Today, the voters of Simcoe-Grey have elected a new member of parliament, but results have not been reported yet.
The incumbent Conservative MP, Terry Dowdall was seeking re-election after one term. He was elected in 2019, replacing former Conservative MP Kellie Leitch, who did not run in 2019.
Simcoe-Grey has been a conservative riding since 2004 when Helena Guergis won a close election in the riding taking 100 more votes than incumbent Liberal MP Paul Bonwick – 22,496 for Guergis and 22,396 for Bonwick.
Bonwick was first elected in 1997 and again in 2000. Bonwick won his first election in 1997 with 17,895 votes, and his second with 22,224 votes or 44.8 per cent of the votes cast in Simcoe-Grey.
After her win against Bonwick, Guergis was re-elected in 2006 with 49 per cent (30,000 votes) of the Simcoe-Grey votes.
Guergis did run in 2011, but as an independent. She was defeated by Conservative candidate Kellie Leitch who took 49.37 per cent (31,784 votes) of the vote. Leitch won again in 2015 with 46.56 per cent (30,612 votes) of the local vote.
In the 2019 federal election, Terry Dowdall secured 43.5 per cent of the vote (32,812 individual votes) with Liberal Lorne Kenney in second winning 31.7 per cent of the vote (23,925 individual votes).
Green candidate Sherri Jackson was third in 2019 with 11.4 per cent of the vote (8,589 votes), followed by NDP Ilona Matthews with 11.2 per cent of the vote (8,462 votes).
Other candidates in 2019 included Richard Sommer of the People's Party of Canda (1,416 votes) and Tony D'Angelo of the Veterans Coalition Party (305 votes).
There were 76,001 ballots cast in Simcoe-Grey in 2019 with 492 rejected ballots for a total of 75,509 valid ballots.
In 2015, there were 65,747 valid votes cast in the riding plus 225 rejected ballots.
According to Elections Canada, there are 120,703 electors on the voting list for Simcoe-Grey.
The riding encompasses 1,950 square kilometres and a population of 129,944 people based on the 2016 census data. The communities included in the riding are New Tecumseth, Collingwood, Essa, Wasaga Beach, Clearview Township, Adjala-Tosorontio, and The Blue Mountains.
Now that polls have closed, watch Collingwoodtoday.ca/canadavotes2021 for local results for today’s federal election.
