Global News is projecting that Conservative candidate Ryan Williams has won the Bay of Quinte riding.
Williams has flipped the riding from red to blue, beating out Liberal incumbent Neil Ellis by. a 4.8 per cent margin with nearly all ballots counted.
The riding was not called until mid-Tuesday, due to the close nature of the race, and the 6,300 or so mail-in ballots needing to be counted.
In late march, Williams announced his resignation from Belleville city council to pursue the aims of becoming Member of Parliament for the Conservatives in the Bay of Quinte riding.
Ellis won the Bay of Quinte seat in the 2019 federal election. It was a tight race, with the MP beating Tory candidate Tim Durkin by 2.4 percentage points. The representatives for the NDP and Green Party came in third and fourth place.
Ellis was first elected as MP in the 2015 federal election, and served two terms as the mayor of Belleville from 2006 to 2014. Ellis won over 50 per cent of the vote in 2015.
The riding Bay of Quinte consists of the cities of Prince Edward, Quinte West, and part of Belleville.
The riding was created out of parts of the electoral districts of Prince Edward—Hastings and Northumberland—Quinte West, two ridings that elected Conservative candidates in federal elections prior to 2013, when the ridings were reconstituted.
Large populations in this riding consist of immigrants from the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands.
Over 90 per cent of this riding’s population is Anglophone, and 4.5 per cent identifies as Aboriginal.
Candidates
Liberal: Neil Ellis (incumbent)
Conservative: Ryan Williams
NDP: Stephanie Bell
Green: Erica Charlton
PPC: Janine Leclerc