As expected, Conservative incumbent Scot Davidson won reelection here in York—Simcoe. However, for the first time in a decade, the Conservative candidate did not pull in an overall majority of the votes cast.
Now, to be fair (I no longer can say that phrase without hearing the Letterkenney guys in my head) – Davidson still won a commanding victory of over 10,000 votes with 46.5 percent of the vote share.
But, for the first time in a decade, the votes for the progressive parties combined in York—Simcoe could have won the day: 26,348 local voters cast a ballot for the Liberal, NDP and Green candidates, compared to 24,796 votes for the Tories.
In a previous column, I tried to answer the question: “What will it take to make this a swing riding?” I suggested, “A well-qualified Liberal candidate—ideally with a high public profile existing already—who focused on local environmental issues and investing in public services could make this a fair fight with a well-funded, strong ground game—but only in an election where the party itself won a majority.”
In this election, the local Liberal candidate was an academic, and she was nominated the day the writ dropped, and hardly had time to prepare the critical “ground game” needed to win: canvassing door to door to identify and get out the vote, organizing a sign crew and covering this large riding stretching across two regions.
Still, the Liberal team roughly 27 percent of the vote – almost an identical total to the results of the byelection, when there were far more resources from the central party poured into the contest. That suggests a loyal base that can be built upon.
It is more than a hypothetical or counterfactual to wonder what a Liberal candidate with enough time to get organized—ideally a candidate with a strong local profile, perhaps as an elected official or other prominent role in the community—might have achieved by working to grow past that base of support.
There is a motivated base of some 24,000 Conservative voters in this riding. But this riding, as I suggested in that earlier column, is changing.
It will be interesting to watch what happens in future races, which might come sooner than anticipated if a minority government does not last long.
