Green party incumbent Elizabeth May has won her fifth straight federal election campaign for the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding.
By 8:45 p.m., the vote totals were enough to give May a decisive mandate when she was declared elected.
Preliminary results as of 11:30 p.m. Monday were as follows:
Elizabeth May – Green – 17,980 votes (39%)
David Beckham – Liberal – 13,892 (30%)
Cathie Ounsted – Conservative – 12,347 (27%)
Colin Plant – NDP – 2,083 (4%).
While a Liberal government was projected early in the night, whether or not that would be a majority or minority government was still not determined by midnight, as so many races in various parts of the country saw frontrunners change throughout the night.
May thanked a huge team of volunteers, staff and family members at a celebratory event at Church & State Winery in Brentwood Bay.
“Greens win — and we’ve always seen this — from the devotion and commitment of volunteers,” she said. “In this election campaign we had 250 volunteers working pretty much non-stop . . . When it comes to Saanich-Gulf Islands it’s a community achievement. It’s not me alone ever.”
“It’s been a hard election,” she added, “because so much of the mainstream media had promoted the idea that I was going to lose in Saanich-Gulf Islands. It developed a momentum based on a rumour, and it became a very hard thing to fight.”
The Saanich-Gulf Islands riding had set an early voting record, tallying the highest turnout in British Columbia and the second highest nationwide, according to Elections Canada. Among the 7.3 million Canadians casting ballots during the April 18-21 advance voting period were a record 37,468 voters within the riding represented by May since 2011. That meant that even before election day, nearly one-third of eligible voters had already cast a ballot. Advance voting in the riding in 2021 had drawn roughly 27,000 voters, up from about 25,000 in 2019.