Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives will maintain their 13-year hold on the riding of Lambton-Kent-Middlesex.
The CBC Decision Desk is projecting that Steven Pinsonneault will win the byelection on Thursday, as polls closed across the large region in southwestern Ontario. Polls closed at 9 p.m. with results coming immediately, and a decision called within ten minutes.
Pinsonneault, a Chatham-Kent city councillor since 2006, finished ahead of Lucan Mayor and Liberal challenger Cathy Burghardt-Jesson and the NDP’s Kathryn Shailer.
The riding will remain PC blue as it’s been since 2011 when Monte McNaughton was first elected. It was last fall’s resignation of McNaughton, a cabinet minister in the Doug Ford government, that made Thursday’s byelection necessary.
McNaughton joined his successor, campaign volunteers and supporters at a victory celebration at the Township of Dawn-Euphemia Community Centre in Florence., about 30 kilometres northeast of Chatham.
Pinsonneault owns an auto repair shop and printing business in Chatham-Kent, and as the polls closed him maintained a 50 per cent lead over the other candidates.
Just under 5,000 voters cast ballots in advanced polls in the riding, which is about 6.6 per cent of eligible voters.
More to come.