There was a moment of panic as the results started to roll in.
“Bob Zimmer isn’t going to win a landslide,” a friend texted as the first poll results rolled in, showing the Liberal Candidate ahead, though with only 313 votes tallied.
Slowly but surely, though, he managed to pull ahead, beating the liberal candidate by the narrowest of margins, with 69.9 percent of the vote, or 38,157 votes. That’s up from 2015, when he captured 27,237 votes, or 52.52 percent.
Mavis Erickson was able to crack the double digits percentage wise, capturing 11.5 percent of the vote, but not in total number of votes, only capturing 6,304.
The NDP’s Marcia Luccock was able to capture 9.2 percent of the vote, or 5,013 vote despite not—as best as we can tell—actually visiting the riding or campaigning.
She was followed distantly by Green candidate Catharine Kendall, with 3,395 votes, or 6.2 percent of the vote, and finally by People’s Party Candidate Ron Vaillant, with 1,728 votes, or 3.2 percent of the vote.
Zimmer will again take his seat in opposition, as the Liberals are returning for their second mandate, though with a minority of seats, as they were only able to win 157 of the 338 seats in the house, 13 short of the 170 needed for a majority.
The conservatives took 36 fewer seats, with 121. However, they had a small (1.3 percent) lead in the popular vote, which should lead to some interesting proportional representation discussions over the next few weeks.
Across the country, about 65.95 percent of the registered voters performed their civic duty. Slightly more than average showed out to vote in this riding with 68.76 percent of registered voters actually voting.
And, of course, none of these numbers are official for a few more weeks, though the actual results aren’t expected to change significantly.
