in the area from Halfmoon Bay to Gibsons.
Some of Darwin’s largest margins were in the polls she won in Roberts Creek, where she appeared with party leader Sonia Furstenau just two days before election day.
B.C. Liberal candidate Sandra Stoddart-Hansen, who finished with 16.7 per cent of the vote, for a total of 4,156, did not win any individual polls.
Elections BC has also revised its estimate of the voter turnout across the province, saying it now appears 54.5 per cent of voters cast a ballot although the number could change again because the number of people who registered to vote on election day hasn’t been tallied.
Turnout for Powell River-Sunshine Coast was estimated at 60.5 per cent.
Of the 8,339 mail-in ballot packages requested by people in the riding, only 7,003 were returned to Elections BC. Forty were rejected.
Data on how people voted shows a slight increase – about five per cent – in the number of advance votes and a significant increase in the number of mail-in votes, which went from 0.3 per cent of votes cast in 2017 to 31.4 per cent in 2020.
MLAs will be sworn in Nov. 24, and Premier John Horgan’s new cabinet will be sworn in on Nov. 26. The legislature is scheduled for a brief sitting starting Dec. 7 with a Throne Speech.
