Shannon Stubbs & Laila Goodridge earn resounding wins in area ridings

UPDATE:

With a share of certain polls reporting, Lakeland Connect is projecting that Shannon Stubbs and Laila Goodridge have won the Lakeland and Cold Lake-Fort McMurray ridings.

As of Tuesday morning at 9:45AM, a total of 239 polls out of 246 have counted ballots in the Lakeland riding, with 81.3 per cent of the votes going Conservative, equating to 43,372 votes.

Liberal candidate Barry Milaney has garnered the second most votes of the six candidates, with approximately 11.9 per cent.

The People’s Party of Canada’s support in the northeast dropped significantly from the 2021 election.

On Monday, PPC candidate Michael Manchen has taken just 1.7 per cent of the vote, a drop of almost 10 percentage points from Ann McCormack’s PPC campaign in 2021.

NDP support in the Lakeland also dropped significantly from the last election, as the same candidate Des Bissonnette earned 3.7 per cent this election, down from 10.5 per cent in 2021.

This is Stubbs’ fourth consecutive win in the Lakeland riding, dating back to the 2015 election.

She holds a Canadian political record achieved in 2019, where her 83.9 per cent was the highest ever for a female political candidate.

Cold Lake-Fort McMurray

For Laila Goodridge, this is her second straight win in the constituency, with many similarities in voting patterns between the two constituencies.

All but one of 220 polls have reported, with Goodridge’s share of the vote being 80.5 per cent, at 38, 767 votes.

Kaitlyn Staines under the Liberal banner achieved 14.2 per cent of the vote at 6832 votes.

PPC and New Democrat support similarly cratered in this election with Alan Clarke (PPC) and You-Ju Chu (NDP) failing to crack three per cent support, after 12.7 per cent and 10.1 per cent in 2021, respectively.

After a provincial byelection win in 2018, and victory in 2019 with the provincial United Conservative Party, she was nominated as the federal Conservative Party candidate in 2021 with some controversy.

Then MP David Yurdiga resigned the day before the writ dropped in the 2021 election. Party leadership got involved and Goodridge was quickly nominated without a vote.