These 12 Races Are Likely to Be Nail-Biters

Is there any way of guessing how ridings will vote?

Even the best of political forecasters will be challenged by the number of unfamiliar variables in play this provincial election.

There is a new party, the BC Conservatives, challenging the incumbent, the BC NDP.

There are new leaders at the head of both parties, and they are facing their first election in the top job.

There is an unusual set of results to look back on. The last election took place during the pandemic, with record-low turnout and 31 per cent voting by mail.

And as reported in The Tyee earlier this week, 2024 marks the first time 93 ridings will be in play. Six are brand new, and 18 old ridings have had their borders updated.

Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, has been sifting the data for clues on how the 2024 election might play out.

The rejigging of ridings is officially called “redistribution.” It is a non-partisan process overseen by the independent BC Electoral Boundaries Commission and conducted every two elections. The commission consults with the public, and any proposed changes require feedback and final approval by vote in the legislature.

The criterion is population change, with the commission aiming to create ridings that contain somewhere near 54,000 voters. Experts say B.C.’s process is nothing like the “gerrymandering” in the United States, when electoral borders are politically manipulated.

That being said, redistribution raises questions about whether a party gains an advantage based on where their supporters live.

A data cruncher’s dozen

Is there anything the data can tell us?

For clues, Yan adapted the provincial election results in 2020 to the new set of ridings in 2024 to see where races would have yielded tighter results. Yan used results from mail-in ballots, advanced voting and election day.

“It’s not prediction, but analysis,” he said. “The math suggests that it’s going to be tight.”

This is different from lists of swing ridings as generated by sources like 338Canada, which take the temperature of present-day voters as aggregated from various surveys.

Instead, Yan’s analysis offers a clearer picture of how residents of rejigged ridings voted back in 2020 and then factored in how some voters are now within the lines of new or different ridings. He found 12 ridings where the 2020 race would have been the tightest according to 2024 boundaries.

Some themes among them: “We’re talking about places with population flux: suburban ridings with growth and areas in the north where there was some shrinkage.”

Without further ado, here are Yan’s dozen, starting with the tightest.

Abbotsford-Mission and Abbotsford South

There has been rapid population growth in these ridings, says Yan, with Abbotsford’s and Mission’s lower housing costs attracting younger residents from nearby Surrey and Langley. According to the boundaries commission, Mission’s growth means it could get its own riding in the future.

Abbotsford-Mission gained more of the city of Mission. Abbotsford South gained the Sumas Mountain neighbourhood.

Both ridings are historically conservative. However, Abbotsford-Mission was won by a New Democrat for the first time in 2020, with Pam Alexis defeating the BC Liberal candidate by about three per cent, 744 votes.

Vancouver-Langara

This was the riding of Michael Lee, a two-time BC Liberal/BC United MLA who made two failed attempts to win the party leadership. Lee is not running this election, which leaves it without an incumbent.

This is “Sim City,” said Yan, referring to the fact that this was a voter stronghold for Mayor Ken Sim and his right-of-centre ABC Vancouver party in the 2022 municipal election. The riding is home to many new and longtime immigrant families.

Vancouver’s swing to the right in its municipal election is a sign that the BC NDP, which has never won an election in this riding, will find it hard to pick up votes here in 2024, even without Lee defending his seat.

But Yan is curious to see how the spike of new residents in the towers of the Marine Gateway area might shift results. He notes that this is a renter-majority riding at 54 per cent, a chunk of it coming from the riding’s Marpole neighbourhood.

Vernon-Lumby

This riding was previously known as Vernon-Monashee.

In 2020, NDP candidate Harwinder Sandhu won the seat, flipping the riding after years of BC Liberal MLAs. The difference was a mere 424 votes and was too close to call on election night.

It will be a race to watch this election as Sandhu is challenged by Lumby Mayor Kevin Acton, who is running as an Independent. He was a BC United candidate until the collapse of the party.

The BC Conservatives subsequently reshuffled their candidates, parachuting their Kamloops candidate, Dennis Giesbrecht, into this riding instead.

West Vancouver-Sea to Sky

This was the riding with the tightest race back in 2020.

BC Liberal Jordan Sturdy defended his seat in a neck-and-neck battle that saw him defeating Green candidate Jeremy Valeriote by a mere 60 votes.

The seat will be home to another exciting match this election. Sturdy is not running again. Valeriote is returning to fight for the seat against two high-profile candidates: the BC NDP’s Jen Ford, former president of the Union of BC Municipalities; and the BC Conservatives’ Yuri Fulmer, an entrepreneur, philanthropist and Order of British Columbia recipient.

