The History of Windsor West riding

Herb Gray was first elected to Parliament for the riding of Essex West on June 18, 1962, as a member of the Liberal Party of Canada.  He was re-elected in twelve subsequent federal elections, making him the longest continuously-serving Member of Parliament in Canadian history

Four decades, from 1962 to 2002

Brian Masse:  Masse joined the federal New Democratic Party in 1997 and was first elected to the Canadian Parliament in a by-election held on May 13, 2002. The election was called after the resignation of Herb Gray, a long-time Liberal cabinet minister who had been a member of Parliament (MP) since 1962. Masse won the NDP nomination without opposition and defeated Liberal candidate Richard Pollock by 2,477 votes to win the seat.

Brian Masse NDP won with 44.1 % of the vote.  If I am doing my math correctly, 21,702 votes and his expenditures were $88,457.01 that equals $4.07 a vote.

Not sure why there is no expenditure for the Conservative party but the PPC only paid out $5,606.67 and got 4,080 votes

Brian Masse NDP won again.  What a close race with the Liberal candidate Sandra Pupatello.  Similar expenditures as well.  The Conservatives did well with Henry Lau compared to the last election.  But the PPC chose a bad candidate and it shows in the results

Brian Masse NDP wins with 51.35% of the vote.  

Brian Masse NDP wins with  54.33%

The Conservatives had a great year with Lisa Lumley with 31.64% of the vote 

Brian Masse NDP won with  52.54%.  The Conservatives came in second with candidate Lisa Lumley with 22.58%

Brian Masse NDP won with 49.49% of the vote. Liberals with only 25.39 but a close race with the Conservative party candidate Al Teshuba.

The turnout was up but still only 57.29%

Brian Masse NDP wins with 45.97 of the vote.  Liberals second and third was the Conservative party

Brian Masse NDP wins by 45.97%

Herb Gray, Liberal wins with 54.21%

Herb Gray, Liberal wins with 55.2% of the vote

Herb Gray, Liberal wins with 73% of vote

Herb Gray, Liberal with 56.24% of votes

Herb Gray wins with 40.55% of votes

Herb Gray wins with 58.50% of votes

This was the era of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.  According to this article:

Trudeau’s Record

Neither the 1979 nor the 1980 elections were exactly voluntary. The Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau hung on, well into the fifth year of its mandate, hoping against hope that events would save it. The only effect was a string of by-election misfortunes that brought the government perilously close to losing its majority, further narrowing Trudeau’s options.

The election, called for 22 May 1979, pitted the veteran Trudeau against three neophyte opponents — Joe Clark of the Progressive Conservatives (PC), Ed Broadbent of the New Democratic Party (NDP) and Fabien Roy of the Créditistes. Liberals were uneasily aware that the government’s record was at best incomplete; a more realistic assessment would have labelled it uninspired. Trudeau had a tendency to believe that the right process would produce the right results, and so one study followed another.

Separatist Threat

Meanwhile the separatists, the Parti Québécois under René Lévesque, had formed the government in Quebec, presenting Canada with an unprecedented challenge.

Overall, the Conservatives won 136 seats, and the Liberals only 114. The NDP improved its position to 26 seats. On the other hand, the Liberals were considerably ahead in the popular vote nationally. But the seat total was what counted (see Electoral Systems), and Trudeau promptly resigned. Clark had won, coming close to a majority in Parliament, but his government

 The 2025 election will be about taxes – but this time it will be against the Liberals.

The result was almost a foregone conclusion. The Liberals rose 4 per cent in the popular vote, and the Conservatives sank 3 per cent. The NDP gained not quite two per cent, and the Créditistes disappeared. As a consequence, Trudeau won 74 out of 75 seats from Quebec in the House of Commons, and did well in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, where voters resented Crosbie’s gas tax.

