Was Eby’s snap election call a bad bet for the B.C. NDP?
Published 4:21 pm Tuesday, September 29, 2026
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A week into the provincial election campaign and the race is about as tight as it gets.
This was not the plan.
Experts now warn that NDP leader David Eby’s snap election call could backfire as his justification for going to the polls has so far rung hollow and a new Conservative leader has deftly shifted the narrative away from internal party chaos.
University of British Columbia political science lecturer Stewart Prest called it a “potentially significant miscalculation.”
Jordan Bateman of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of B.C., an organization with deep ties to right-wing politics in the province, said the week since “couldn’t have gone any better from the Conservatives’ point of view.”
Timothy van den Brink, a former lecturer on Canadian politics at Simon Fraser University who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Moncton, says most voters will see through Eby’s efforts to convince them the election is needed to provide a mandate to face down U.S. tariffs.
Even Geoff Meggs, who served as chief of staff to former premier John Horgan, acknowledged Eby was shaky out of the gate — though he expressed more optimism that the NDP leader can shrug it off and successfully show the party is stronger on the issues most important to British Columbians.
During the weeks leading up to the Sept. 22 election call, the B.C. Conservative Party devolved into chaos as members of the legislature fled the Tory caucus during the waning days of Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s tumultuous tenure as leader.
Rumours swirled that Eby planned to take advantage by calling a snap election. He even confirmed that he’d hired a campaign manager.
Then Findlay quit and mild-mannered Lorne Doerkson took over the reins. But Eby went ahead with what was clearly a pre-ordained plan anyway, calling the election two days later.
To get a sense of how the campaign is shaping up after the first week, Today in BC spoke with experts on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as some neutral observers.
Polls out of the gate show the NDP suddenly faces an uphill battle.
The impact was clear in the first week of campaigning as Eby struggled to find a groove, while Doerkson easily hit talking points. The two sides’ messages are now evolving, as the NDP looks to pivot to affordability and the Conservatives focus on lower taxes and economic growth.
But this is not the race the NDP were facing when they planned this election call — it is no longer a contrast between Conservative chaos and NDP level-headedness.
Snap election call in hindsight
Prest compares Eby’s decision to call the election to the eve of World War One. In 1914, there was a moment when it seemed like a deal was possible to avert a conflict, but the Russians and Germans already had trains full of troops in motion and couldn’t pull them back without sacrificing strategic advantage.
“It had that kind of feeling, like the NDP was already committed to this plan and it was too late to change course,” Prest said.
As Horgan’s chief of staff in 2020 when he called a snap election, Meggs is intimately familiar with this sort of decision-making. But he says that train can be halted right up to the writ drop.
“It’s all possible to turn the machinery off until you’ve actually gone to see the lieutenant-governor,” he said.
Meggs reckons Eby’s decision not to turn back shows his calculations were based on more factors than just Findlay’s floundering. He also says voters have probably moved on.
“As days have worn on, the frustration over a snap election call has faded, in my view,” he said.
Meggs says the race might now hinge on whether the public is sympathetic to Eby’s claim that he needs a new, more decisive legislative mandate.
But Van den Brink doesn’t think the public will believe that Trump is the reason this is needed, pointing out that Trump was already a focus during the last B.C. election — the U.S. presidential election happened only two weeks later, and Trump almost immediately began threatening tariffs.
He contrasted this with Justin Trudeau’s 2021 election, called less than two years after the previous federal vote. There was a valid argument of unforeseen circumstances in this case: Nobody could have predicted the Pandemic in 2019, and Trudeau sold the election as a way for the public to weigh in on the government’s response.
But even so, Trudeau’s snap election failed to deliver him a majority government, leaving him with roughly the same number of seats.
“It still wasn’t very popular,” Van den Brink said. “I don’t think voters feel the need to sign off on every single decision the government makes.”
Bateman suggested Eby is looking for a scapegoat in Trump. He asks why the NDP needs a new mandate when the party had two more years in power.
“Trump did not cause the election, Dave Eby caused the election,” he said.
A shifting political landscape
Bateman is part of a group of B.C. business leaders and politicos who, while Findlay was still at the helm of the Conservative Party, were trying to find a path to building a third free enterprise coalition party.
This group met after several MLAs defected from the Tories in August in what is now famously known as the “Triple O Summit” at a White Spot in Vancouver.
Since Doerkson took over for Findlay, some of the people involved in this coalition-building are being tapped as candidates.
“It’s very clear that the majority of the coalition that elected free enterprise governments for most of B.C.’s history has come back together under the Conservative banner,” Bateman said.
Meanwhile, Bateman says Doerkson has “exceeded every expectation” for a new leader.
“He’s precisely the kind of person we need,” he said.
The difficulty now will be for Doerkson to hold the coalition together.
Part of the NDP’s campaign strategy is to question whether Doerkson — technically only interim leader — can remain in control of the party after an election.
Van den Brink questions whether anyone can hold together what has so far been called an “untenable coalition” that has had four leaders in two years. The only time there has been any stability for the B.C. Conservative Party is when an interim leader is in place, and the various factions still believe they have a shot at winning a leadership race.
He wants to know how Doerkson plans to overcome this.
“Are they going to try to find someone that actually bridges the factions in the party, or is the party going to pick one of those factions?” Van den Brink asks.
And Meggs points out that Doerkson stood by Findlay to the end of her tenure, arguing that he is much the same on policy, despite being more willing to distance himself from Trump and emphasize the importance of positive relationships with First Nations.
“By and large, he’s a Kerry-Lynne Findlay supporter,” Meggs said. “He just doesn’t seem crazy.”