The outcome of British Columbia’s election will be determined by the counting of mail-in ballots today, after counting of mail-in votes over the weekend failed to resolve a handful of undecided races.

There was no change in party standings after counting absentee and assisted telephone ballots on Sunday, as well as a recount in downtown Surrey and a partial recount in central Kelowna.

Both manual recounts resulted in the margins narrowing by just a few votes.

Prospects for an NDP government grew Saturday after the party widened its lead in some tight races and narrowed the margins of the British Columbia Conservatives in others, thanks to mail-in voting.

The province’s closest undecided riding was Surrey-Guildford, where the NDP cut the BC Conservatives’ lead to 12 votes.

With about 226 absentee and special votes still to be counted, Surrey-Guildford could provide David Eby’s New Democrats with the narrowest majority if the lead there changes on Monday.

Eby released a statement on social media on Sunday saying Elections BC was ensuring all votes in the election were counted.

The agency is an independent, non-partisan office of the Legislative Assembly that administers elections and by-elections in British Columbia.

“We knew the election was going to be close, but we’ve been here before,” Eby said on social media platform X.

“British Columbians support our fair election process and the people at Elections BC are making sure every vote is counted. Thank you to the candidates, volunteers and election workers who make democracy work.

Elections BC said counting of more than 22,000 absentee and special votes would begin at 9 a.m. Monday, with results then updated on its website every hour “as the count progresses.” .

The NDP is elected or in the lead with 46 seats and John Rustad’s Conservatives with 45 seats, both short of a 47-seat majority, while the Greens could hold the balance of power with two seats.

A full recount began Sunday afternoon in two ridings where the New Democrats held a slight lead after the initial tally of the still-undecided Oct. 19 vote.

Elections BC said the recount in downtown Surrey was completed Sunday evening, narrowing the NDP’s lead to 175 votes from 178 votes.

The result of the recount in Juan de Fuca-Malahat, where the NDP leads by 106 votes, will be announced Monday.

The recounts were triggered because the margins of victory after the initial count were less than 100 votes. But the counting of mail-in ballots on Saturday significantly widened the NDP’s lead in both ridings.

Although the makeup of the 93 legislative districts could finally become clear on Monday, judicial recounts could still take place afterward if the margin in a district is less than 1/500th of all votes cast.

For example, in the tightest Surrey-Guildford race, where the total votes cast are estimated at 19,306, the margin required for a judicial recount is approximately 38 votes or less.

In another tight race that will be decided by mail-in votes, the Conservatives held a 68-vote lead in Kelowna Centre, where about 228 votes remain to be counted. A partial recount of ballots passed through a private tabulator in Kelowna Center allowed the NDP to narrow the gap by four votes on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Chief Clarence Louie, tribal chairman of the Syilx Okanagan Nation, released a statement on Sunday calling for the removal of BC Conservative candidate Juan de Fuca-Malahat from the party due to comments about Indigenous people.

On Friday, the Vancouver Sun published a recording in which a person identified as Marina Sapozhnikov refers to First Nations people as “savages.” The newspaper says the comments were made during an election night conversation with a journalism student.

Louie called the reported comments “abhorrent and racist.”

“These ignorant and hateful comments, which constitute a form of hate speech, have no place in our society. We are calling on British Columbia Conservative Leader John Rustad to immediately take a clear and strong stand against hatred and racism by removing her from his political party,” Louie said.

Rustad issued a statement saying he was “dismayed and deeply saddened” by the comments and that the party “takes this matter seriously”.

Michael J. Prince, a political scientist at the University of Victoria, said his prediction that mail-in ballots would tend to favor the NDP was coming true.

“It seems like what we’re seeing is that they’re sort of either expanding their narrow victories or crawling toward some tantalizing possibilities of flipping a seat or two,” he said Sunday afternoon.

The result should be known Monday evening, said Prince, the Lansdowne professor of social policy at the University of Victoria.

“But there might even be one or two more judicial recounts that could continue to prolong the drama for another day or two.”

He said the deflation the NDP must have felt following the election night results may be easing somewhat thanks to the modest “return in the direction of momentum” seen so far in the recounts.

“I think it’s looking increasingly likely that they will try to form a government with probably the support of the Greens, whether it’s a formal supply deal or whether it’s on a case-by-case basis.” , Prince said. “I think the prime minister needs to feel a little more comfortable.”

He said the Juan de Fuca-Malahat vote could have been very different if comments attributed by the Vancouver Sun to Conservative candidate Marina Sapozhnikov on election night about First Nations people had been made earlier.

Prince said the comments were “blatant in terms of bias and racism.”

— With files from Ashley Joannou, PC, in Vancouver and Jeff Bell, Times Colonist