NDP candidate Leila Dance has won the Winnipeg seat of Elmwood-Transcona, the CBC News decision desk projects.
The result isn’t much of a shock because this working-class community in the city’s east end has been represented by a New Democrat for most of the last 45 years.
Elmwood-Transcona is one of the NDP’s safest seats. Only seven seats across the country were safer for the party in the last general election, according to a CBC News analysis of voting data.
Ahead of the final results in the byelection in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood-Transcona, New Democratic Party candidate Leila Dance thanked her team and family for their help and support during her campaign.
But the margin of victory is narrower this time than in years past — a sign that while the NDP pulled in enough votes to win again, the party’s brand has taken a bit of a hit.
Dance, a small business advocate, bested Conservative candidate and electrician Colin Reynolds by fewer than four percentage points — a fraction of what outgoing MP Daniel Blaikie posted in this riding last time.
Polls suggest the NDP have been struggling to make a breakthrough with voters even as their main progressive opponent, the governing Liberal Party, is on a downward slide.
To this point, the biggest beneficiary of Liberal weakness has been Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
But Poilievre couldn’t pull off a win in Winnipeg, despite optimism from some of the party’s MPs that the Conservatives would take it with the NDP stuck in neutral nationwide.
Colin Reynolds, the Conservative byelection candidate in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood-Transcona, said his result in the byelection ‘was not what we were hoping for.’
The Conservatives, however, performed much better here than they did in the 2021 general election, which suggests Poilievre’s popularity in opinion polls is translating into some success at the ballot box.
The NDP victory could be interpreted as a vindication of Singh’s decision to back out of a deal to prop up the Liberal government just days before this byelection.
NDP ends agreement with Liberals
Singh initiated the breakup to show voters he’s not beholden to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The decision to step away from the deal gave the party the opportunity to tell voters that a vote for the NDP is a vote for change.
Singh ripped up the supply-and-confidence agreement earlier this month, saying the Liberals are out of new ideas and too soft on “corporate greed.”
Liberals, in turn, have accused Singh of abandoning progressive policies that haven’t yet cleared Parliament, including the promised pharmacare program.
Singh has also walked back his past support for the government’s carbon tax, saying he wants to propose an alternative that’s less punitive for consumers. Trudeau said Monday Singh caved in the face of Conservative criticism.
The Liberal vote in Elmwood-Transcona collapsed.
The Liberal standard-bearer, Ian MacIntyre, is on track to post one of the worst byelection results for a candidate from the governing party in Canadian history.
The party was not expected to be competitive given it finished a distant third in the 2021 general election and polls suggest Liberals are a lot less popular now than they were then.
But the drop was still notable with the Liberal candidate taking less than five per cent of the vote — down about 10 percentage points from last time.
The ballots are still being counted in the Montreal riding of LaSalle-Emard-Verdun — it’s a tight three-way race.
NDP candidate Craig Sauvé and Bloc Québécois contender Louis-Philippe Sauvé are trying to take the seat from the governing Liberals.
Palestini delivered a speech to supporters about an hour after the polls closed and left without speaking to the assembled media.
Ahead of final results in the LaSalle-Émard-Verdun byelection, Liberal party candidate Laura Palestini thanks those who worked on her campaign for their enthusiasm and support.
The ballot in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun includes an eye-popping 91 candidates — the result of a protest campaign calling for electoral reform. That means results may not be known for sometime.
The electoral reform group responsible for the large number of candidates in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun also put dozens of names on the ballot in another byelection earlier this summer. The final outcome of that byelection wasn’t known until after 4:30 a.m.
Ahead of final results in the Montreal byelection in the riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun Monday night, NDP candidate Craig Sauvé said his campaign was a dream and thanked his supporters.
“It is never possible to predict exactly when all results will be reported, but estimates based on the simulations we’ve conducted suggest it will take longer to count and report each poll,” a spokesperson for Elections Canada said in a media statement.
“With this in mind, we cannot provide specific estimates for when results will be completed, but can confirm that results will be available on election night.”
