Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
TORONTO – It’s a tight race in the Toronto-St. Paul’s by-election tonight with results still trickling in more than an hour after the polls closed.
At almost 10 pm only 11 polls out of 192 have reported results with Liberal Leslie Church just ahead of Conservative Don Stewart.
Elections Canada warned that the count would take longer than usual because a record-breaking 84 candidates were on the ballot.
It has been a safe Liberal riding for 30 years but issues including housing and the Israel-Hamas war are eating away at Liberal support, as is a general malaise for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The riding is considered vital for the Liberals, and a loss is expected to put pressure on Trudeau to step down before the next election.
Shortly after the polls closed at 8:30pm Conservative strategist Jenni Byrne, an informal adviser to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, told CBC News that she did not expect her party to win.
Still, the results are extremely close and with more than 10,700 votes cast in the advance polls it may still be some time before a winner is declared.
The length of the ballot causes delay because it is more than a meter long and must be opened like a map for each one to be counted.
A protest group calling themselves the Longest Vote Committee stacked the vote with independent candidates to highlight the disadvantages of the first-past-the-post system.
Church is a long-time Liberal staffer who worked as chief of staff to multiple ministers including most recently Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Don Stewart is a financial professional who previously worked at a lobbying firm owned by Byrne.
The by-election was prompted by the resignation of former Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, who held the seat for more than 25 years and was recently appointed ambassador to Denmark.
Bennett has won the seat in every election since 1997, usually with more than 50 percent of the vote.
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on June 24, 2024.
-By Mia Rabson in Ottawa
Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.request(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document, ‘script’, ‘fbq(‘init’, ‘682184526921804’); fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
Source link
The post Polls have closed in a must-win Liberal by-election in Toronto appeared first on Canada News Media.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source link https://canadanewsmedia.ca/polls-have-closed-in-must-win-byelection-for-liberals-in-toronto/
