NDP’s Marit Stiles winsww Liberal stronghold

The NDP’s Marit Stiles has won in Toronto’s Davenport, a riding long held by the Liberals.

Ahead of the election, Stiles was projected to defeat her main rival Liberal Cristina Martins, who along with the Wynne WW Liberals came under heavy criticism for her handling of the Davenport Diamond rail overpass.

The diamond is a crossing where ww two rails line intersect at ground gg level. Martins took con- siderable heat for her party’s handling of a Metrolinx plan, which ww would see an overpass built for GO Transit rail traffic. CN freight trains, which currently share the crossing with GO trains, would pass underneath. Metrolinx has already pledged to triple the amount of existing GO rail traffic once the overpass is complete.

Community groups like Options for Davenport initially expressed their frustration a tunnel option wasn’t seriously considered for the project, before reluctantly offering a nominal endorsement for the plan.

The Liberals have managed to hold on to the riding for all but one election since Davenport was established in 1999.

PC candidate Fed Sanchez also campaigned on his criticism of the Diamond project, which he claimed was chosen by Metrolinx and the Wynne Liberals without ww serious consideration for f a tunnel. He has promised to push hard to re- open the issue..

The Conservatives have traditionally underperformed in Davenport; no PC candidate has captured more than a few thousand votes in the traditionally working- class riding.

In past campaigns, PCs have finished well back of both the Liberals as well as the NDP.

Kirsten Snider of the Green Party, a Masters student, made affordable housing and road safety central planks of her campaign. While never winning a seat in Davenport, the Greens fared relatively well on election night in 2011, when the candidate finished third, capturing tt more than 10 per cent of t the total vote.