ANALYSIS

BY JACOB FEHR

LAST WEEK, Haldimand-Norfolk re-elected independent candidate Bobbi Ann Brady as MPP. In doing so, our riding opted to be represented by someone outside party politics for the second straight election.

While many pollsters, pundits, and locals believed the competition would be close, MPP Brady won by a landslide with 33,669 votes compared to runner-up Amy Martin’s 12,949 votes. In fact, the margin of 20,720 votes between the two frontrunners was greater than the 19,227 total votes received by all five unsuccessful candidates combined.

It wasn’t as simple as MPP Brady having a larger pre-existing base of support than her peers. This year, she received more than double the 15,921 votes cast for her in 2022.

Furthermore, every party candidate in Haldimand-Norfolk received fewer votes than their predecessor in 2022. The PCs received 902 fewer votes; the Liberals received 411 fewer; the NDP received 4,164 fewer; the Greens received 1,020 fewer; and the New Blues received 1,062 fewer. That’s 7,559 fewer party candidate votes than in 2022.

It’s possible that many of those 7,559 Haldimand-Norfolk residents who didn’t vote the same in this election as they did in 2022 voted for MPP Brady. But even if one assumes they all did, combined with her total from the previous election, that’s still only 23,480 votes. Where did an additional 10,000 votes for MPP Brady come from?

Looking at registered voter turnout might help close the gap. Turnout for registered voters in Haldimand-Norfolk was 54.8 per cent in this election, up by just under six percentage points from 48.9 per cent in 2022.

With 96,586 registered voters this year, approximately 52,929 voted. In 2022, registered voter turnout was 45,679. That means approximately 7,250 more registered voters went to the polls locally this year than in 2022. One can presume much of that support was for MPP Brady and that the rest came from previously unregistered voters.

All of this indicates that MPP Brady was remarkably successful in motivating constituents to vote for her. Since she believes there is no monopoly on good ideas, perhaps her peers would be wise to ask her what made her campaign work so well.

One person who doesn’t need MPP Brady’s advice on electioneering is Premier Doug Ford, whose PC government cruised to a third consecutive majority. Unless he calls another early election, the province is set to spend over a decade with him at the helm.

Given his party’s successful run, it seems many Ontarians believe Premier Ford is right about some things. But there’s at least one thing he got wrong: Bobbi Ann Brady still has a job, and Haldimand-Norfolk is happy to go its own way without him.

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Originally published March 5, 2025