The Liberals narrowly held on to the Nova Scotia riding of Cape Breton-Canso, after Mike Kelloway seized 38.5 per cent of the vote, Global News has declared.
Global News is projecting Justin Trudeau’s Liberals will form a minority government.
Kelloway took the torch for the Liberals in the riding after long-time Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner decided not to run for re-election in 2019.
Cape Breton-Canso has gone Liberal for almost a decade thanks to six straight wins by Cuzner since 2000. In his last re-election bid in 2015, the Liberal MP had won by a landslide margin, just shy of 60 per cent.
Conservative runner-up Alfie MacLeod came in a close second with 34.5 per cent of the vote, with 99 per cent of the polls counted.
Kelloway, a special project administrator at the Nova Scotia Community College, was born and raised in Glace Bay, according to his website. The son of parents who worked in the coal mining and fishing industries of the town, he started his career as a youth worker after studying Community Studies at Cape Breton University and pursuing graduate studies in education at the University of Calgary.
MacLeod, meanwhile, is a well-known name in Nova Scotia politics.
Until recently, the Conservative candidate was the Progressive Conservative (PC) MLA in the Cape Breton riding of Sydney River-Mira-Louisbourg and had been the speaker of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly and PC caucus chair. He resigned his provincial seat at the end of July in order to stage his second run in a federal election after losing to Cuzner in 2000.
The riding is made up of a U-shaped section of southern Cape Breton Island that includes the Acadian communities in northeastern Nova Scotia and part of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
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