The battle in Windsor-Tecumseh is still on between candidates from two parties who have represented this riding on Parliament Hill for the past 90 years.
Going into the election, opinion polls had a virtual toss-up battle between Liberal incumbent Irek Kusmierczyk and the NDP's Cheryl Hardcastle. She lost the seat to Kusmierczyk in 2019 by just 629 votes. As of early Tuesday morning, the 2021 version of that race was still too close to call.
Early returns had Kusmierczyk taking an early lead. Soon before 10:30 p.m., Hardcastle pulled out in front and took a sizable advantage.
At 1 a.m. Tuesday, however, late returns had Kusmierczyk coming back and retaining a 499-vote lead with one polling place still to report and mail-in votes yet to be counted.
Before a small group of supporters at Parks and Rec in east Windsor, Kusmierczyk thanked his volunteers and insisted the challenge wasn't over.
"It's going to be close, we've still got advanced voting to go," said Kusmierczyk. "We may not know until Wednesday, but I'll tell you something. No matter how the outcome is, I couldn't be more proud."
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Also mounting a challenge in Windsor-Tecumseh was Conservative Kathy Borrelli, a first-time candidate who is the wife of former Windsor city councillor Paul Borrelli, who finished third with 25.7 per cent of the vote, slightly less than the total by Tory candidate Leo DeMarce in 2019. The region has not had Tory representation in Ottawa since the party last lost the seat in 1930, as the former Essex West riding.
The People's Party of Canada, which only polled 1.6 per cent nationally two years ago, had a stronger-than-anticipated presence with candidate Victor Green. Polls had shown the PPC getting as much as 11 per cent of the total vote in Windsor-Tecumseh. As of early Tuesday morning, Green had won 10.7 per cent of the total vote.
The Green Party had a late entry into the campaign with Henry Oulevey, who had run unsuccessfully in the provincial riding in 2018. Oulevey polled just over one per cent Monday.
Perennial Marxist-Leninist candidate Laura Chesnik rounded out the field in Windsor-Tecumseh with 0.3 per cent of the vote.
According to Elections Canada, Windsor-Tecumseh recorded a 60.1 per cent voter turnout in 2019. In 2021, advance voting numbers released last week showed the riding with a 68.3 per cent increase in the number of people who voted early.
BlackburnNewsWindsor.com will continue to watch the results as they come in.