The South Surrey-White Rock federal riding, and its numerous historic predecessors, have long been considered a Conservative stronghold – but it has not always been so.
When the Surrey riding (including White Rock) was created from part of the New Westminster riding in 1966, the first subsequent election went to the NDP.
That was when Barry Mather was elected in 1968 and served a first four-year term as Surrey's federal representative.
By the time of the next federal election, in 1972, the riding had been renamed Surrey-White Rock, and Mather was returned for a second term, ending in 1974.
The riding went against traditional form again, in 2017, as voters elected former mayor and MLA Gordon Hogg as MP for the Liberals, in a byelection that followed the resignation of Conservative incumbent Dianne Watts. It was the first time since the 1940s that the area had been represented in Ottawa by a Liberal.
Hogg served two years before being unseated by Conservative Kerry-Lynne Findlay in the 2019 election.
But the riding has predominantly shown a preference for Conservative candidates over the years starting with the 1974 election of Progressive Conservative Benno Friesen – a reign that lasted almost 20 years until his retirement.
In 1993 the riding, by then reconfigured as Surrey-White Rock-South Langley, went to Val Meredith of the Reform Party (made up of elements of the former Progressive Conservatives).
Meredith went on to represent the riding in 2000 for the Canadian Alliance Party and was re-elected as Conservative in 2003.
In the 2004 election the riding, now South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale, was won by the new Conservative candidate, Russ Hiebert.
Hiebert stayed in office for the next decade, re-elected again in 2006 and 2011, but chose not to run in the 2015 election, by which time the riding had become South Surrey-White Rock.
In that race, Watts won over Liberal Judy Higginbotham with 44.03 per cent of the vote (to 41.49 per cent).
Following Kerry-Lynne Findlay's win in 2019, she again won over Hogg in 2021, with 42.5 per cent of the vote (to Hogg's 39 per cent).
Demographics of the riding, compiled most recently in 2021, showed the population as 60.8 percent European ethnicity, with 18.65 per cent East Asian, and 12.09 per cent South Asian.
As of that time, residents of Southeast Asian origin represented 2.69 per cent of the population, while Indigenous residents represented 2.12 per cent of the population.
This election, four candidates are vying for the seat:
- Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative Party of Canada, www.votefindlay.ca
- Christine Kinnie, Green Party of Canada, www.greenparty.ca/en/candidate/christine-kinnie
- Ernie Klassen, Liberal Party of Canada, www.ernie-klassen.com
- Jureun Park, New Democratic Party, jureunpark.ndp.ca