Yan is curious to see whether the Greens will be able to win the riding this time around or whether the competition is too steep.

“People who’ve lived longer in a place tend to be more conservative,” he said. “There are new voters here that weren’t here five years ago.”

West Vancouver-Sea to Sky was a riding with such a fast-growing population that the riding redistribution carved out some of its area and gave it to West Vancouver-Capilano.

Cowichan Valley

This is Green Party of BC Leader Sonia Furstenau’s former riding. In 2020, she defeated BC NDP candidate Rob Douglas by four per cent, 1,184 votes.

However, Furstenau is running in Victoria-Beacon Hill this election instead.

Cowichan Valley is a relatively safe seat for progressives, though the redistribution of ridings means that it has lost communities like Shawnigan Lake, Mill Bay and Cobble Hill and gained Chemainus and Crofton.

The average age in this riding is 50, much higher than the average British Columbian’s age of 42.

Fraser-Nicola

The BC Liberal/BC United incumbent Jackie Tegart, who held the seat for three terms, will not be running for office this election.

This riding has not been held by a New Democrat for over a decade, though in 2020, BC NDP candidate Aaron Sumexheltza came close to unseating Tegart, losing by only two percent, 282 votes.

Both the BC NDP and the BC Conservatives are running new candidates here; the Greens’ Jonah Timms, who came in third in 2020, is running again.

Starting this year, the Fraser-Nicola riding now includes the District of Kent and Harrison Hot Springs.

The median household income in this riding is $67,500, much lower than the average household income in the province, according to the 2021 census. It’s also an older riding, with an average age of 51.

Kamloops-North Thompson

This was the setting of another tight race in 2020. BC Liberal Peter Milobar ended up beating New Democrat Sadie Hunter by less than one per cent, 196 votes.

Milobar was one of his former party’s candidates recruited by the BC Conservatives but is instead running for the riding of Kamloops Centre.

New challengers from the three main parties will be vying for Kamloops-North Thompson. A New Democrat has not won in this riding since 1991.

Richmond Centre and Richmond-Steveston

Richmond Centre is an old BC Liberal riding that was split into two ridings in time for the 2017 election: Richmond North and Richmond South Centre.

The latter surprisingly turned orange in 2020, with New Democrat Henry Yao winning the seat by a little over one per cent, 179 votes.

But the latest riding redistributions have brought Richmond Centre back into play. Yao hopes to defend it for the BC NDP.

Similarly, Richmond-Steveston also turned orange in 2020. New Democrat Kelly Greene broke the BC Liberals’ streak, winning by 6.5 per cent, 1,335 votes.

However, politics in Richmond are tense after the city’s council asked Vancouver Coastal Health to look into the possibility of creating a supervised drug consumption site for the local hospital earlier this year. Emotional crowds protested at city hall, pushing council to reverse course.

Conservative candidates and right-leaning Independents have been running against what they’ve termed “drug dens,” which includes not only supervised consumption sites but also supportive housing. It has arguably become the big election issue in Richmond.

Richmond is known for its large population of locals with roots in East Asia, predominantly from China and Hong Kong. In China, producing, selling and possessing drugs warrants a death penalty, not to mention strong social stigma. Over two-thirds of Richmond Centre residents are immigrants.

The riding is “very suburban,” said Yan, and residents are determined to keep out elements they associate with Vancouver’s urban core.

“It’s always been a bit more right-wing, but also looking at what happened in the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown and being afraid that that’s going to happen here, without knowing the real reasons why — it’s their own social isolation from these larger issues of addiction and homelessness in the city.”

Skeena

This riding switches allegiances every few elections.

In 2020, BC Liberal Ellis Ross defeated the New Democrat by about eight per cent, 849 votes.

The three main parties are running new candidates in this riding. Ross is not running in the provincial election, vying for a seat with the federal Conservatives instead.

Surrey-White Rock

Surrey-White Rock is another former BC Liberal stronghold, though 2020 was the closest match in the riding’s history.

BC Liberal/BC United MLA Trevor Halford won by a margin of less than one per cent, 224 votes, over New Democrat Bryn Smith.

Halford has since joined the BC Conservatives and will be running again this year.

Yan suspects that the population boom in this riding will make health care and education election issues due to hospital wait times and school enrolment. Surrey schools have 361 portables, the most of any district in the province.

Both the BC NDP and the BC Conservatives have been touting more investment in public transportation in Surrey.

---

Want to get even more of The Tyee’s election coverage? Sign up today for The Run. It’s a free B.C. election newsletter full of smart voices unpacking key issues, fact-checking politicians and exposing disinformation to clarifying light. Go beyond the horse-race headlines and subscribe now.