Conservative candidate Brent Chapman has defeated the NDP's Haroon Ghaffar in Surrey South.
By 9:30 p.m., Chapman had consolidated an early lead into 11,913 (or 58.86 per cent of the vote) to Ghaffar's 8,325 (or 41.14 per cent of the vote) with six of six advance ballot boxes reported, plus 12 of 13 voting day ballot boxes reported.
First contested in the 2017 provincial general election, Surrey South has voted right of centre ever since, electing candidates for the B.C. Liberal Party, renamed B.C. United in 2023.
Although other party candidates have run in the riding, second-highest votes have consistently gone to the B.C. NDP candidates.
In the absence of B.C. United candidates in 2024, Surrey South is a two-way race between the Conservatives' Chapman, an actor, producer, broadcaster and writer; and the B.C. NDP's Ghaffar, a journalist.
The biggest question about which way the riding was to go concerned the potential impact of numerous social media posts and online activity by Chapman, some as much as nine years old, which many have seen as racist and offensive.
Among them are a 2015 comment that referred to Palestinian Muslim children as "little inbred walking, talking, breathing time bombs", which prompted the White Rock Muslim Association to call on Chapman to withdraw from the election race.
Other Chapman posts included reposting a meme in 2016 suggesting liberals angry at the election of Donald Trump should commit suicide, a 2017 post that questioned the truth of accounts of mass shootings in Canada and the U.S., and an appearance on a podcast in September of this year in which he appeared to agree with the host that the issue of Indigenous children perishing in residential schools was a "massive fraud".
The emergence of screen shots of this Chapman posts over the last two weeks of the campaign created a media storm in which NDP Premier David Eby and Surrey South candidate Ghaffar – among others – have demanded that Conservative leader John Rustad remove Chapman from the running.
But Rustad, while acknowledging that Chapman's posts were "offensive", said he had accepted Chapman's apology for the anti-Muslim comments, and appeared to stand by Chapman's explanations of other posts and comments in the podcast appearance, which Chapman claims have been taken out of context.
The controversy ultimately was not enough to swing the riding towards the NDP, in keeping with the past voting pattern, which has never given more than 43 per cent of the vote to that party.
The last time the riding was contested, in a byelection in 2022, then BC Liberal candidate Elenore Sturko took the riding with 51.5 per cent of the vote to B.C. NDP candidate Pauline Greaves' 29.9 per cent of the vote.
