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Kerry-Lynne Findlay has been voted the new leader of the BC Conservative Party.
In a tight race that came down to four rounds of voting, Findlay received 4,696.51 points, or 51 per cent of the vote, to win.
Caroline Elliott came a very close second with 49 per cent of the vote.
There were five candidates for the leadership race: Iain Black, Caroline Elliott, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Yuri Fulmer and Peter Milobar.
“It is a race that has been shaped very much about articulating opposition to the direction of the NDP, but also opposition between one another,” Stewart Prest, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, said on Friday, after the vote closed.
More than 25,000 party members cast ballots in the race.
Online voting on a secret ballot started on May 23 and wrapped up on Friday morning. The ballot is a preferential or ranked ballot. Voters were asked to rank the candidates in order of their preference.
Each of B.C.’s 93 electoral districts has been allocated 100 points, or one point per ballot cast, if fewer than 100 ballots were cast in that district
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Points were distributed among contestants proportionally based on first-choice votes within each district and the province-wide total.
If no candidate got more than 50 per cent of the province-wide points on the first ballot, the candidate with the lowest number of points is eliminated.
Their supporters second choice votes are then redistributed, and this continues until a candidate exceeds 50 per cent of the province-wide points.
“This contest is really less about which leader and whose ideas, but more about what kind of conservatism is going to follow from this,” David Black, an associate professor at Royal Roads University, told Global BC earlier on Saturday.
“What does the centre-right look like in B.C. amid deep kind of philosophical currents and a lot of turbulence within the conservative movement in general?”
Under John Rustad’s leadership, the party emerged from obscurity to come within about 30,000 votes of winning the 2024 provincial election.
Infighting fractured the caucus and reduced Conservative members in the legislature by five, and eventually led to Rustad’s expulsion in December.
Speaking at the leadership vote gathering on Saturday, interim leader Trevor Halford said, “Not too long ago, our opponents were writing us off. They said there was no path forward, and they said that our party was finished.
“Well, I think we broke a few hearts tonight. I can tell you, this party is just getting started.”
Halford also thanked Rustad for his hard work and dedication to the BC Conservative Party.
“I am confident because I know that whoever we elect as our new leader tonight will be the next premier of British Columbia,” Halford added.
-with files from The Canadian Press
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
