D-C voters were Green in the north, Red down south, Blue everywhere else

July 4, 2014 · 0 Comments

Poll-by-poll unofficial election results released by Elections Ontario for the June 12 canvass showed Dufferin-Caledon as having widely divergent sympathies, depending on where one lives in the riding.
Although the riding wound up Tory Blue by a wide margin, at its north end concern over aggregates had most electors voting Green, while in south Caledon most of the polls turned Liberal Red.
Sylvia Jones easily retained her seat in the Legislature for the Progressive Conservatives with about 40 per cent of the total count, but Green candidate Karren Wallace won more polls in Melancthon and Mulmur townships and Liberal Bobbie Daid did likewise in Bolton.
Examination of the unofficial tally showed that Wallace won six of the nine polls in Melancthon and Mulmur townships, with Jones winning only three polls at Mansfield.
In Shelburne, Jones won in nine of the 16 polls, with the other seven going Green.
There was no such close race in Grand Valley or anywhere in the rest of rural Dufferin, with Jones taking all five Grand Valley polls, as well as the three each in Amaranth and East Garafraxa.
As expected, PC support was almost as strong in Orangeville, where Jones took 50 of the 55 polls, Daid capturing four and one – poll 90 at the Orangeville and District Seniors Centre – winding up in two dead heats — with 74 votes for each of the Liberals and Conservatives and another tie for third place, at 26 votes, for Wallace and NDP candidate Rehya Yazbek.
Although Jones won all or most of the polls in north Caledon, the Liberal vote was strong just about everywhere in the south end of the town.
In Bolton, Daid was shown as the victor in 30 of the 42 polls, while Jones captured 11 and of the 13 residents of the King Nursing Home who voted, five each voted Liberal and PC while the other three cast two ballots for Yazbek and one for Wallace.
In percentage terms, Daid was noticeably out in front in Bolton, with a little more than 41 per cent of the vote, to 34 per cent for Jones. There was thought Wallace would have strength in Bolton from foes of a massive Canadian Tire development currently under construction in the village’s industrial area. But in fact, she took a little less than nine per cent of the vote, compared to almost 13 per cent for Yazbek.
As for the rest of Caledon, things were almost the opposite. Jones was solidly ahead with 42 per cent of the vote to 32 per cent for Daid. And the Green machine of Wallace bested Yazbek by about two percentage points (12.7 to 10.8).