PCs cruise to victory

PC incumbent Gila Martow easily won the riding of Thornhill on Thursday night.

The race in Thornhill saw Martow up against Liberal candidate Sabi Ahsan, NDP candidate Ezra Tanen, and Green Party candidate Rachel Dokhoian.

Both Martow and Ahsan identified transit as a major campaign issue ahead of the race, a and acknowledged the region’s desire for an extension of the Yonge- YY University subway line into Markham and Richmond Hill.

Though the riding has mostly been PC since its establishment in 1999, the race for Thornhill has always been tight in the past. The PCs won the seat in 2014 after a tight race and a data- entry error, with Martow winning ww by a mere 85 votes a ahead of Liberal candidate San- dra Yeung Racco.

The race was initially called for Yeung Racco, also with an 85- vote margin. The polling error was discovered and forced a recount, flipping the win to Martow. The PC seat was won with ww less than 0.2 per cent of the v vote separating them from the Liberals. The reversal was incredibly unusual, and the dataentry issue was reportedly a first for Ontario, Elections Ontario said at the time.

Thornhill has historically been a hard- fought seat between the Liberals and the PCs. In 1999, the newly formed seat was ww won by the PCs with less t than 1 per cent of the vote. In 2003, the story was similar, with ww just over 1 per cent of the v vote handing the seat to the Liberals. Then, in 2007, the seat swung ss back to the PCs and Pe- ter Shurman with a slightly larger 3.5- per cent margin.