As of 2 am, Liberal Pauline Rochefort has an over 1,100 vote lead over Conservative Garry Keller in the race to be the Member of Parliament for Nipissing-Timiskaming, with one poll left to be counted.
It was a seesaw battle all night, with Rochefort taking the early lead, then falling behind by as much as a 1,400 vote margin for most of the night.
That’s before she came back in the final few polls, to regain the lead.
When she arrived at her post-election event at the North Bay Granite Club, Rochefort actually didn’t know she had regained the lead, by about 25 votes.
Later when that widened to over 1,100 with the second-last poll coming in, there was a burst of excitement from the crowd of supporters.
“Win or lose was my attitude so I’ve been calm about the whole situation,” she says. “I would really like to represent Nipissing-Timiskaming so I really hope we do come through victorious. It’s a future I look forward to so I hope the results will be in our favour.”
While she garnered nearly 47% of the vote, Rochefort says she understands over 50% did not vote for her or the Liberals.
“There are people that are angry out there. People that are hurt. People that are fearful,” she says. “So, it’s acknowledging that is present in our community and it is working to grow our economy and our economic prosperity. That is the way we’ll bring down the cost of living in our country right now.”
Keller says he’s disappointed he won’t be able to serve the people of the riding.
“It’s never fun to lose an election campaign especially when it’s this close,” says Keller. “How many more doors could we have knocked on and how much more could we have done. But we knew it was going to be a tight race here in Nipissing-Timiskaming especially with no incumbent and the collapse of the NDP vote meant that this was a two-horse race.”
Voter turnout, with one poll remaining, is already at 67% with nearly 57,000 ballots cast.
Rochefort secured 26,657 while Keller garnered 25,504 in 227 of 228 polls.
Over 3,400 ballots were cast for the NDP’s Valerie Kennedy with over 600 for People’s Party candidate John Janssen and nearly 600 for the Green Party’s Louise Poitras.
Preliminary results are courtesy of Elections Canada:
| Party | Candidate | Votes | Percentof Votes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | Pauline Rochefort | 26,657 | 46.9 % |
| Conservative | Garry Keller | 25,504 | 44.9 % |
| NDP-New Democratic Party | Valerie Kennedy | 3,455 | 6.1 % |
| People’s Party – PPC | John Janssen | 631 | 1.1 % |
| Green Party | Louise Poitras | 571 | 1.0 % |
| Total number of valid votes: | 56,818 |
Polls Reporting: 227 of 228 (99.56 %)
Over 84,000 people were eligible to cast a ballot for one of five candidates in the riding.
21,200 took in the advance polls.