Read more here

Herb Gray won with 48.56% of votes

Herb Gray, Liberal Party wins with 49.20% of votes

Herb Gray wins with 49.20% of votes

Herb Gray, Liberal wins with 54.07% of votes

For the Windsor – Tecumseh riding, they were the victim of the Conservative party choosing the wrong leader.  O’Toole was not a strong enough leader in the eyes of Conservatives. It is because of the CPC choosing O’Toole that Maxime Bernier left the Conservative party and started the PPC in 2018.  Many of the candidates who ran for the PPC were life long Conservatives but could not support the new leader of the party.  The biggest reason that conservatives turned to the PPC was because of their platform.  This election vs 209 saw Peoples Party votes went from 1,279 for the candidate Dan Burr, to 5,927 in 2021 for Victor Green. But so much has happened since 2021 and many die hard Conservatives are returning to the party.

In the riding of Windsor – Tecumseh there wasn’t a candidate in place at the beginning   This did not help the Conservatives, as there was a PPC candidate who was well ahead in his campaign.  There is also the subject of anti-vax which had a lot to do with how people voted.

It can be best explained in this article 

Global news said:

The margin of loss for Erin O’Toole‘s Conservatives was smaller than the size of the vote for the far-right People’s Party of Canada in just over 20 ridings in the Canadian federal election.

But amid questions over O’Toole’s future as leader, political science experts caution that explaining those numbers is not as simple as assuming the PPC split the vote and cost Conservatives all of those ridings.

“If you add up the Conservative and the PPC, it finishes ahead of the Liberals. That’s assuming that every PPC voter was a Conservative voter and that’s not the case,” said Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“Now, the majority were, but not all of them. Some of them are nonvoters, they were coming out solely on anti-vax. You can’t use the simple math of one plus one equals two.”

Demographics of Windsor – Tecumseh

The age group with the largest numbers is over 65.  In 2021 there was a larger percentage of women then men.  For employment it shows the higher percentage of residents are in Sales and Service followed by Trades and Transport. 

In the 2019 Canadian Federal Election, Leo Demarce was chosen to be the CPC candidate and came in third.  CBC reported:

Windsor-Tecumseh has been an NDP stronghold since the district was first contested in 2004.

Joe Comartin  (NDP)held the riding from 2004 until 2015, when Cheryl Hardcastle took over the district for the NDP.

The results in the 2019 election show the Green Party votes growing and coming in 4th and the People’s party was 5th.  This was the first Federal election for the PPC

 

A better year for the Conservatives.  Coming in second but -6.08 votes lost and the Liberals came in third.  Jo-Anne Gignac is well known for her career in politics as a Windsor Councillor since 2003 and was the only one who put her name forward as a candidate for the Conservative party.

Gignac was quoted as saying:

“As soon as Joe Comartin said he was stepping down, this became a seat anyone could take,” says political analyst Cheryl Collier. “It’s not really about the party, it’s about the person. When you have a long-standing person who steps down, it opens things up.”

It appears she put a lot of effort into her campaign judging by her expenditures.  But the NDP with lesser expenses won

In the 2011 election results there was only a 44, 772 turnout at the ballots.  Conservative candidate Denise Ghanam did well and came in second.  

Interesting facts about this electoral riding: 

History: Comartin has held this riding since 2000, but prior to that it was generally a Liberal stronghold, having been represented by MP Mark Macguigan from 1968 to 1984, and Shaughnessy Cohen from 1993 to 1999.

Demographics: The 2011 National Household Survey says Windsor-Tecumseh has the second highest number of Iraqi and Lebanese immigrants in Canada outside Quebec

The 2008 Election showed a close percentage of votes for  both the Conservative and Liberal candidates.  But the NDP made gains at this election.  The NDP invested $67, 619  for expenditures and only $15, 626 for the Conservative candidate

According to Windsor news today in 2021:  they said:  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.  She  finished third with 25.7 per cent of the vote, slightly less than the total by Tory candidate Leo DeMarce in 2019.  Unfortuanely this 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.  We have to wonder if Victor Green had run as a Conservative in this election, would Windsor Tecumseh of had their first win since 1930.