Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter.

The scariest month of the year is over, and it had nothing to do with Halloween. BCers came out on the other side of two elections in October, as municipal contests were held a week before a province-wide vote, creating both ample confusion and many interesting combinations of signs on peoples’ lawns.

Across the province, David Eby’s name was dragged through the mud as the premier’s decision to call a snap election backfired like a faulty bottle rocket. That led to the BC Conservatives and premier-designate Lorne Doerkson winning a large majority in the legislature.

In Vancouver, Ken Sim’s ABC Vancouver party was defeated by a left-leaning council and Green Party of Vancouver mayoral candidate Pete Fry. That creates an interesting left-right dynamic in the municipal and provincial levers of government. (The same can’t be said in Surrey, where a zombie dressed as Doug McCallum marched into power.)

Below, we dig into how every major party in both Vancouver and B.C. performed, and separate them into tiers.

And, in some cases, tears.

The Things Couldn’t Be Better Tier

As noted above, the BC Conservative Party swept to power rather dramatically. That meant some gains across virtually every region of the province, including in Vancouver, where the party improved its seat count from one in the 2024 election to four.

In the municipal election, the Green Party of Vancouver and COPE were the big winners. Both parties elected every single candidate they ran across city council, park board, and school board.

It does beg the question of how Vancouver Mayor Fry and B.C. Premier Doerkson can and will work together. Fry has talked about being a pragmatic, easy-to-work-with guy. But clearly the Conservatives and COPE—with popular councillor and deputy mayor Sean Orr, who is close to Fry—don’t have a ton in common ideologically.

What might happen with B.C.’s SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) plan? Doerkson unveiled plans to repeal the program, which he called a “lightning rod”. We can’t see the left-leaning Vancouver School Board signing off on that without a fight.

There could be similar arguments around the Conservatives’ wishes to repeal the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), and its arguments in favour of involuntary care for some of the province’s most vulnerable people. Vancouverites also voted on that last point in the plebiscite, which was added to the ballot by ABC. Fry already dismissed the plebiscite results before they were revealed, but it’s unclear whether Doerkson will agree with him.

Interesting times ahead.

The Keeping Steady Tier

On the provincial level, it could be argued that the BC Green Party didn’t just hold steady. It will come back into the legislature with the same amount of seats (two), but Emily Lowan’s party did increase its share of the vote from 8.2 percent to nearly 11 percent. Still, Lowan’s election night speech, which featured confetti, was a little much.

OneCity Vancouver entered this municipal campaign hoping to be the main opposition to ABC. On council, the party returned incumbent Lucy Maloney, but it didn’t get any of its other candidates elected, mostly because COPE and the Greens seemingly became the anti-Ken Sim vote. Some residents might have bristled at OneCity’s more developer-friendly approach compared to the Greens and COPE. The party did also elect three school board trustees, but that only happened because the Greens ran just two candidates there.

The Down But Not Out Tier

After what will go down as the biggest political own goal in Canadian politics maybe ever, the BC NDP can only go up. Former leader and health minister Adrian Dix compared the election to 2001, when the party was almost completely wiped out, save for two seats in East Van. This wasn’t as bad as that, but it will take some time (and a new leader).

The only thing saving ABC Vancouver from complete disintegration is Councillor Mike Klassen. One wonders if the party would have folded completely (it might still) if he didn’t sneak into City Hall. For now, the incoming councillors and Klassen have said the right things: they will work with him openly and amicably (a privilege ABC hardly afforded the opposition) and he will continue to work hard for Vancouverites. In an encouraging move, Fry has said that he will appoint Klassen to the Metro Vancouver board.

Councillor Rebecca Bligh came fifth in the mayoral race with the party she created, Vote Vancouver. None of her councillor candidates came at all close. But Bligh garnered a lot of support and respect during her run as a councillor, which saw her leave ABC after the party voted to stop approving net-new supportive housing projects.

In a nod to her expertise, Fry named her the head of his transition team. She’ll land on her feet, whether she continues with Vote Vancouver or not.

The Goodnight and Good Luck Tier

With apologies to the Beatles, “Elenore Sturko/Thought she could run with a party called CentreBC/Nobody believed.

The leader of OneBC, Dallas Brodie, was also thrown out of the legislature with just over 800 votes in her riding of Vancouver-Quilchena. We don’t know if that’s a record low for an incumbent, but it sure feels that way.

Kareem Allam and the Vancouver Liberals had a lot of interesting ideas and proposals, including providing more frontline workers, initiating a luxury yacht tax, and helping speed up home construction. But in an election that was about being Ken Sim or being against him, his former chief of staff couldn’t convincingly pull either position off.

Lastly, we have Colleen Hardwick, who came in a distant third place in the mayoral race with TEAM for a Livable Vancouver. There are about 18,000 people in the city who are committed to voting for her and TEAM, which wants to slow the pace of building. They call that listening to neighbourhoods. Their opponents call it being a NIMBY. As for TEAM’s political future, the call might be coming from inside the house.