Joan Isaacs has been elected in the riding of Coquitlam-Burke Mountain.
The BC Liberals won Coquitlam-Burke Mountain in 2013 by a wide margin of 2,450 votes. But the seat was then won by the NDP in a by-election after the incumbent BC Liberal MLA Douglas Horne resigned in 2015 to run (unsuccessfully) in the federal election as a Conservative candidate.
Returning for another kick at the can, Isaacs, who ran for the BC Liberals in the 2016 Coquitlam-Burke Mountain by-election, has over three decades of experience in the financial services industry. She has a long history of community involvement in the Tri-Cities, focusing on housing and homelessness, mental health, youth and families, and restorative justice.
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While the NDP won by 700 votes, the voter turnout was incredibly low at 21.5 per cent with the Burke Mountain part of the riding, which carries the BC Liberals main area of overwhelming strength, stayed home. This riding will be very hard for the NDP to hold onto since by-elections are almost never won by a sitting government, and usually revert to their traditional results in a general election.
In 2013: Douglas Horne handily won reelection by a margin of 49.9 per cent to 37.4 per cent for the NDP.
In 2009: Horne defeated NDP candidate Heather McRitchie by over 3,000 votes in this new riding, 57-35 per cent.
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