#eby being called the 'most left' premier also doesn't mean much when the bar is so low and politics is so polarized these days

[awkward-teabag]

How I've long framed it is that BC's party's are a step to the right of where people think they would be. Liberals (now BC United) are right, NDP is centrist, and Greens are centre-left—though with them it depends on who's leader and what sort of candidates they're running.

Which, I guess, means the Conservatives are PPC and, given their candidates, they wouldn't be out of place there.

But BC has had the issue since I can remember where people here play up how "liberal" they are but they're actually centre or centre-right and simply don't want to be called conservative or Conservative. Even the NDP is pretty centre with some left-ish policies and Eby decided to move further to the centre to appeal to Liberal United voters. It's a status quo party that's between Trudeau and Singh and much closer to the former than the latter.

At least Eby is more left than Horgan was.

But like Anon, I'm hoping if the current seat predictions stay, the NDP and Greens will force each other to shift to the left. Even Weaver tended to lean more left when the Greens held balance between the NDP and Liberals, and he's the personification of "Tories on bikes", has endorsed Rustad and the Conservatives, defended them when people pointed out how they don't think climate change is a concern/real, and said the current Green party has "lost its way" (likely because it ceased being the "socially progressive, fiscally conservative" party and has actually taken steps to move to the left in general post-Weaver).

I was born here and BC has always been a province that was centrist at best (under the Liberals and SoCreds it was actually right-wing) with a rainbow sticker and a "I <3 trees" sticker to give the illusion of being left. Being above the US and beside Alberta just made it seem more progressive than it actually was/is.

Hi! Wanted to reply to the anon from Alberta, and also folks in general anxious about the BC election, with a (mostly) hopeful message.

I'm a queer POC immigrant from BC and I've never really seen it as a left stronghold. The "BC Liberals" were always actually a conservative party, and the BC NDP are in many ways more centrist than the already centrist-in-many-ways federal NDP. This might sound dire, but I like to frame it as: this election isn't revealing a loss in empathy. We've already been working at this level, and we can continue to make gains from here.

Furthermore, if the pre-recount results hold and the Greens end up holding the balance of power with their 2 seats, the coalition between the two non-conservative parties could encourage them both to lean into their more popular and progressive ideas, like the harm reduction that became a wedge issue this election. This was the sort of power dynamic I had hoped for when proportional representation was floated in BC, and it may be interesting seeing how that plays out.

Further-furthermore, no matter the electoral situation, grassroots movements continue to fight, and their wins are often underreported by the news. Even though times may toughen, people are always finding ways to look out for each other.

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