Dear Editor,
Re: "B.C. Votes 2024: Conservatives sweep three Richmond ridings, NDP takes Richmond-Steveston"
While we await the final count, we have enough results to see trends. Does B.C. Election 2024 indicate a turn to the political right?
Many think so, but the data points to the contrary. If NDP and Green voters rank centre-left on the political spectrum and BC Conservative voters rank centre-right, centre-right is not gaining.
In this election, centre-left took 53 per cent of the popular vote and centre-right 44 per cent. Twenty years ago, in the 2005 election those respective numbers were, centre-left 51 per cent, centre-right 46 per cent.
Over those years, centre-left gained two per cent and centre-right lost two per cent.
A four per cent shift is not insignificant.
So, what happened in Election 2024? Centre-right parties have changed labels. What is now BC Conservative was BC United, was BC Liberal, was Social Credit. Changing labels does not change a party’s position on the political spectrum.
The movement away from right-wing politics is a B.C. trend of duration. In the past, the NDP could win only if the centre-right fractured, as was the case in 1972 and 1991.
That is no longer true. Today, the NDP can form government on its own, as it did in 2020, or with the support of the Greens as it did in 2017 and may do so again.
In B.C., the political trend is not conservative.
Nick Loenen
Richmond
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