The Hook

Stephen Harper's Conservative Party appears tonight to have made a stunning break-through with B.C.'s visible minority voters, based upon an early analysis of election returns.

In 2004, the Tories captured an even 27 per cent of the vote in the 10 B.C. ridings with the largest proportion of visible minority residents. Two years later, that figure inched upward slightly to 29.3 per cent.

Tonight, with about half of the polls counted in those same 10 electoral districts, the Tory share of the vote has soared to a whopping 41.6 per cent.

An even better indication of Tory success is provided by the election of Members of Parliament. In 2006, the Conservatives elected just two MPs in the 10 B.C. ridings with the largest visible-minority population — Nina Grewal in Fleetwood-Port Kells, and John Cummins in Delta-Richmond East.

Tonight, not only did both Grewal and Cummins considerably increase their margins of victory, but Conservative Alice Wong scored a huge win over Liberal incumbent Raymond Chan in Richmond, and Tory Dona Cadman finished ahead of her NDP opponent in Surrey North.

Moreover, at the time of writing, Conservative challenger Wai Young was in a tight contest with Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh in Vancouver South; Tory newcomer Ronald Leung trailed NDP MP Bill Siksay by a handful of votes in Burnaby-Douglas; and Conservative Sandeep Pandher was in a see-saw battle with Liberal incumbent Sukh Dhaliwal in Newton-North Delta.

Of the top 10 B.C. ridings with the largest proportion of visible-minority residents, there are seven in which Chinese have the greatest numbers, and three where South Asians are more numerous.

The seven Chinese electoral districts — Richmond, Delta-Richmond East, Vancouver East, Vancouver South, Vancouver-Kingsway, Burnaby-Douglas and Burnaby-New Westminster — tonight gave Conservative candidates an average of about 42.3 per cent of the vote. That's well ahead of the 27 per cent and 28.8 per cent recorded in 2004 and 2006, respectivley.

In the three districts with sizeable South Asian populations — Newton-North Delta, Fleetwood-Port Kells, and Surrey North — the average tonight for the Tories was about 40.1 per cent. By comparison, the figures in the last two federal general elections were 27 per cent and 29.3 per cent.

Again, the voting tallies for this evening are preliminary, as not all of the polls have been counted. Still, there is no doubt that Stephen Harper's Conservatives achieved a greater level of electoral success this evening with visible-minority voters in B.C. than in previous elections.