Maguire takes Brandon-Souris in narrow victory
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/11/2013 (4393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
By the slimmest of margins, Larry Maguire managed to hold Brandon-Souris for the Conservative Party.
Maguire, a former MLA, faced an extremely tight fight against Liberal candidate Rolf Dinsdale, the son of the riding’s legendary former Conservative MP, Walter Dinsdale.
Both of them held small leads through the night, although Maguire pulled ahead near the end, first by a few dozen votes, then by a couple of hundred.
In the end, preliminary Elections Canada results showed that Maguire took 11,951 votes (44.1 per cent) to Dinsdale’s 11,544 (42.6 per cent). The 1.5 percentage point spread kept pundits guessing until nearly midnight as the final polls trickled in.
There are still two polls remaining to be counted, of the 210 in the riding, but they are not expected to change the decision.
Turnout was strong for a byelection, with more than 27,000 votes being cast — some 43.7 per cent of the registered electorate.
Local Liberals watched results see-saw back and forth at the Roadhouse, decorated in red and white for the occasion. Meanwhile, Conservatives were at the Victoria Inn, decked out in blue and white.
The NDP were watching at the Double Decker, downtown. Their candidate, Cory Szczepanski, pulled 7.3 per cent of the vote, with 1,985 ballots cast for him
The Green Party’s David Neufeld drew 4.9 per cent support, with 1,329 votes. Libertarian Frank Godon received 267 votes, or 1 per cent.
The election came down to getting out the vote.
Buses of volunteers converged on the riding today as campaigns ensured that every supporter would hit the polls.
The campaign was a partcularly nasty one, beginning with a bungled Conservatice nomination fight that alienated many Tory supporters and ending with a wave of Conservative attack flyers criticising Dinsdale for being a parachute candidate.
Advance polls saw a healthy turnout, and traffic at Brandon polling stations were reportedly steady all day.
This is the final update for this story.
Below, see tweets about the election, hashtagged #BdnSouris