BURSTThe B.C. Conservative leadership race is now in the home stretch.
After the passing of the final financial and membership deadlines on April 18, the party now has five candidates who have paid the last set fee of $60,000 and roughly 42,000 voting members.
The five finalists are Capilano University Chancellor Yuri Fulmer, conservative commentator Caroline Elliot, Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar, former Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay and former B.C. Liberal minister Iain Black.
Each candidate has now coughed up a total of $115,000 to the party, plus a $20,000 compliance deposit and 20 per cent of total political contributions.
The baseline membership of approximately 7,000 has increased sixfold since Dec. 25.
Conservative Party executive director Angelo Isidorou said he is “profoundly thrilled” to see the party grow into a political force.
“Now we’re the largest political party in British Columbia, and we’re powered by a very serious sort of base of members that we’ve never had before,” Isidorou said.
Black Press Media has reached out to the B.C. NDP for the governing party’s latest membership count. The party did not publish a count during the last annual meeting.
The Conservative leadership race now enters the “persuasion period” as candidates vie to convince those 42,000 members to vote for them. And second-choice votes could prove pivotal.
Each campaign will get a full membership list to work with. This, along with candidates’ weekly updates on how many supporters they have signed up, ought to provide a decent baseline of how their campaigns stack up versus the field.
Isidorou would not publicly reveal how many members each campaign has signed up, but said the race is shaping up to be competitive and there are still many unattached votes.
“Contrary to what we saw with the [federal Conservative leader] Pierre Poilievre race, where Pierre just signed up so many members that it was just over,” Isidorou said, “I think this is a super competitive race.”
With the lists finalized and provided to individual campaigns, internal polling will likely begin in earnest — and it will be far more accurate than previous iterations. Isidorou expects the campaigns to publish these polls.
“The moment they get the membership list, they’re probably going to poll it because it has so much new data for them,” he said.
Before voting begins, three debates are scheduled.
The first, to be televised on CPAC, is the Canada Strong and Free debate in Vancouver on Friday, April 24. Then the candidates will appear on Conversations that Matter with Stuart McNish on April 28, and a forum organized by the LNG advocacy group Resource Works in Kelowna on May 9.
How the voting will work
Voting begins on May 9 and ends with a convention on May 30, when the votes will be counted. New members will be required to verify their identity to confirm eligibility to vote.
With the ranked-ballot system, candidates may need a combination of earned support, clever strategy, and a bit of luck.
Here’s how it works: Each of the province’s 93 ridings is worth up to 100 points. If fewer than 100 members vote in a riding, then there are fewer than 100 valid votes from that riding. But if there are more than 100 votes from a single riding, it is still worth only 100 points. For example, if there are 1,000 voting members in a single riding, each vote is only worth one-tenth of a point.
This makes it worthwhile for candidates to campaign outside of Conservative strongholds. If there are fewer members in a riding, each vote could be worth more.
“We want to basically incentivize these campaigns to sort of go into enemy territory, if you will, to try to build a membership,” Isidorou said.
Voting members will rank candidates, with counting taking place in rounds until a single candidate receives more than half the available points.
On the first count, each candidate receives a point for each first-choice vote cast for them. If anyone gets more than 50 per cent of the provincial point total, they win. If no candidate passes this threshold, a second count is held, with the bottom candidate eliminated and their votes redistributed based on each voter’s second choice.
This continues in rounds of counting until one candidate has more than 50 per cent of the total.
This presents a scenario where the winner might be determined by whether an ideological peer is the first or second to be eliminated, conveying enough second-choice votes to the winner to get them over the hump.
There is also the possibility that a late-stage withdrawal could have a major impact if a candidate suddenly throws their support behind another.