Desnethe-Missinippi Churchill river was predicted as a riding to watch this election and it delivered.
The winner wasn’t clear until the very last poll came out after midnight.
NDP candidate Georgina Jolibois took the northern Saskatchewan riding with a slim margin of 70 votes over Liberal Lawrence Joseph.
Jolibois said she wanted to connect with constituents through her campaign, whether it was a home visit or through social media.
After a night with so many lead changes, she could hardly believe she had won when the final ballots were counted.
“I had a quiet evening, reflecting and watching the results and still thinking that I could still lose because it’s such a close race,” she said. “And then these last few minutes rolled around, and it does feel like a dream. And I want to thank everyone in the north who believed in me and supported me.”
Joseph says he’s not conceding until any election irregularities are assessed.
“I personally am very pleased with our campaign in the sense that I don’t feel like I lost,” he said. “However, with the numbers that close, the people that are supporting me are certainly calling for some type of investigation, a recount or appeal. I will be certainly talking to our people, the Liberal Party of Canada, to explore my options. I’m not prepared to concede right now.”
He said there were reports of at least one polling station running out of ballots — and APTN is reporting it happened on his home reserve of the Big River First Nation as well as five other reserves across the country.
But according to Elections Canada, the returning officer says that didn’t happen in Big River.
In the event a polling station does run out of ballots, electoral officials are instructed to make photocopies.
Elections Canada also says the race in northern Saskatchewan was not close enough to trigger an automatic recount.
The margin of victory has to be within 1/1000th of the total votes cast — or in this case, 30 votes. Jolibois defeated Joseph by 70 votes.
Meantime, Conservative incumbent Rob Clarke trailed behind, finishing with a thousand votes less than Jolibois.
Clarke says his defeat didn’t come out of nowhere and he knew it would be a hard battle.
He did manage to get 30 per cent of the vote this time around.
When asked what led to his defeat, Clarke said he chose not to engage in the war of words that he heard from the two frontrunners.
“Well, in my riding, I didn’t get into the squabbling that took place between the two other candidates, and I refused to do that,” he said. “We all have to work together eventually, and I didn’t want to see that happening or take place.”
Advance polls showed a strong turnout in northern Saskatchewan, and that trend continued on election day.
Around 68 per cent of registered voters cast their ballots in Desnethe-Missinippi Churchill River.
This is a huge change from 2011 – when the riding was among the lowest for voter turnouts across Canada.