Crack elected by slim lead as Liberals take near-majority in Ontario

The mayor of North Glengarry is moving to a bigger office at Queen's Park in the next few weeks.

Liberal Party candidate Grant Crack was announced as Glengarry-Prescott-Russell's next member of provincial parliament late in the evening on Thursday, October 6.

Crack won the riding with 17,344 votes, but it was no major victory: he beat Progressive Conservative candidate Marilissa Gosselin by only 1,353 votes, in what was a neck-and-neck race for much of the evening.

The atmosphere at Crack's Alexandria campaign office was tense for most of the night, as results came in from the various polling stations across the riding. Initially, Gosselin had taken the lead, but by 10:45 p.m., Crack had established a lead of about 1,200 votes - and managed to keep it until all the numbers came in, shortly after midnight.

Crack took 43.14 per cent of the vote share while Gosselin took 39.77 per cent (15,991 votes). New Democratic Party candidate Bonnie Jean-Louis had 5,711 votes or 14.2 per cent of the share and Green Party candidate Taylor Howarth received 770 votes.

Family and friends then traveled with the newly-elected MPP to St-Isidore, where he met with outgoing Liberal MPP Jean-Marc Lalonde and a horde of sign-waving supporters.

Both Crack and Lalonde said the last week of the campaign made a huge difference in support, noting the Liberals took longer to "get the vote out" than the Progressive Conservatives.

Voter turnout was similar to the 2007 provincial election, with 40,208 people casting a ballot this year compared to 40,531 four years ago. The PCs saw an increase in support, up 4,073 votes from the last election, as did the NDP with a boost of 3,410 votes since 2007. The Liberals suffered from both counts, seeing a drop of 7,181 votes.

The story was much of the same across the province, where Ontarians largely elected the Liberal Party to represent them at Queen's Park - with a significant drop from the last election.

The Liberals had 70 seats at dissolution, and were re-elected as a minority government with 53 seats. The party needed 54 seats to form a majority. The PCs took 37 seats and the NDP took 17 seats, both increases from the 2007 election.

Stay tuned for more details in next week's Review.