Conservative challenger Honveer Singh Randhawa topped the polls in the new, renamed Surrey-Guildford riding by a narrow margin over NDP incumbent Gary Begg.
Just 102 votes separate the two candidates — 8,671 for Randhawa to Begg's 8,569, meaning the riding just missed the 100-vote threshold for an automatic recount, as is the case in Surrey City Centre.
Elections BC now proceeds to a final count of ballots from Saturday to Monday (Oct. 26-28). After that, a judicial recount may occur if the difference between the top two candidates is less than 1/500th of the ballots cast. In Surrey-Guildford, with 18,395 votes in play, that would require a difference of less than 37 votes between the top two candidates for a judicial recount to occur.
During the campaign, Randhawa said that if elected, his three main priorities are to stop SOGI, stop the indoctrination of our kids in schools, and immediately get Surrey hospitals built and expand school structures and remove portables.
Randhawa, who runs Randhawa Law Centre in Newton, is known "not just for his legal acumen, but for his unwavering dedication to fairness and accessibility to legal services," says a bio on on the Conservative party website. He's also described as "an avid animal lover with a family that includes dogs, geese, ducks, hens, a parrot, and over a hundred fishes."
Gary Begg was first elected as the riding's NDP MLA in 2017, and he has held the riding ever since. A retired RCMP officer, Begg faced Randhawa, Manjeet Singh Sahota (BC Green Party) and Kabir Qurban (Independent).
According to Elections BC, 36,965 people were registered to vote in the riding as of Oct. 7. Over 25 per cent voted in advance.
Surrey-Guildford takes in a large part of what used to be Surrey-Tynehead, a provincial riding that had been held by the B.C. Liberals since Dave Hayer was first elected in 2001, and then re-elected in 2005 and 2009. In 2020, Begg won with 60.59 per cent of the vote against Liberal candidate Dave Hans, who got 29.93 percent.
