B.C. Election 2026: Will Burnaby remain an NDP stronghold?

It’s election day across B.C. and voters in Burnaby are headed to the polls.

On this page, you’ll see updates for the following Burnaby ridings:

• Burnaby North
• Burnaby East
• Burnaby Centre
• Burnaby South-Metrotown
• Burnaby-New Westminster

For everything you need to know about how and when to vote in the provincial election, click HERE.

If you’re still undecided on who to vote for, check out our voters’ guide and read up on the major issues and priorities within B.C.

Then follow along our live-blog HERE throughout the day and night for the latest election day news across the Metro Vancouver region, and check back here where we’ll keep this post updated all night with election results and reaction from ridings in Burnaby.

The NDP swept all five Burnaby ridings two years ago, but three of them could have gone either way if 2,775 NDP votes had gone instead to the Conservative runners-up.

The NDP won all five races in 2024 in its Burnaby stronghold with between 49 and 60 per cent of the votes, and the Conservatives came in second in all five, with between 35 and 43 per cent of the total votes.

None of the races were nail-biters, but Burnaby South-Metrotown, Burnaby North and Burnaby East weren’t far off from having a reversed outcome.

The Burnaby South-Metrotown seat, for instance, would have flipped if 594 voters who had cast ballots for the NDP’s Paul Choi had instead voted for the second-place finisher, Conservative Han Lee.

It was the 30th closest race of the 93 riding battles across the province in 2024.

Burnaby North, the 38th closest contest provincewide, had a margin of victory of 2,066 votes, meaning if half of those voters plus one — or 1,034 voters — had backed Conservative Michael Wu instead of the NDP’s Janet Routledge, that seat, too, would have flipped.

Similarly for Burnaby East, the 40th tightest race, 1,147 votes were needed to flip the win to Conservative runner-up, Simon Chandler, over the NDP’s winner Rohini Arora.

The other two ridings — Burnaby Centre and Burnaby-New Westminster, respectively the 52nd and 74th closest 2024 results — were further out of reach, with almost two-thirds of all voters backing the NDP in each of them.

Conservative candidate Dharam Kajal would have needed another 1,244 votes, from NDP winner Anne Kang to win in a two-candidate race in Burnaby Centre.

And in Burnaby-New Westminster, longtime NDP Raj Chouhan beat Conservative Deepak Suri by a sizable 4,500 votes. Suri would have needed more than 2,200 votes from him to win.

In all in 2024, the second-place candidates would have needed more than 6,200 votes from the first-place candidates to close the margin of victory and swing all five ridings, or about 3.5 per cent of all registered voters.

In this snap election, there are more candidates on the ballot than in 2024, which may dilute the concentration of votes for the two leading contenders.

The Tories last elected an MLA in Burnaby in 1978, almost 50 years ago, but the party regained support in 2024 as B.C. United (formerly the B.C. Liberals) faded from the political spectrum.

Compared to 2024, when four of the five ridings were contested by two or three candidates, in 2026, four candidates are fighting to win four of the ridings.

Those fourth candidates come with the arrival this year of OneBC candidates in three Burnaby ridings and CentreBC in one riding, making the right of the political spectrum more crowded than in 2024.

The exception is in Burnaby-New Westminster, where in 2026 it’s a contest between only NDP incumbent Chouhan and Conservative challenger Joe Latam.

Also, NDP incumbents are running again in all five ridings and facing new Conservative challengers in all five (except for Simon Chandler who ran in Burnaby East in 2024 and is now trying his luck in Burnaby North).

The NDP stronghold is one of B.C’s most diverse communities. At the last census, 38 per cent of the population had origins in East Asia, followed by 30 per cent of European origin. It also has sizable populations of residents with South Asian and southeast Asian heritage.

Voters have been rewarded for their loyalty to the governing NDP with two cabinet ministers, Routledge and Kang. And Chouhan sat as speaker in the last Legislature.

Arora, a labour organizer, is running again in Burnaby East, and lawyer and former police officer Choi wants to hold on to his seat in Burnaby South-Metrotown.

Burnaby-New Westminster
It’s a diverse riding, both in makeup — it’s home to many new immigrants — and in design, featuring blocks of old single-family homes, but also a new density, especially around Kingsway and Edmonds Street.

Chouhan, the former head of the Canadian Farmworker’s Union who was first elected in 2005 and was Burnaby’s longest-standing MLA, wants to win his seat for a seventh time.

Burnaby North
The Liberals’ Richard Lee held the seat from 2001 to 2017, but otherwise it’s been NDP territory since the 1960s. Longtime labour activist Routledge retained her seat in 2024 with 53 per cent of the vote, defeating Conservative Wu, an entrepreneur, by just over 2,000 votes.

Burnaby East
Won in 2024 by Arora, a labour organizer, who defeated the Conservative Chandler by almost 2,300 votes and 51.5 per cent of the vote.

Burnaby Centre
Retained by Kang with 59 per cent of the vote; she defeated Conservative challenger Dharam Kajal by almost 2,500 votes.

Burnaby South-Metrotown
Choi — a lawyer and former police officer — took the seat with 49.2 per cent of ballots over Conservatives’ Lee, a real estate adviser and serial entrepreneur, by just over 1,000 votes. Lee had 41.8 per cent of the vote.