New West residents will be represented by some familiar folks and a new face in the BC Legislature.
As a result of changes to the province’s electoral boundaries, the 2024 provincial election marked the first time that New Westminster will be represented by three MLAs in Victoria.
Preliminary results from the Oct. 19 election showed that incumbents Jennifer Whiteside and Raj Chouhan will represent New Westminster-Coquitlam and Burnaby-New Westminster respectively.
Prior to the 2024 provincial election, Whiteside had served one term as MLA for the New Westminster riding, a longtime NDP stronghold. On Saturday, she cruised to victory in her new riding (12,214 votes), with Conservative candidate Ndellie Massey getting 6,225 votes and independent Maureen Curran receiving 2,292 votes.
Chouhan, who had served five terms as an MLA for Burnaby-Edmonds prior to Saturday’s election, was re-elected. Along with Burnaby, he will now represent parts of New Westminster.
"Every campaign, I always looked at it like I was kind of the underdog, you know, like I was not taking anything for granted," Chouhan said Saturday night. "So, same thing today. I knew I worked hard; I had a wonderful team, my volunteers, my staff, they did a fantastic job. But you never know until the final result comes out."
Chouhan said he will wait until the final results come out before planning next steps. (At press time, the election results were still being tallied.)
"Once the government has formed, then we'll prioritize how to continue to address the issues people are facing about affordable housing, affordability in general, and healthcare," he said.
In Burnaby-New Westminster, Chouhan had 10,258 votes, topping Conservative candidate Deepak Suri (5,984) and independent Daniel Kofi Ampong (921).
Some political pundits had predicted the Richmond-Queensborough race could be tight – as it has been in the past. That was once again the case, with Conservative Party of BC candidate Steve Kooner defeating incumbent Aman Singh.
In the 2017 provincial election, Jas Johal of the BC Liberals edged out Singh by just 134 votes to become the first MLA in Richmond-Queensborough – a riding that had only been created in 2015. In 2020, Singh defeated Johal by about 1,600 votes in what was one of the closest races in B.C.
On Saturday night, Kooner topped the polls with 9,864 votes, followed by Singh with 8,442 votes. Trailing behind were two independent candidates – Cindy Wu (707 votes) and Errol E. Povah (252 votes).
As of 1 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 20, the BC NDP was leading in 46 electoral districts – one more than the BC Conservatives who were leading in 45 ridings. The BC Green Party was leading in two electoral areas.
Late Saturday night, Elections BC issued a statement about the initial vote count stating that 99.72 per cent of preliminary results had been reported and counting would continue for the next hour. Any electoral districts that were unable to complete initial count on Saturday night would continue counting Sunday morning.
“Due to election official availability and weather-related disruptions we will not have complete preliminary results tonight for Cariboo-Chilcotin, Surrey-Newton and North Coast-Haida Gwaii,” said the statement. “Sixteen districts are continuing to count out-of-district ballots. These ballots take longer to count for several reasons. With B.C.’s vote anywhere model, some districts are reporting out-of-district results from dozens of other contests. Write-in ballots also take longer to count than ordinary ballots.”
According to Elections BC, automatic recounts will take place in electoral districts where the margin between the top two candidates is 100 votes or fewer at the conclusion of initial count. These recounts will take place during final count, scheduled for Oct. 26 to 28.
“Some types of ballots must be counted at final count and were not counted tonight. These include vote-by-mail ballots that were received by mail after the close of advance voting or dropped off in person at a voting place or district electoral office,” said Elections BC. “We will report the number of ballots that will be considered at final count and will provide this information as soon as possible.”
