The 7 Ridings To Watch in British Columbia
April 28, 2025
The last part of the series is on the Pacific coast of British Columbia, with about 20 competitive ridings; only 7 are ones I think should be significant enough to keep an eye on. BC is known for being a political mess between the three parties, with good Liberal vote efficiency allowing them to do well here in seat count despite sometimes lacking pretty heavily in the vote share overall, thanks to big, heavy margins for the CPC in the interior. The Liberals made a significant recovery here in the polls after being in third place for a while, shooting to first a couple of weeks ago, and now are back down, neck and neck with the Conservatives, with an interesting realignment happening in a lot of seat-rich Metro Vancouver.
The List
Abbotsford-South Langley
Nanaimo-Ladysmith
Port Moody-Coquitlam
Saanich-Gulf Islands
Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke
Richmond Centre-Marpole
Surrey Centre
Abbotsford-South Langley
Starting in the edges of Metro Vancouver, Abbotsford-South Langley is not one you’d expect to be on the list, looking at the last election. This seat had an almost 20-point margin for the Conservatives last time, but it’s fallen victim to Conservative internal drama. This seat was previously held by Ed Fast, who was locally liked but isn’t seeking re-election now. Sukhman Gill is the Conservative candidate here, he won the nomination after the party rejected Mike de Jong’s application, who has caused a lot of local uproar. De Jong has a long history here, serving as an MLA for 3 decades in Abbotsford. Mike de Jong has been posting riding polls that have him competitive, although it doesn’t help in the model as riding polls aren’t inputted.
The riding polls don’t align with the model, but de Jong seems to be in contention to win this seat. With the vote split, even the Liberals have a chance at picking up this seat in a vote split. It’s an interesting race to see if independents with this much notoriety can win their races after a string of upset independent losses in BC and Ontario.
Nanaimo-Ladysmith
On the island, Nanaimo-Ladysmith has been a close three-way race in the last three elections, and this one could even turn out to be a rare non-Quebec four-way race. NDP held in 2015 and 2021, with a Green win in 2019. Paul Manly is trying again to try and nab this seat off a falling NDP. Similar to Trois-Rivieres in the Québec list, you can see here. This riding has also been competitive this entire term among at least two parties, never being solid enough for it to be a safe call, even when the Conservatives were achieving opposition-slamming results. The Conservatives have consistently done well here despite not holding this seat for decades, but it seems that, with a three-way split on the left, this is their chance. Conservatives are currently projected to win with Tamara Kronis, over now councillor and former MP Paul Manly of the Greens, over Lisa Marie Barron current NDP MP, over Michelle Corfield an indigenous leader for the Liberals.
Port Moody-Coquitlam
This riding has flip-flopped between Conservative and NDP since 2004, never electing a Liberal in that time, although this election could make history with star candidate Zoe Royer, a former popular councillor in Port Moody who is now serving as a school board trustee. She’s running against Paul Lambert of the CPC, who is a business consultant. And finally, a victim of collapsing polling numbers, incumbent Bonita Zarrillo, a former councillor in Coquitlam, is trying to hold this seat after losing it in 2019. When the blue wave in the west went back out to sea in 2021, she picked this seat up. The NDP is projected to lose half its support in Metro Vancouver overall, along with over half of its 2021 supporters, so this riding will be a tough fight for them. It’s gotten so bad in the NDP camp, there’s been a growing list of NDP won ridings that are considered to be lost causes, among these are North Island-Powell River (NDP+3 → CPC+18), Similkameen-South Okanagan-West Kootenay (NDP+1 → CPC+28), or Kapuskasing-Timmins-Mushkegowuk (NDP+10 → NDP-17). Port Moody-Coquitlam could be close to joining this list if there’s not an unforeseen local swing happening here that the model hasn’t picked up on.
Saanich-Gulf Islands
The next riding on the island is Elizabeth May's on the Saanich Peninsula. She's been slowly going down in support since she first won here in 2011 with this election being her first serious risk of losing re-election.
But the Greens did manage to beat the odds here provincially in the riding of Saanich North and the Islands, which overlaps a lot with this federal one. She sank very heavily in 2021, losing her notoriety as the party's leader at a time when the party as a whole was doing very poorly. This election is no different, with the party continuing to struggle trying to claw back its lost support. At the start of the campaign May was seen crossing across Canada for events, but in the last 2 weeks she’s been solidly locked in this riding playing serious defense, not good for someone who’s won with such large margins before, while being party leader, trying to defend their turf, which is their only real sense of relevancy in the House of Commons these days. She’s still the favourite in this seat but it’s going to be difficult with a projected 4 point margin, solidly in within the margin of error. Her most serious opponent is Cathie Ounsted of the Conservatives, who’s been involved in a wide range of careers from being a councillor to being on an airport authority board. Also in the running is the Liberals with David Beckham, who has a career in environmental innovation and farming. While low in the model, Colin Plant of the NDP could also put up a serious fight here as a popular councillor in the riding. While not a serious target for the party, the NDP is well suited to overperform potentially even their 2021 result.
Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke
Staying close on the island is Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, another interesting three-way race (tangent coming soon). The Conservatives were favoured here for a long time, this term, and the NDP was only able to make a slight recovery briefly between the projected Conservative majorities and the Liberal recovery. Incumbent NDP MP Randall Garrison is not seeking re-election, and this riding could make the map weirder on an already politically diverse island if the Conservatives manage to pick this up. Tangent time. Strategic voting is a scam, and Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke is a perfect example of this. A well-known strategic voting site called VoteWell recommends you vote Liberal here based on the 338Canada model in the riding (no diss to Philippe), which is 100% bound to be inaccurate and that’s not just because my model shows something different, it’s because models aren’t going to be 100% accurate in any riding, in any province, in any level of government. It’s just so statistically improbable.
An NDP counteract site called ProgressiveVote recommends you vote NDP because in 2021, the NDP won this seat. Do you see the issue this is falling into? Elections are not identical, while ridings sometimes vote similarly across multiple elections, just like with models, it’s statistically nearly impossible to be identical across elections. Yeah, the 2021 results show the NDP have this seat, but what they’re not showing you is the fact that in the polling average, less than forty percent (!!!) of 2021 NDPers are supporting the party in this election. If you cut 62% (% of 2021 NDPers supporting another party) off the 2021 result here, you actually get the NDP in third here. See the problem with this?
Sorry for the rant, but it needed to be said. Models aren’t 100% correct, despite us trying our hardest. Strategic voting sites and modellers alike have no confirmed knowledge of what’s happening on the ground and what the result will be based on x factor vs y factor vs z factor. It just doesn’t work that way because the only time we see what actually happened is when the results come in. My model will be different from 338Canada, etc, because it’s a different average, a different set of data points, a different set of swings and all other things that go into calculating model results. I hoped to have a methodology page on my website by now, but time constraints didn’t allow it. I’ll go into a whole deep dive there post-election.
Tangent over, I promise. Now, my model shows me that the NDP is favoured to win here. They have Maja Tait, Mayor of Sooke since 2014, running in this election against Liberal Stephanie McLean, a former NDP MLA in Alberta from 2015-2019, and Conservative Grant Cool, an aerospace engineer.
Richmond East-Steveston
Richmond East-Steveston and the next one on the list will be an important litmus test of how immigrants and visible minorities vote more broadly in this election. Richmond East-Steveston has a large Chinese population, which is continuing to coalesce around the CPC after the 2021 scandals regarding Chinese election interference, which targeted this riding extremely heavily. With a general realignment in Metro Vancouver along racial lines, more widely, this riding will be a test of how the Chinese vote is swayed, and we may get a hint of that when we get results in some of Ontario’s high Chinese populated ridings, you can read about in Markham-Unionville and Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill. Zach Segal is the Conservative candidate here, a member of some local clubs and has some history working for the government on the defence file. Liberal Parm Bains is right behind him in the projection; he’s the incumbent, but without such influence from China on the local race here it could be more difficult to get voters to vote for him.
Surrey Centre
The last riding on the list is an unexpected one: Surrey Centre. The riding was CPC-24 in the last election, with the party in third and the Liberals holding it safely over the NDP. This election? That could change quite a bit. The shocking provincial result in Northern Surrey points to potentially a shift in the sands of Surrey.
The provincial riding of Surrey was my #1 least accurate in the BC election, with the projection being NDP+27, the result was CPBC+7. There’s a realignment happening along racial lines in Metro Vancouver in general, as displayed in the provincial election; whether or not it’ll be able to cause such a disturbance on the federal level is something we’ll see when the votes are in. Cardinal Research has been doing riding polls, and they’ve shown a tied race here in both polls they’ve done.
Now I don’t include riding polls in my model. However, south of the Fraser has seen a general realignment that the model wouldn’t be able to pick up on without manual swings. This riding is only in the likely category, with incumbent Randeep Sarai still in the lead with a healthy margin in a typical election, over Conservative Rajvir Dhillon. The NDP, despite coming second in the last three elections, isn’t expected to keep this streak with falling poll numbers. This riding will be interesting to look at later today after polls close, to see if such a strong provincial trend has managed to seep through to the bigger and more partisan federal level
Thanks for reading the last part of this series covering ridings nationwide to pay attention to for various reasons. There are 54 total ridings across all the lists, amounting to less than 16% of ridings nationwide, typically the rough percentage of seats I list in these articles. Thanks for supporting my work. Feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future posts.