Faced with the decision to brave Thursday’s wintry conditions to vote or stay home, most Orléans residents chose the latter.
Just 47.74 per cent of Orléans’ eligible voters cast their ballots in the recent provincial election.
The turnout is a minute uptick from the 2022 election, when just 46.59 per cent of voters showed up.
However, it’s a substantial drop from 2018, when 62.77 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballots.
Incumbent Liberal candidate Stephen Blais — a former Ottawa city councillor who represented the former Cumberland ward from 2010 to 2020 — comfortably won the historically red provincial riding, securing more than 54 per cent of the vote.
Orléans has been a Liberal stronghold for more than two decades. The riding flipped from the Progressive Conservatives in favour of Liberal candidate Phil McNeely in 2003.
Marie-France Lalonde succeeded McNeely in 2014, before running and winning as a federal MP in 2019. Blais won a byelection on Feb. 27, 2020 — exactly five years before last week’s provincial election.
He was re-elected in 2022 by more than 7,000 votes ahead of PC candidate Melissa Felián.
Before becoming an Ottawa councillor, Blais worked as a special assistant for then-MPP and provincial cabinet minister Jim Watson, later Ottawa’s mayor. Blais also worked as a media relations officer at Carleton University and as an Ottawa Catholic School Board trustee.
