Liberals sweep West Quebec
Allyson Beauregard
and Nicolas Sabourin
Monday, October 21, 49% of eligible Pontiac voters elected Liberal incumbent William Amos to a second term representing the Pontiac riding in the House of Commons. In second place came David Blackburn, Conservative, with 17% of the vote; Jonathan Carreiro-Benoit came third with 16%; and the NDP’s Denise Giroux came fourth with 10%.
In total, 66.46% of Pontiac’s eligible voters exercised their right to vote, down from 2015’s 71.8%; the party showing the most improvement in the Pontiac riding was the Bloc, up 9.1% from 2015.
Nationally, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won a minority government, followed by Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives. As of 10 am, October 22, preliminary results indicated that 65.95% of eligible Canadian voters cast a ballot, down slightly from 68.3% in 2015, however, only 99.67% of polls had been reported.
The following is a breakdown of the Pontiac riding’s results, with 69,915 of the 91,656 registered electors casting their ballots:
William Amos (Liberal) obtained 29,759 votes (49%), down from 54.5% in 2015.
David Blackburn (Conservative) received 10,298 votes (17%), up from the 13.9% Benjamin Woodman collected in 2015.
With 9,851 votes (16%) for Jonathan Carreiro-Benoit (Bloc Quebecois), it represented a drastic increase from the 6.9% Bloc candidate Nicolas Lepage received in 2015.
Denise Giroux (New Democratic Party) obtained 6,364 votes (10%), down from the 22.5% Mathieu Ravignat received in 2015.
The Green Party, headed by Claude Bertrand this year, also saw a fairly large increase in votes, from 1.7% in 2015 to 6% (3,631) this time around. Colin Griffiths ran as the Pontiac’s Green candidate in 2015.
Mario Belec (People’s Party) garnered 764 votes (1.2%), Shawn Stewart (Veteran’s Coalition) collected 197 and Louis Lang (Marxist-Leninist) got 51.
Argenteuil-La-Petite-Nation was a tight race with incumbent Stéphane Lauzon holding on to his seat by a little more than 1% over the surging Bloc’s Yves Destroismaisons. When polling stations closed fewer than 700 votes separated the two men who combined for 74% of all voter turnout. Conservative Marie Louis-Seize was the only other candidate to get over 10% of all votes. 61.87% of registered electors cast a vote, the lowest turnout in all four ridings.
In Gatineau Steven MacKinnon retained his seat obtaining 52.2% of all votes in his riding. Geneviève Nadeau, daughter of Richard Nadeau the first Bloc MP ever elected in the National Capital area, came in second for the Bloc Québécois with 21.5% of votes. Eric Chaurette of the NDP came in third with 10.9% of votes followed closely by Conservative Sylvie Goneau who obtained 10.3%. Voter turnout for the riding was 65.32%.
Hull-Aylmer’s Greg Fergus won his riding by the largest margin of all incumbent liberals retaining with the support of 53.8% of voters. Bloc Quebecois representative and commissioner at Aylmer’s Grande-Rivière High School, Joanie Riopel, rode the light blue wave a distant second place followed closely by the NDP’s Nicolas Thibodeau. 66.93% of the 79,072 registered voters cast their ballots.