So I ran the math on the election outcome on this, as someone who lives in the riding directly:
32401 / 116259 = ~ 27.9% (Voter turnout)
27.9 * 0.574 (Percentage of vote which went to Jivani) = 16.01%
16% of the electorate gets to decide a candidate for the remaining 84%. I don't know about anyone else, or whether it's just supposed to be the way that things go, but it gives me a real ick feeling when I see a number like that. Maybe if it was something closer to 30% or something along those lines, I could at least begrudgingly accept that this is such a solid Conservative riding, but only 16%?!
I just really hate voter apathy, guys. Come on, we had 4 days of early voting, mail-in voting, the actual vote day itself, you can legally request time off work to go vote if you need it... was it that difficult to get out and vote, or am I just missing some other context?!
Not overly surprising. As the CBC says, the Conservatives have held this seat for decades at this point. I think the most surprising thing about this election is that the PPC's vote share held fairly steady between this election and the last. Meaning the Conservative gains came either directly from the Liberals and NDP, or as a relative gain from those two party's voters staying home. That probably feels good in the moment, however if the national mood shifts between now and the next election in (probably) October 2025, the PPC maintaining the small relevance that it has could end up biting the CPC in the ass.
Also I listened to the guys speech and he sounded coherent at first, then he went on about the liberal elites running the corps that make life more expensive for working people and I fucking lost it. Straight face and all, truly believing this, or an amazing actor. So close to grasping the trurh!
He knows his audience, and this audience doesn't give a damn what happens as long as their house value goes up and their property taxes go down.
Durham is...weird. Other than some very small pockets, it's like no one really lives there. Oh, sure, there's schools and strip malls and housing developments, but there is almost no industry outside of big-box retail: everyone is either in construction, or works in Markham or Toronto. There's little to no stake that anyone has in the community, outside of mercenary concerns about taxes, so as long as you keep the numbers going in the right direction, you're golden. The reason Liberal support collapsed is purely because of those mercenary concerns: largely a) inflation, and b) housing (being either unaffordable, or, perversely, dropping in value. Yeah, weird, I know...)
So when you have a community that doesn't care about the community except for the value of it, it's going to be ripe for the kind of politician that only talks about money. Social concerns come into it, but only couched around how they're costing you money. It's Conservative, but more Doug Ford conservative than Pierre Poillevre conservative.
Put it this way. Toronto has "citizens". Montreal has "citizens". Even places like Lanark County, Ontario, have "citizens". Durham has "taxpayers".
PPC support doesn't seem to have moved much either way. What I mean to say is that CPC gains (speaking as a percentage) would have to come either from previous Liberal/NDP voters voting for the CPC this election, or alternatively from Liberal/NDP voters not showing up in numbers as large as the previous election making Conservative support look stronger relative to the weaker showing from the other two.
That said, polling-wise the country is absolutely feeling further right than it did during the 2021 election. We're still a year and a half away from the probable next election though so it's a bit early to take that as fate.