As British Columbia prepares for an election on Oct. 19, the province is facing a seemingly unfamiliar situation. The provincial party system — which until recently featured the Liberals and the NDP as the two dominant players — has seen the demise of the Liberals a year after they rebranded as the BC United party.
BC United Leader Kevin Falcon recently announced the party was suspending its provincial election campaign to support the B.C. Conservative Party, until recently confined to the margins. The change occurred almost overnight, following futile attempts to forge a more informal electoral alliance between these two right-of-centre parties opposed to the NDP.
One explanation for the emergence of the province’s Conservatives as the main rival to the NDP lies in the huge unpopularity of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in B.C. Support for the federal Conservatives in terms of voting intentions has been in the mid-40 per cent range, far in excess of support for either the NDP or the Liberals.
