Conservative candidates running in the three Prince George-area provincial electoral districts in last fall’s provincial election either exceeded or maintained their vote share in rural areas while NDP candidates saw their support drop outside of the city according to data released last month.
On April 17, Elections BC released a complete breakdown of votes cast at each polling station in British Columbia.
For this story, the Citizen took the voting data for each polling station in the three Prince George-area ridings — Prince George-Mackenzie, Prince George-North Cariboo and Prince George-Valemount — and divided them based on whether they were located inside or outside of the City of Prince George.
However, there are some limitations to this approach. We don’t know where people who voted out of their own electoral districts, by telephone, special ballot, mail or at a district electoral office live, so they have been excluded from the analysis.
It’s also possible that voters who went to polling places on the edge of the city’s limits live in the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George.
In Prince George-Mackenzie, voters at Prince George polling stations cast 9546 votes for Conservative winner Kiel Giddens, 4,405 votes for NDP candidate Shar McCrory, 1,298 votes for Green candidate James Steidle and 286 votes for Rachael Weber.
With 15,535 votes cast at Prince George polling stations, the vote share breaks down to around 61.4 per cent for the Tories, 28.4 per cent for the NDP, 8.4 per cent for the Greens and 1.8 per cent for Weber.
At polling stations in the rest of Prince George-Mackenzie, voters cast 805 ballots for Giddens, 130 for Steidle, 125 for Weber and 95 for McCrory.
With 1,155 votes, that translates to a roughly 69.7 per cent vote share for the Tories, 11.3 per cent for the Greens, 10.8 per cent for Weber and 8.2 per cent for the NDP.
That shows that Giddens maintained his strong performance both in and outside of Prince George, but the NDP’s support was proportionally smaller outside of the city.
In Prince George-North Cariboo, voters at Prince George polling stations cast 3,512 votes for Conservative winner Sheldon Clare, 1,381 votes for NDP candidate Denice Bardua, 760 votes for independent incumbent Coralee Oakes and 300 votes for Green candidate Randy Thompson.
With 5,953 votes cast at Prince George polling stations, that leads to a roughly 59 per cent vote share for the Tories, 23.2 per cent for the NDP, 12.8 per cent for Oakes and 5 per cent for the Greens.
Outside of Prince George, voters in this riding cast 5,418 votes for Clare, 2,029 for Oakes, 1,370 for Bardua and 371 for Thompson for a total of 9,188 votes.
That represents a roughly 59 per cent vote share for the Tories, 22 per cent for Oakes, 14.9 per cent for the NDP and 4 per cent for the Greens.
Clare’s vote total was almost identical inside and outside of Prince George, while the NDP once again saw lower support outside of the city.
In Prince George-Valemount, those casting ballots in Prince George gave Conservative winner Rosalyn Bird 7,214 votes, NDP candidate Clay Pountney 4,627 votes and Green candidate Gwen Johansson 1,236 votes for a total of 13,077 total votes cast.
That represents a roughly 55.2 per cent vote share for the Tories, 35.4 per cent for the NDP and 9.5 per cent for the Greens.
In polling places outside of Prince George, votes cast 570 ballots for Bird, 296 for Pountney and 148 for Johansson for a total of 987 votes.
That leads to a vote share of around 57.8 for the Tories, 27.3 per cent for the NDP and 15 per cent for the Greens.
Bird saw a slight boost in vote share outside of Prince George while the Greens’ vote share rose at the expense of the NDP.
In the three ridings, the Tories’ vote share either stayed pay or rose, the NDP saw their support drop outside of Prince George and the Greens saw their support increase in two ridings and drop in another.
Across all Prince George polling places in the three ridings, the Tories earned around 58.6 per cent of the votes cast, the NDP got 30.1 per cent, the Greens got 8.2 per cent and independent candidates got three per cent.
If you combine the vote share for all polling places within the three Prince George ridings but outside of the city, the Tories got around 60 per cent of the vote, independent candidates got around 19 per cent, NDP candidates got 15.3 per cent and Green candidates 5.7 per cent.
The Citizen will return with a similar breakdown when Elections Canada releases poll-by-poll results for the 2025 federal election.
