With a voter turnout of 45.02 per cent, the riding of Ottawa West-Nepean closely mirrored province-wide participation rates of 45.4 per cent in the recent Ontario election.
Ottawa West-Nepean’s NDP incumbent Chandra Pasma dramatically expanded her support across the riding in last week’s vote, taking 49.33 per cent of the ballots — an 11.79-point increase from the last provincial election in 2022 — with an 8,391-vote margin of victory.
The Progressive Conservatives, now represented by Husien Abu-Rayash, saw their vote fall from 34.94 per cent three years ago to 28.72 per cent.
Rookie Liberal candidate Brett Szmul saw the party’s 22.44 per cent vote share in 2022 drop to 17.75 per cent.
Green hopeful Sophia Andrew-Joiner, another new candidate, was a distant fourth at 2.39 per cent.
Pasma’s convincing victory charts a relatively new direction for the riding, which has voted Liberal or PC for most of its 25-year existence. It also seems to represent a strengthening hold on the riding for the NDP. In 2022, Pasma won a nail-biter against Jeremy Roberts, the PC incumbent, by a little more than 1,000 votes of the 91,000-plus votes cast.
The riding had previously been represented by Liberal MPPs Jim Watson and Bob Chiarelli — both former Ottawa mayors and provincial cabinet ministers under former Ontario Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty.
Overall in Ontario, Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford secured a third term in office as premier of Canada’s most populous province. In the 124 seat Ontario legislature, where 63 seats are a majority, the PCs took 80 seats, the NDP won 27 to retain official opposition status, the Liberals secured 14 to regain official party status and the Green Party grabbed two seats.
