You only have to look through the history books to see why the Liberals have their eyes on Delta South.
The constituency, which was created back in 1991 when the province eliminated those dual-member ridings, instantly went Liberal, one of 17 won by Gordon Wilson's upstart party in that landscape-shifting election.
The late Fred Gingell, who entered the race with less than three weeks to go and spent less than one-tenth what the incumbent did, managed to win by more than 2,000 votes, a margin he expanded to more than 7,000 votes in the 1996 election.
Delta South was considered such a safe Liberal seat that after Gingell's passing, a half-dozen hopefuls battled it out for the party's nomination, a race won by Val Roddick, who went on to win the subsequent by-election with almost 60 per cent of the vote. Roddick received two out of every three votes in the 2001 general election in what was a high water mark for the party locally.
By 2005, with cuts to Delta Hospital hanging over her head, Roddick narrowly retained the seat with just 37 per cent of the vote in an election that signaled times were changing. More unpopular decisions, including routing high voltage power lines through Tsawwassen, followed, allowing independent Vicki Huntington to knock off Liberal heavyweight Wally Oppal in 2009.
A riding where the NDP has never received 30 per cent of the vote, and more often than not gets 15 per cent or less, should be fertile ground for the Liberals, but Huntington, who appeals to voters up and down the political spectrum, has wrestled it away.
Her initial victory was looked upon as a protest vote, but it should be noted that Huntington has gone from 8,000 votes in her unsuccessful try in 2005 to 10,000 when she won for the first time to more than 11,000 last time, so if it's a case of voters being mad, well, it appears they haven't been in a good mood for quite some time.
Although it could well have started as a protest, many voters have become comfortable with the notion of an independent and haven't seen the need to return to the Liberal fold. That's a hill to climb, for sure, but the Liberals can take some comfort in the fact they did win the riding in five straight elections.
