2003 British Virgin Islands general election

2003 British Virgin Islands general election

← 1999 16 June 2003 (2003-06-16) 2007 →
13 of the 15 seats in the House of Assembly 7 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	72%
First party Second party   Leader Orlando Smith Ralph T. O'Neal Party NDP VIP Leader since 1999 1995 Leader's seat At-large 9th District Last election 38.14%, 5 seats 36.74%, 7 seats Seats won 8 5 Seat change 3 2 Percentage 52.39% 42.22%
Chief Minister before election Ralph T. O'Neal VIP Elected Chief Minister Orlando Smith NDP

General elections were held in the British Virgin Islands on 16 June 2003. It was won by the opposition National Democratic Party (NDP), which took 54.4% of the vote and 8 of the 13 available seats on the Legislative Council. After the election the NDP formed a Government for the first time in its history. Both major parties - the NDP and the Virgin Islands Party (VIP) actually increased their share of the overall vote at the expense of minority parties and independents. No independents or any minority parties won any seats. The NDP won all four of the territorial-at-large seats.

The NDP's victory was largely as a result of sweeping all four of the At-large seats. However, with each voter being able to cast four votes per ballot, the margin between the bottom NDP candidate (Paul Wattley) and the top VIP candidate (Reeial George) was a mere 41 votes, out of a total of 7,351 ballots cast (a margin of 0.5%). The other key win for the NDP was in the Fifth District where Delores Christopher carried the seat for the NDP by a wafer thin margin of just 3 votes in a constituency where a total of 20 ballots were rejected by elections officers.

Voters exercised a largely binary choice between the two main parties. No third party candidate or independent polled well in any area. In the Territorial seats, Alred Frett in the Fifth District was the highest vote-getter, with a mere 7.1% of the votes. In the At-large seats, the top eight spots went to the four candidates for each of the two main parties, with a massive drop off in numbers of votes for the ninth place candidate (Conrad Maduro, a former elected representative on the United Party ticket).

• BVI News online