The BC NDP has only bolstered its lead in Burnaby now that all mail-in ballots from last month’s provincial election have been counted.
No candidate benefited more from the mail-in ballots, however, than Katrina Chen, who saw a gain of 2.18 percentage points in her lead. The NDP candidate and incumbent in Burnaby-Lougheed finished election night with 58% of the vote, which has since increased to 60%.
Other NDP candidates saw increases of 0.77 points (Raj Chouhan), 1.46 points (Anne Kang) and 1.41 points (Janet Routledge). BC Liberals, on the other hand, saw decreases of 0.66 (Raymond Dong) percentage points to 1.14 points (Tariq Malik). BC Greens saw their share of the vote either hold steady (such as Iqbal Parekh) or drop of up to 0.77 points (Mehreen Chaudry).
Elections BC began counting mail-in ballots on Friday and completed the count at around 4 p.m. on Sunday.
In Burnaby, the new ballots were never expected to change the result. By the end of the initial count, all four NDP candidates held leads of at least 20 percentage points over the BC Liberals, who came in second in all four ridings.
The final election results in Burnaby are as follows:
Burnaby-Deer Lake
Glynnis Hoi Sum Chan (BC Liberals) – 5,163 (31.8%)
Mehreen Chaudry (BC Greens) – 1,878 (11.6%)
Anne Kang (BC NDP)** – 9,190 (56.6%)
Burnaby-Edmonds
Tripat Atwal (Liberals) – 4,754 (26.7%)
Raj Chouhan (NDP)** – 11,063 (62.0%)
Iqbal Parekh (Greens) – 2,023 (11.3%)
Burnaby-Lougheed
Katrina Chen (NDP)** – 12,574 (60.3%)
Tariq Malik (Liberals) – 5,386 (25.8%)
Dominique Paynter (BC Libertarians) – 281 (1.4%)
Andrew Williamson (Greens) – 2,628 (12.6%)
Burnaby North
Raymond Dong (Liberals) – 6,846 (30.7%)
Janet Routledge (NDP)** – 12,894 (57.8%)
Norine Shim (Greens) – 2,568 (11.5%)
(**incumbent)
In total, 77,248 ballots were cast in Burnaby ridings, including 29,623 by mail, making for nearly two-fifths of all votes in the city. That’s an average of 7,406 mail-in ballots in each riding, with Burnaby North casting the most ballots by mail, at 9,168 (41% of all ballots in the riding).
That leaves the overall voter turnout at just 48.2% of the city’s 160,334 registered voters, far below the roughly 60% turnout typically seen in B.C.’s provincial elections.
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