The results of the final elections in districts closed soon

A handful of closed tours, including an exciting photographic finale at Vancouver Granville, are still waiting for mail-in ballots to be counted to determine the final result.

But Elections Canada says it expects the majority of the 850,000 mail-in ballots, which were not counted Monday night, to be counted by the end of Wednesday.

Four trips that were too close to call on Election Night – Fredericton, Edmonton Center, Northwest Territories and Yukon – were declared Wednesday by the Liberals after the count concluded.

A fifth, Toronto’s Spadina-Fort York, was declared for Kevin Vuong, who was on the ballot as a Liberal although the party overruled him over a late campaign disclosure that he had been charged with sexual assault in 2019. The charge was dropped later, but the party has said that Vuong will have to sit as an independent deputy.

On the Toronto walk through Davenport, liberal Julie Dzerowicz beat NDP candidate Alejandra Bravo by 165 votes.

In the Winnipeg area, ride the Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley, conservative incumbent Marty Morantz beat liberal Doug Eyolfson by 24 votes in results published on the Elections Canada website. A count is expected.

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In a series of razor-sharp races, candidates were holding their breath to see if mail-in ballots confirmed the results of in-person voting.

In Edmonton Griesbach, where The Canadian Press projects that Blake Desjarlais scored a remarkable NDP victory over the Conservatives, mail-in ballots are still being counted.

Some 1,660 ballots were still being counted in one of the election’s closest races in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Just 30 votes separate Liberal incumbent Terry Sheehan from Conservative Sonny Spina.

In Trois-Rivières, Que., Where the Bloc Québécois leads by a handful of votes in a close fight between the Bloc, the Liberals and the Conservatives, vote-by-mail ballots are likely to ensure the bottom line.

An analysis of early voting-by-mail results by public opinion firm Mainstreet Research suggested that Liberal supporters were far more likely to have voted by mail than Tory and NDP supporters.

Pollster Quito Maggi said that progressive voters, such as in the United States during the presidential elections last fall, were more inclined to choose to vote by mail, rather than attend polling stations during the COVID pandemic.

Maggi’s analysis found that roughly 40 percent of the postal ballots were from Liberal voters, compared with 30 percent for Conservatives and 16 percent of people who voted for the NDP. Only eight percent of the Bloc’s voters voted by mail, in constituencies declared so far.

“Liberals have a much bigger advantage on mail-in ballots,” Maggi said.

“As in the US, more progressive voters were afraid to go out during the pandemic and ordered their ballots by mail. Most of the Conservative vote is in rural constituencies. There is less fear and apprehension of going out to vote in places like rural Saskatchewan. ”

Final results continued to flow across the country on Wednesday as the mail-in ballots were counted. But Elections Canada has warned that in some constituencies with thousands of votes by mail, final results may not be available until Friday.

In some districts, verification of ballots by mail took all of Tuesday before counting could begin, an Elections Canada spokesperson confirmed.

Mail ballots should be carefully reviewed to make sure they have been signed and that people have not already voted in person or mailed more than one ballot.

In narrow constituencies, candidates are likely to request a recount, which could further delay the outcome.

Many results have yet to be finally declared in close battles where mail-in ballots could determine who wins and who loses.

In Nanaimo-Ladysmith, 989 votes separate new Democrat Lisa Marie Barron from conservative Tamara Kronis, with incumbent Green Paul Manly relatively close behind. As of Wednesday, 6,892 postal votes were still counting.

In Richmond Center, 691 votes separate the liberal Wilson Miao from the conservative Alice Wong. 4,463 mail ballots are still being counted.

British Columbia received the most mail ballots of any province.

In Victoria, more than 12,600 people voted by mail, the most in Canada, followed by Saanich-Gulf Islands, where more than 10,700 people chose to vote by mail.

Elections Canada spokesman Matthew McKenna said that verifying a large number of ballots delayed the counting in some areas.

“Local ballot counting will take place around the clock; local offices also had to do special ballot checks, and for many, that took all day yesterday,” he said Wednesday. “We hope that the vast majority will be counted at the end of the day.”

This Canadian Press report was first published on September 22, 2021.