We recently got the chance to speak with BC Green Party Member Nick Gottlieb, who was running for the MLA position here in the Skeena Riding during the Provincial Election. During the interview, he gave us his reaction to the election results and said where he thinks BC will be headed with the Conservatives now in power;
“It’s not super surprising. The polling was showing a Conservative Majority and there’s just a lot of dissatisfaction with the NDP in general and their decision to call this election on top of a municipal election. I think none of us were really sure how that would play out in terms of voter turnout. Unfortunately, it seems to have resulted in a historically low voter turnout and that led to the Conservatives being ahead in the polling. With lower voter turnouts, Conservatives generally do very well. What was interesting to see was that it wasn’t so much that there’s a blue wave in the Province. Both the NDP and Conservatives got fewer total votes than they got in 2024. The NDP lost more than 200,000 votes, the Conservatives, last I checked, was in the tens of thousands, maybe 50,000. So this was really a story of low voter turnout, dissatisfaction and disengagement more than anything. About a quarter of British Columbians actually voted for the Conservative Government, so it’s not like there’s a big political tide shift in BC. It’s also worth mentioning that while I’m disappointed we didn’t win more seats, the Greens are the only party of the three that actually increased their vote share and count since the last election. It’s a tricky thing because the headline is that this the first time they’ve been in charge since 1926. But the BC Liberals were in charge just nine years ago and most of the people in the Conservative Party are from the BC Liberal Party. I think this party in many ways looks a lot like the Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark Party of the early 2000’s and early 2010’s. In terms of what we’ll see, I think it’s really up in the air because there is a way that this party is holding together a coalition of right wing interests that’s much more fractured than it has been in the past. We’ve seen this with the forming, the disillusion and all the turmoil over the last few months before this election. There’s a big question of whether their current leader will be able to hold the party together, whether he’ll be able to govern effectively given all of these competing interests. I don’t want to speculate, but it’s likely not going to be a straightforward path of four years of majority governance is my guess.”
Nick also said that he thought the election as a whole was a success for the Green Party and he believes there’s a potential for the Party to gain even more seats in the next election, whenever that may come.