MANITOULIN—Manitoulin Island turned out to be very important to Carol Hughes’ campaign for re-election with voters giving the NDP incumbent almost half of her plurality between second place Liberal candidate Heather Wilson.
Five thousand, five hundred and fifty-four votes were cast on Manitoulin and Birch Island with the following breakdown: 2,649 for Carol Hughes, NDP; 128 in favour of Cal Orok, Green; 1,116 cast for André Robichaud, Conservative; and 1,661 for Heather Wilson, Liberal. The difference between Ms. Hughes’ and Ms. Wilson’s vote on Manitoulin is 988. Throughout the riding of Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing (AMK), Ms. Hughes won the seat with 16,516 votes to Ms. Wilson’s 14,374—a difference of 2,142 votes.
The majority of Manitoulin’s 33 polls voted in favour of Ms. Hughes while Little Current Poll No. 91, Big Lake-Sandfield, 169, Mindemoya, 170 and Gore Bay, 180, all voted in favour of the Liberal Party’s Heather Wilson. Only one of the Island’s polls, 136 Meldrum Bay, saw the majority of votes for the Conservative Party’s André Robichaud. Mindemoya Poll No. 171 had a split of 67 for Mr. Robichaud and 67 for Ms. Hughes while Howland No. 94 had an almost three-way tie between the top three parties. Spring Bay Poll No. 175 was also a close race with 90 votes in favour of Ms. Hughes and 89 for Mr. Robichaud and the Conservatives.
Voter turnout in AMK followed national trends, with 41,535 votes cast on October 19 compared to 36,277 cast in the 2011 election—a substantial difference of 5,258 votes.
The biggest and only winner in this election in terms of gain was the Liberal Party’s Ms. Wilson with 8,736 votes, up from 5,375 votes for the party in 2011. The rest of the parties lost votes in the riding: Ms. Hughes lost 2,231 votes; the Conservatives lost 1,123; while the Green Party also suffered a reduction of 285 votes.
