Liberals’ Chandra Arya poised to retake riding
Electoral district has different patterns of federal and provincial party support
Liberal candidate Chandra Arya appeared to be on track for his second consecutive win in the Ottawa riding of Nepean. Very early returns on Monday — just two polls reporting — saw him with 45.5 per cent of the vote, compared to nearly 40 per cent for his main rival, Brian St. Louis, who carried the Progressive Conservative banner.
Zaff Ansari and Jean-Luc Cooke, the New Democratic Party and Green party candidates, respectively, were seen as long shots in a riding dominated by government workers and commuters. They received eight per cent and four per cent of the vote in the early tabulation, up slightly from the 2015 election.
The result will likely prove a big disappointment for Cooke, the Green party of Canada president who has contested the riding (and its Nepean-Carleton predecessor) in three straight federal elections, but failed to top five per cent of the vote.
Arya, who formerly served on the board of Invest Ottawa — the city’s economic development agency — couldn’t take a win for granted despite grabbing 52 per cent of the vote in the 2015 federal election.
The relatively new riding, carved out of the northern portion of the former Nepean-Carleton riding, is beholden to no single political party. Many of the same Nepean voters who supported Arya federally Monday and in 2015 cast their lot provincially with Progressive Conservative candidate Lisa MacLeod, who prevailed by a wide margin in the 2018 Ontario election.
The riding — a large tract that stretches from Eagleson Road in the west to the Rideau River, and the Queensway in the north to Bankfield Road in the south — has the same boundaries for both federal and provincial elections. Barrhaven is the key population centre.
Interestingly, federal NDP candidate Ansari ran in last year’s provincial contest in Nepean, where he was runner-up to MacLeod with nearly 29 per cent of the vote. It was an unusually strong showing by the NDP, but it came about largely because of the collapse of the Kathleen Wynne-led Liberals.
Nevertheless, Ansari had hoped his provincial result would translate into a better result in Monday’s federal contest, especially given the unexpectedly strong performance by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. It was not to be.
Nepean riding residents are relatively engaged politically. Nearly 78 per cent of the 84,000 registered voters cast their ballots in the 2015 federal election.
In previous elections, Nepean was part a larger riding known as Nepean-Carleton, represented by Progressive Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre.
Following the 2011 census, the riding was split in two: Nepean to the north and Carleton in the more rural south. Poillievre successfully contested the Carleton riding in 2015, when he won nearly 55 per cent of the vote. He was expected to prevail again Monday night.