The polls close at 9:30 in Vaughan and 8:30 in Manitoba. I’ll be providing updates, snark, and Julian Fantino sightings throughout the evening but, if you’re really keen to follow along, elections.ca will be posting the results here.
9:02 pm – Bonus by election results from the provincial by election in Quebec! With 39 of 159 polls reporting, the Liberals and PQ are neck and neck. The Liberals took this seat by 32 percentage points last election but with Jean Charest in trouble, many are expecting the PQ to steal. Chantal Hebert looks at the possible fallout here.
10:26 pm – Time for some results! In Quebec, the PQ cling to a 157 vote lead with 10 polls to go. Should be as exciting as a Grey Cup finish.
As expected, Vaughan is a close one. Fantino leads by 5% with a quarter of the polls reporting.
The surprise of the night could be Winnipeg North, where Liberal Kevin Lamoureux is within 100 votes with half the polls reporting. A win there would certainly take the sting out of losing Vaughan.
Oh, and the Pirate Party is up on the Greens by 1 vote in Winnipeg. In fairness, Jim Flaherty did warn us they were on the move.
10:54 pm – The PQ wins by 196 votes. A tough night for Jean Charest.
It’s getting to the point where we can likely call Vaughan for Fantino. That 5-point lead shows no signs of narrowing, with 2/3 of the polls reporting. (though the Genco HQ has the lead at only 400 votes)
Dauphin, we could call about a month ago.
So that leaves Winnipeg North, where Kevin Lamoureux has taken a 235 vote lead with 33 polls left to report. Which means, as usual, it will be up to Western Canada to bail out the Liberal Party after Toronto abandons them.
11:26 pm – Well, well, well. The Liberal lead in Winnipeg North (1.4%) is now larger than the Tory lead in Vaughan (1.2%).
11:35 pm – Coming up on midnight and two of the by elections are still too close to call. Isn’t this more fun than scan tran ballots?
12:08 am – Last update for the night. Fantino up by 500 votes with 24 polls to go. He’ll likely hang on, but it’s certainly not a sure thing.
In Winnipeg North, I think we can chalk it up for Lamoureux, who now leads 47% to 41%. Which means the Liberal vote share will have increased more than 5-fold since the last election. Which means we should expect a Liberal sweep across Western Canada next election, eh?