After listening to polls and more polls predicting a minority Conservative government, the final election result surprised many Tory supporters in Brandon including Jim McCrae, campaign manager for Merv Tweed, MP for Brandon-Souris.
“I read polls too much. Polls have been saying Tory minority, Tory minority,” said McCrae, former provincial cabinet minister in Manitoba and a city councillor in Brandon, as approximately 100 Tory supporters held wine glasses and watched the election results on television.
McCrae and many others inside Tweed’s campaign office, in a strip mall near Brandon’s downtown, were caught off guard when the television networks officially proclaimed that Stephen Harper would form a majority government.
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Although the crowd’s reaction to the first Tory majority in 18 years was subdued, Tweed, who was first elected to Parliament in 2004, was confident that his party would defy the pollsters.
“I’m not surprised. I’ve been talking with my colleagues in Ontario for the last 10 days…and they said that there were a lot of ridings that would come our way if the stars lined up and it looks like tonight they did.”
Following his easy victory in Brandon- Souris, receiving nearly 64 percent of the vote, Tweed was asked if he’s interested in the job of speaker of the House of Commons.
“I’ve had some guys broach me on it, but that’s not what I’m thinking about right now,” he said. “You never stop thinking about opportunities, but we’ll see what happens over the next couple of weeks.”
The Conservative party, as expected, retained all of its seats in the rural areas of southern Manitoba. However, the real story of the election night in Manitoba was the Tories’ upset wins in Winnipeg.
The Conservatives won Winnipeg South Centre, a riding that has been Liberal for three decades, and Elm-wood- Transcona, which has been in NDP hands since 1979.
Overall, the Tories easily trumped the NDP in Manitoba, earning 250,000 votes to the NDP’s 125,000.
With the two wins, the Conservatives will send 11 Manitoba MPs to Ottawa, the NDP will have two representatives and the Liberals, one.
