Swing map:
Obvious trends are obvious. Vancouver proper and more White or Chinese areas in the lower mainland swung to the NDP. More ethnic (read: South Asian) areas in the Lower mainland swung Liberal. Outside the Lower mainland, nearly everything swung Liberal.
While the interior generally seems have swung in favour of the Liberals, it seems the Cariboo ridings were the most heavy. Not just Cariboo North where you had Bob Simpson running as an independent but also Cariboo-Chilcoltin. My guess is those areas are fairly right wing to begin with (consider how heavily they vote Conservative federally) and they only went NDP in 2005 due to being hard hit by cuts like school and hospital closures. With Campbell gone and those behind, they swung back to their previous voting patterns.
Its true that the ridings with large South Asian population swung heavily towards the Liberals mind you in ridings like Surrey-Green Timbers and Surrey-Newton the NDP was at close to 70% and Liberals only around 25% so its not as though the NDP really had much room to grow to begin with. My guess is ground organization and Christy Clark's former federal Liberal ties played a role. While most voters could care less about her federal affiliation, her former ties there probably gave her closer contacts with many key organizers in that community than what Campbell had. People like Sukh Dhaliwal and Prem Vinning are both federal Liberals who are close to Christy Clark. Also back in 2004, one Indo-Canadian men was sent home from the hospital due to lack of beds and died choking on his blood. This was a huge scandal in the Indo-Canadian community and really hurt Campbell amongst them. Also with Delta North and Surrey-Fleetwood being more competitive, there is no question in my mind the gains amongst South Asians gave the Liberals enough votes to go over the top here.
A final question sort of on a different one is anybody have any idea why Prince George has swung so heavily towards the Liberals over the past 15 years. It went NDP in the 90s and even in the 80s was quite competitive whereas in the past two elections the Liberals won by landslides here. In fact I figure if the BC Liberals only won 25 seats like some polls suggested they still would have held both Prince George ridings. The only one I can think of is decline of forestry and rise of mining as I believe the NDP has tended to do well amongst those in the forestry industry whereas the BC Liberals tend to do well amongst those in the mining industry. Any other thoughts.
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