Liberals pick up another seat by a single vote after results of judicial recount in Montreal-area riding
Thanks to a single vote, the federal Liberals have won a Montreal-area riding, edging the party closer to the number of seats required for a majority government.
A judicial recount found that Tatiana Auguste won the riding of Terrebonne by one vote over Bloc Québécois incumbent Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, who had initially appeared to be the winner there in last month's federal election.
That gives the Liberals 170 seats in the House of Commons, two short of the 172 needed to form a majority government, which would bolster the party's ability to advance its political agenda.
Meanwhile, the number of Bloc seats has fallen to 22. The Conservatives won 143 seats in the federal election, the NDP won seven seats, and the Green Party won a single seat.
Although there are announcements of three other judicial recounts on the Elections Canada website, there is no path for the Liberals to secure a majority through their outcomes.
Ms. Auguste did not respond to The Globe and Mail's requests for comment but said in a statement posted on social media that after a long electoral process and rigorous judicial counting her victory had been confirmed.
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A total 61,118 votes were cast in the riding, but the initial outcome was close enough to warrant a judicial recount – a process launched when there is a difference of less than 0.1 per cent between the leading candidate and second-place candidate.
Last Wednesday, Chief Electoral Officer of Canada Stéphane Perrault announced, in a statement, that there would be a judicial recount in the riding because the difference between the two leading candidates was 44 votes.
The recount, conducted by Quebec Superior Court Justice Danielle Turcotte, began on Thursday.
By Saturday night, the result was a single-vote victory for Ms. Auguste, a former assistant to Montreal Liberal MP Emmanuel Dubourg, who was running in her first election.
Ms. Auguste won 23,352 votes compared to 23,351 for Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné, who had been elected to represent the riding in 2021.
Political scientist Hamish Telford said he had never heard of a federal or provincial election decided by one vote.
Prof. Telford, who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, said it may have happened in the distant past when the number of voters was much smaller.
'But it is statistically improbable in the modern era. It is a reminder that every vote counts but again it is unlikely that an election will be decided by one vote so I am not sure it will influence voters,' he said in a statement.
Alex Marland, a politics professor at Nova Scotia's Acadia University, said the one-vote story out of Terrebonne may be used in the future as an example by political parties and campaign teams that every vote matters.
One of the three other judicial recounts is in the Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Terra Nova-The Peninsulas, where the difference between the two front-running candidates is 12 votes. Liberal Anthony Germain is ahead at this point, over Conservative Party candidate Jonathan Rowe.
The second is in Milton East–Halton Hills South, near Toronto, where the current difference is 29 votes, and Liberal candidate Kristina Tesser Derksen is ahead of Conservative candidate Parm Gill.
Finally, there's a judicial recount scheduled in Windsor – Tecumseh – Lakeshore where the current difference between the two leading candidates is 77 votes. Conservative challenger Kathy Borrelli initially won that riding over Liberal incumbent Irek Kusmierczyk.
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