Which were the strongest NDP and BC Liberal seats? When measuring the difference in vote percentage between the NDP and BC Liberals, once again, Vancouver Mt. Pleasant came out on top.

Based on Election Night numbers, the NDP outdistanced the BC Liberals in 57 seats (finishing ahead of the BC Libs in two seats that elected a Green). The BC Liberals prevailed over the NDP in 30 seats (including one seat that elected a Green).

Thus, the dividing line, so far, between the NDP and BC Liberals is between Chilliwack-Kent (NDP leading) and Vernon-Monashee (BC Liberal leading). Chilliwack-Kent is a bit complicated, so you can back up one seat and you have the NDP leading BC Liberal Alexa Loo in Richmond South Centre. That riding would be the 54th NDP seat and Chilliwack-Kent the 55th.

The left hand column (2017) measures the NDP-BC Liberal difference in the previous election, then the 2020 difference, and third column reports how many places each riding moved in terms of its relative rank. For example, North Coast went from 15th best NDP riding in 2017 to 2nd best in 2020, based on the initial count, while Vancouver-Point Grey dropped from 18th best to 43rd best (UBC students at home? spec tax? or see further below). I’m also interested to know why Surrey-Green Timbers dropped from 14th best to 44th. Those examples aside, the only metric that really matters for the NDP is that they lead the BC Liberals and Greens in 55 seats.

As for the BC Liberals, where you see #40 to #57, those are mainly ridings that they need to win next time to form government and many of them are seats they traditionally won from the 1990s until Saturday. However, the first step is to stop going in the wrong direction, and sliding down the chart.

Some ridings that they lost actually did better, relatively speaking. While Jas Johal lost the initial count by about 900 votes, Richmond-Queensborough actually dropped on the NDP depth chart. Based on difference between NDP and BC Liberal votes, it went from 46th best NDP riding (an NDP loss) in 2017 to 51st best NDP riding in 2020 (an NDP win). A rising tide lifts all boats, or some of them to victory anyway. None of this is much consolation to Jas!

While Dan Davies in Peace River North had the largest margin over the NDP, his actual challenger was BC Conservative leader Trevor Bolin, who netted 35% of the vote. The above table isn’t then an exact indicator of ‘safeness’ when third parties and independents are in the mix, but it does at least establish that Peace North is not painted orange.

What about the Greens? They complicate my table so I will deal with them separately. Let’s look at their top 20 seats by popular vote.

Their best three showings in terms of popular vote were the three wins, but they also had another four ridings over 30%: Powell River-Sunshine Coast, Victoria-Beacon Hill, Nelson-Creston, and Nanaimo-North Cowichan. This is a longer list of winnable Green seats than seen before.

In fact, after their three wins, the next 17 best showings are all in NDP seats. Only one of these Top 20 seats elected a BC Liberal in 2017 (West Vancouver-Sea to Sky).

The good news for the NDP is that they still won 17 of these 20 seats in spite of the Greens taking a significant chunk (and this does explain David Eby’s lower popular vote). The Greens eclipsed the BC Liberals in many Island ridings. The bad news for the NDP is that they have a renewed Green Party in the NDP heartland and there is no nicey-nicey CASA arrangement going forward. It will be interesting to see how the NDP and the Sonia Furstenau-led Greens interact at the old rockpile on Belleville Street.