Your vote matters Monday ... but only if you use it

For those who didn’t leave it until Monday there were several ways to vote in the federal election.

Not any more.

Advance polling days are done and gone, vote by mail has closed up shop and your nearest Elections Canada office is no longer an option.

It’s down to Election Day, Monday, Oct. 21. Polling stations open at 9:30 a.m. and close at 9:30 p.m.

We hope everyone in Peterborough and area who hasn’t already voted will be making that trip to their local polling station, taking a ballot card from the Elections Canada official and marking an X beside a candidate’s name.

Who you should vote for is your own decision. But it is not too late to provide a little more information about this riding’s history and what your vote might mean in the big picture.

Ah, yes, the big picture.

The calculus of a Canadian federal election is complicated. Technically, everyone votes for a local candidate. You probably know the choices in Peterborough-Kawartha riding: Conservative, Michael Skinner; Green party, Andrew MacGregor; Liberal, Maryam Monsef (the incumbent); NDP, Candace Shaw; Alexander Murphy, People’s Party of Canada; Ken Ranney, Stop Climate Change; Robert Bowers, independent.

But experience shows that a local candidate is not the main draw for most voters. People generally vote first for parties, the style and substance of government the party promises. Affinity for the party leader comes second, and then the riding candidate.

Who gets elected in this riding will have an impact. They will, given the normal course of events, represent Peterborough and district for the next four years.

They will be Peterborough’s face on the national stage. They will also be responsible for seeing that residents’ daily concerns with government are taken care of, trouble with taxes or visas or any number of points where federal jurisdiction touches our lives.

Peterborough is known as a bellwether riding, a place that elects MPs who are members of the winning party. That’s been the case in every federal election but one going back more than 50 years.

The result is that this riding has always been represented by a Liberal or a Conservative, the only parties that have managed to be elected to government in Canada’s history.

Just days ago the Conservative and Liberal candidates both conceded the local vote will be close on Monday. No surprise there in that polls show very little space between the two parties nationally.

If the bellwether tradition holds, it would make sense the race here will also be tight.

But not necessarily.

The past five elections covering 15 years produced only one close outcome — 2006 when former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro won by just 2,000 votes. His share was 35.9 per cent, edging Liberal Diane Lloyd at 32.4 per cent.

Other than 2006, margins of victory have been substantial: Roughly 6,000 votes, 7,000, 9,000 and 14,000. No winner received less than 43 per cent of the total.

Yet three of those five elections resulted in minority governments.

It seems Peterborough swings with the victorious party, and swings hard even in close elections.

Whether that will happen on Monday remains to be seen. Another minority government seems possible.

Knowing what might happen is hard, maybe impossible.

Knowing that you voted is what counts.