List of British Columbia general elections

Contemporary elections in British Columbia use a relatively unique system of handling absentee ballots.^[10] While all jurisdictions in Canada allow for absentee voting through advance communication with the appropriate federal or provincial election agency, British Columbia is unique in allowing same-day absentee voting at any polling station in the province; ballots so cast are not counted locally on election night, however, but are sent to the voter's home riding and counted two weeks after election day.^[10] One important effect of this is that a particularly close race, such as the nine-vote margin that initially separated the main candidates in Courtenay-Comox in the 2017 election, may not have a winner officially declared until the absentee ballots have been counted at the later date;^[10] as well, because the absentee vote tends to favour the New Democratic Party rather than the Liberal Party,^[11] a district narrowly won by the Liberals has a higher chance of being flipped by absentee voters than a narrow NDP win does.^[11]

The system exists both to serve commuters in the Greater Vancouver Area, where requiring people to vote at home frequently forced suburban districts to cope with sudden crowds of late voters at the end of the day, pushing past poll closing time and delaying the counting of the results in those areas, and because the province has a much higher than normal proportion of people who work away from home for long periods in remote natural resources sites.^[11]

Prior the 1903 election, political parties in British Columbia were not officially recognized in provincial elections. During this period, some candidates declared their support for the administration as "Government" candidates, while those not in support ran as "Non-Government" or Independent candidates. However, these pre-election alignments often did not persist once the House was seated as allegiances would frequently shift.^[8]

While there were no official party lines, there were unofficial yet unstable ones. Premiers Amor De Cosmos and Joseph Martin both sat, at various times, in the federal House of Commons as Liberals, while Premier Edward Gawler Prior sat in the House of Commons as a Conservative. There was also a clear grouping of members who would often sit in opposition to, or in the cabinet of, certain other premiers. De Cosmos and his unofficial Liberals mutually supported each other (i.e. were in each other's cabinets). These premiers included McCreight, Walkem, Bevean, Semlin, and Martin. Meanwhile, Premiers Prior, Dunsmuir, Turner, A.E.B. Davie, Robson, Theodore Davie, Smithe, and Elliot sat in each other's cabinets or otherwise supported one another; while premiers from one group often sat in opposition to premiers from the other.

"Other" encompasses Independent seats and parties that never won more than one seat in an election.

• List of premiers of British Columbia
• List of political parties in British Columbia
• List of British Columbia by-elections
• Timeline of Canadian elections

• "Electoral History of BC". Elections BC. Office of the Legislature of British Columbia. Retrieved 2015-08-29.
• "Electoral History of British Columbia 1871–1986" (pdf). Elections British Columbia. Victoria: Queen's Printer for British Columbia. 1988. Retrieved 2015-08-29.
• "Electoral History of British Columbia Supplement, 1987–2001" (pdf). Legislative Library, British Columbia. Victoria: Queen's Printer for British Columbia. 2002. Retrieved 2015-08-29.
• "Electoral History of British Columbia Supplement 2002–2013" (pdf). Elections BC and the Legislative Library of British Columbia. Victoria, B.C.: Elections BC and the Legislative Library of British Columbia. 2014. Retrieved 2015-08-29.