If Delta students were to decide, Delta South provincial election candidate Ian Paton would have won the riding.
That’s according to the results of the 2024 Student Vote, that saw nearly 180,000 elementary, middle and secondary students in B.C. participate in their own vote coinciding with the election.
Student Vote is a program of CIVIX, a non-partisan registered Canadian charity dedicated to strengthening democracy through civic education. CIVIX programming focuses on elections, government budgets, elected representatives and digital media literacy.
After learning about government and democracy, researching the parties and platforms, and discussing the future of the province, students cast ballots for the official candidates running in their school’s electoral district.
Results are tabulated and released publicly following the end of voting on final voting day and include the seat count and popular vote for each party, results by electoral district and individual school tallies.
According to the Student Vote results, the BC NDP took 36.7 per cent of the popular vote in the province and won 44 seats, forming a minority government. David Eby won his seat.
Meanwhile, the BC Conservative Party would form the official opposition with 40 seats and 36.2 per cent of the popular vote. John Rustad won his seat.
As far as the BC Green Party, it received 19.2 per cent of the popular vote and won nine seats. Sonia Furstenau won her seat.
As far as Delta South, 15 schools participated and almost all reported by Saturday night with just over 2,600 votes tallied. Paton with the BC Conservatives came out on top with just under 52 per cent of the vote. NDP Candidate Jason McCormick was second with just over 48 per cent of the vote.
In Delta North, the NDP’s Ravi Kahlon came out on top with just under 44 per cent of the vote, well ahead of Raj Veauli with the Conservatives (29.5 per cent), Nick Dickinson-Wilde for the Green Party (just under 20 per cent) and Manqoosh Khan with the Freedom Party of BC (7.4 per cent).
The Student Vote exercise saw students also take on the roles of election officials and coordinated the voting process for their peers.
Student Vote BC 2024 was in collaboration with Elections BC and supported by the Government of Canada.
