Preliminary Post-Mortem

Well, the preliminary results are mostly in at Elections BC:

STV Referendum
Needed 60% YES votes, and needed to pass (50%) in 60% or 46 of 79 electoral districts

Percentage of YES votes: 57.38%
Percentage of NO votes: 42.62%

Electoral District majority support:
Pass: 77
Fail: 2

Obviously there is a great groundswell of support out there for an alternative to our present system, but the razor-thin difference (1,614,060 votes were cast, 60% of that is 968,436, so the4 YES side failed by only 42,326 votes) will be a ready-made excuse for the government to do nothing. Let's hope there will be another chance to try again one day.

Seats, and the Green Party
There is one district (Cariboo South, NDP leading but by only 27 votes)) that is way too close to call right now, so I have calculated 44 Liberal and 34 NDP seats.

However, I went through the list and quickly added up the votes between the three major parties. With the admittedly simple-minded assumption that all Green votes went to the NDP and leaving the Liberal vote count alone (as there are no influential right-wing parties other than this one), we see that the Green vote gave the seat to no fewer than 12 Liberals:

Burnaby North, Burquitlam, Comox Valley, East Kootenay, Kamloops, Maple Ridge-Mission, North Vancouver-Lonsdale, Oak Bay-Gordon Head, Prince George-Mount Robson, Saanich North and Islands, Vancouver-Fraserview, Vancouver-Point Grey (Gordon Campbell's own riding!). Going further, votes for Independent candidates denied the NDP seat in one place: Delta South.

Add it up yourself: http://www.elections.bc.ca/elections/ge2005/results/ALL_Results%20by%20Candidate.htm

Yes, it's awfully simple-minded to say this, but if there were no Green Party the government-elect would have consisted of 31-32 Liberal and 46-47 NDP seats.

There could have been a majority NDP government.

Thanks, comrades, for standing up for your Green principles.