“One of the most spectacular political blunders in Canadian history”—Doug Firby

BC’s vote counters are compiling the final numbers on what looks like one of the biggest political missteps, and fastest reversals of fortune, that Canada has seen in decades. 

The spectacular implosion

Five weeks ago, the BC Conservative Party was in shambles. 

It was down to 24 seats, its ranks nearly halved since falling just short of forming government in 2024. 

Its new leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay had kicked out, then un-kicked-out, then re-kicked-out its past leader. 

She had hired, then fired, an operations director who was a former Alberta separatist organizer and appeared to have been caught on a call planning to “steal” hundreds of thousands from (and via) the party. 

She was facing allegations of using private investigators to spy on a party MLA—and of offering improper compensation to other MLAs to clear the way for her to win a seat via by-election. 

And she was at risk of losing that by-election, looming in just a few days.

So on September 20, Kerry-Lynne Findlay resigned as leader after just four months.

On September 21, Lorne Doerkson—a “guy from Williams Lake” who was not even on the continent—became interim party leader. 

On September 22, Premier David Eby followed through with a rumoured snap election call. 

On October 24, Doerkson was elected as BC’s next premier with a commanding majority. 

In five weeks, his party has gained 39 seats, pending final counts in close ridings. 

How did that happen?

The spectacular blunder

That there was an election at all may have sealed its outcome, as Doug Firby writes.

Eby held a bare majority. But it was insulated by the once-formal, now-contingent support of the Greens and by the Conservative schisms that had splintered MLAs off into the far-right OneBC, the centre-right CentreBC, and independent seats. 

Rather than play out the remaining two years of his mandate, Eby leapt on the fractured opposition. It was the move he had failed to make in late 2023 and early 2024 as the luckily named fringe party of BC Conservatives began to rise from obscurity in Pierre Poilievre’s wake.

But the fall timing riled municipal politicians in the throes of their own local elections and a public that never bought Eby’s straight-faced but half-assed justification (the new Trump tariffs). 

Firby calls this “cynical opportunism” but also a “very high-risk undertaking” given that the Conservatives’ situation is “highly fluid” and they had just shed the leader whose own MLA had said constituents found her “unelectable.” 

Had Eby held off a few days, he would have seen how quickly the defectors to CentreBC returned to the fold. A sort of Reunited Conservative Party emerged that reintroduced itself as more pro-business than anti-woke, in the vein of the long-time ruling BC Liberals (which briefly rebranded as BC United before folding to the ascendant Conservatives in 2024).

And had Eby held off a few weeks, he would have seen the broad anti-incumbent wave that later rolled across the municipal elections. 

The great unknown

In that context, it was an asset that Doerkson was an unknown quantity.

A fresh face can be a usefully blank slate when, as Michelle Cyca writes, “in Canadian politics, everyone tends to vote against the person or party they dislike rather than a candidate or platform they do.”

Eby meanwhile faced “the penalty of being a known quantity—one that enrages opponents and frustrates even loyal supporters.” He had alienated many NDP voters by abandoning or flip-flopping on formerly key party positions on the toxic drug crisis, the environment, and Indigenous rights.  

Many defected to the Greens and their young, social-media-savvy, vocally anti-oligarch new leader Emily Lowan. 

But even more simply stayed home. With a record-low turnout, the voters who decided the 2026 race were the ones who didn’t vote in it.

By the numbers

48%
Eligible voter participation in 2026, down from 58% in 2024

-273,768
NDP vote drop*, from 944,579 in 2024 to 670,811

-48,465
Conservative vote drop*, from 911,153 to 862,688

+23,519
Green vote gain*, from 173,377 to 196,896

_{*The mail-in ballots—likely about 60,000 votes—haven’t yet been counted}

The not-so-great unknown

But the thing about an unknown candidate is, well, that you don’t know much about them. 

When the leader of BC United stepped down in 2024, his riding went to formerly fringe Conservative candidate Dallas Brodie. She later crusaded against Indigenous peoples, split from the party to form OneBC, and used public money to make a denialist “documentary” on residential schools. 

Brodie came a dismal fifth place this month. But there could be any number of future rogue MLAs lurking among the Conservates’ projected 63 seats. 

The party also still needs to adjust its constitution to let Doerkson stay as full-time leader. In the campaign, he was accused of being a seat-warmer or Trojan horse for more extreme options, such as Aaron Gunn.

Doerkson looks likely to stay; ResearchCo polling showed that about half of his party’s voters would not have voted for his predecessors. 

But his first days as premier-designate have brought the first of many challenges to prove what he is and isn’t. His first test: to prove he isn’t ushering in the far-right. Amid stating his upcoming government’s priorities, Doerkson had to distance himself from election congratulations from Donald Trump—still likely the world’s single least-popular person among BC residents. And he had to disavow an apparently emboldened white supremacist group that gathered outside the legislature building on Sunday morning to display a sign calling for ethnic cleansing of immigrants. 

Doerkson spent the past month distancing himself from far-right associations in the party, dropping candidates over past comments on Hitler, and running over protesters—but defending his campaign director over an anti-Muslim post from this summer. 

He may spend the next four doing the same. His predecessors couldn’t wrangle the warring factions in their party while in opposition. This former rodeo rider will have to manage it while trying to run a government. 

And he’ll have to contend with divides between his base and the general public that have begun to sap the support of some of the country’s most prominent conservative party leaders.