Jagmeet Singh’s bid to represent Metro Vancouver in the House of Commons will ultimately come down to who shows up at the polls in next month’s vote, says pollster Quito Maggi.

The race in Burnaby South is expected to be the closest of the three byelections set for Feb. 25, with all major parties having a shot at taking the riding.

Maggi says the Liberals are the slight favourites at the onset of the campaign, though Singh’s talent for getting out the vote makes it hard to count out the NDP leader.

However, Singh stands at a disadvantage because of his unpopularity with the riding’s sizable Chinese population, he said.

When his company, Mainstreet Research, last polled the riding in early November, the NDP was trailing in third, behind the Conservatives and first-place Liberals, Maggi said. The difference between first and third was just under 10 percentage points.

Considering the riding’s large Chinese population, Maggi said Mainstreet asked all polling questions in English, Cantonese and Mandarin. The 2016 census pegged the Chinese population of Burnaby South at 40 per cent.

But while Singh was leading, or in a close three-way race, with English respondents, he was a “distant third” among those who responded in Cantonese and Mandarin, said Maggi, Mainstreet’s president and CEO.

“It’s going to come down to turnout among the Chinese population,” he said, noting the Conservatives were in first place among Cantonese and Mandarin respondents.

Singh is running in the riding against corporate lawyer Jay Shin of the Conservative Party, small business owner Karen Wang from the Liberal Party (who ran for the provincial Grits in the 2017 B.C. election), and evangelist TV personality Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson of the People’s Party of Canada.

The Green Party is not fielding a candidate as a “leader’s courtesy” to Singh, according to Leader Elizabeth May.

In nominating a Chinese candidate, the Liberals will make “things tough” for Singh, Maggi said, though turnout, and the composition of those who show up, will determine who wins. Byelections, he said, generally draw about 50 per cent of voters who showed up for the general election.

Maggi said the race will hinge on what team has the best “ground game” and organization, which may favour Singh. He described the NDP leader as a “machine” at getting out the vote, pointing to his come-from-behind victory in the 2014 Ontario provincial election. In that race, Maggi said Mainstreet polls had Singh losing his Brampton riding by five points, but he wound up winning by seven.

He also said the Tories stand a good chance of winning the riding because of their popularity with Chinese voters, which polling shows largely and strongly oppose cannabis legalization.

But while Burnaby South is expected to be close, Maggi said he believes the Liberals will easily win back the Montreal riding of Outremont in next month’s vote, after more than a decade of NDP representation.

“Outremont is a slam dunk for the Liberals,” he said.

The riding was seen as a Liberal bastion for decades before Thomas Mulcair pulled it into the NDP fold in a 2007 byelection. Mulcair won re-election three times before resigning this summer to accept a teaching position.

Mulcair, the NDP’s leader from 2012 to 2017, grabbed 44 per cent of the vote in the last election.

Rachel Bendayan is once again running for the Liberals in Outremont, after coming within 10 points of Mulcair in the 2015 race. After the election, she served as chief of staff to Bardish Chagger when the latter was minister of Small Business and Tourism.

Maggi said polling by Mainstreet three to four months ago suggested a “runaway win” for the Liberals.

Julia Sanchez will try to hold the seat for the NDP, while Jasmine Louras will represent the Tories. Green Party deputy leader Daniel Green will also run in the riding.



In the other race, Maggi said he believes the southern Ontario riding of York—Simcoe will be a closer fight than many anticipate.

A Conservative stronghold in the periphery of the Greater Toronto Area, the riding had been held for the past 14 years by Harper-era House leader Peter Van Loan. He resigned last fall.

Van Loan got 50 per cent of the vote in 2015, beating Liberal Shaun Tanaka, who received 26 per cent, and the NDP’s Sylvia Gerl, who got 10 per cent.

In February’s byelection, Tanaka, a university geography professor, will run against business owner Scot Davidson of the Conservatives and workers’-rights advocate Jessa McLean of the NDP.

Maggi described Tanaka as someone who is “very popular locally,” and credited her with making the 2015 race closer than it had been in recent elections. He said the Liberals “might be able to pull off” the upset because of Tanaka’s popularity and the weakness of the federal NDP.

The NDP, Maggi said, hasn’t polled above 12 or 13 per cent in a Mainstreet survey in more than a year. He also noted that the party saw a 50 per cent drop in support in December’s byelection in Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, though cautioned that the NDP has historically never performed well in eastern Ontario.

But if this trend of falling NDP support continues, Maggi said expect York—Simcoe to be the “possible Liberal surprise” of the night.