The May 9, 2017 election produced British Columbia's first hung parliament since 1952, upending 16 years of BC Liberal government and setting off weeks of political uncertainty before a new premier was sworn in on July 18. The legislature was dissolved on April 11, and all 87 ridings were contested in a 28-day campaign. Turnout was 61.2% of registered voters, up from 57.1% in 2013.

Premier Christy Clark's Liberals entered the campaign as slight favourites, buoyed by their upset majority win in 2013 when they overcame a 20-point deficit in the polls. NDP leader John Horgan sought to capitalize on public frustration over housing affordability and the opioid crisis, while Andrew Weaver's Green Party aimed to build on its 2013 breakthrough, when Weaver became the party's first-ever MLA.

Results

The Liberals won 43 seats with 40.4% of the popular vote — one short of the 44 needed for a majority. The NDP won 41 seats with 40.3%, and the Greens won 3 seats with 16.8%. The gap between the Liberals and NDP was just 1,566 votes province-wide, the closest result in British Columbia's electoral history. Compared to 2013, the Liberals dropped from 49 seats and 44.1% while the NDP gained 8 seats and the Greens more than doubled their vote share from 8.1%.

The most consequential close race was Courtenay-Comox, where NDP candidate Ronna-Rae Leonard won by just 9 votes on election night. After absentee ballots and a recount, her margin expanded to 189 votes — had the Liberal candidate prevailed, Clark would have held a bare majority.

Party Leaders

Christy Clark (BC Liberal) — Clark entered politics young, winning the Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain seat in 1996. After serving as Gordon Campbell's Education Minister and Deputy Premier, she left politics in 2004, eventually hosting a talk radio show at CKNW. She returned to win the BC Liberal leadership on February 26, 2011, on the third ballot with 52% of the vote, succeeding Campbell after the HST controversy forced his resignation. Clark led the Liberals to their surprise 2013 majority, though she herself lost her Vancouver-Point Grey seat to David Eby and re-entered the legislature through a by-election. She won Kelowna West comfortably in 2017 but resigned as leader and MLA on August 4, 2017, after losing the confidence of the legislature.

John Horgan (NDP) — Born and raised in Victoria, Horgan earned a BA from Trent University and an MA in history from the University of Sydney. He worked as a political staffer for three NDP premiers — Mike Harcourt, Glen Clark, and Dan Miller — and served as lead negotiator on the Columbia Basin Trust. First elected in Malahat-Juan de Fuca in 2005, he became NDP leader by acclamation on May 1, 2014, after rival Mike Farnworth withdrew. Horgan was sworn in as the 36th premier of British Columbia on July 18, 2017, following a non-confidence vote that toppled the Clark government 44-42.

Andrew Weaver (BC Green) — A climate scientist and professor at the University of Victoria, Weaver held a Canada Research Chair in climate modelling and was a lead author on four assessments of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was part of the team that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He became the first Green MLA in BC history when he won Oak Bay-Gordon Head in 2013, and was acclaimed as party leader on December 9, 2015.

Campaign Issues

Housing affordability was the dominant issue, particularly in Metro Vancouver, where the average detached house price had climbed to roughly $1.47 million by 2016. The NDP promised 114,000 affordable housing units over ten years, while the Liberals pointed to their 2016 foreign buyers' tax as evidence of action.

The fentanyl crisis loomed over the campaign. BC's provincial health officer had declared a public health emergency on April 14, 2016 — the first under the Public Health Act — with 985 overdose deaths in 2016 alone. Despite the severity, the crisis received limited attention on the campaign trail.

Campaign finance reform drew sharp contrasts. The BC Liberals had raised $6.6 million in the first half of 2017 through a system critics called a "wild west" of political fundraising, including cash-for-access events. Both the NDP and Greens pledged to ban corporate and union donations — which became one of the first acts of the new NDP government.

The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the Site C hydroelectric dam divided the parties along environmental lines. Both the NDP and Greens opposed the pipeline and promised a review of Site C.

Notable Outcomes

On May 29, 2017, the NDP and Greens announced a confidence-and-supply agreement committing the three Green MLAs to support the NDP on confidence votes for four years. Clark chose to meet the legislature rather than resign. A non-confidence amendment to the throne speech passed on June 29 by a vote of 44-42. When Clark asked Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon to dissolve the legislature and call a new election, Guichon refused and instead invited Horgan to form government — a rare exercise of vice-regal discretion.

The NDP solved the arithmetic problem of placing a Speaker by recruiting Liberal MLA Darryl Plecas of Abbotsford South, who accepted the role in September 2017, after which the BC Liberals expelled him from caucus. This gave the NDP-Green side a functional majority on the floor.