Tories easily keep grip on area strongholds

The Conservatives held all six of their seats in the broader London region, even as the People's Party of Canada found increased support in the bedrock Tory territory.

Conservatives easily defeated challengers in Southwestern Ontario rural areas stretching from Chatham-kent-leamington and Sarnia-lambton in the west, to Huron-bruce and Perth-wellington in the northeast.

“You can set your watch by some of those Conservative ridings the same way you can with some of the dense, urban ridings in downtown Toronto that are reliably Liberal,” said Matt Farrell, a political science instructor at Fanshawe College.

“This is a longer-term trend, where you live is tied to how you vote . . . . For the time being, until there's a realignment, that looks like it's going to hold.”

Competing for right-leaning voters, the PPC, which gained traction with many in the anti-lockdown movement this time, didn't spoil any races for area Conservatives, but did see its share of the vote rise from the 2019 election.

The PPC, which won less than four per cent of the vote in all six area ridings in 2019, posted its strongest showing in Chatham-kent-leamington, winning 14.6 per cent of the vote with all but three of 272 polls reporting.

“They're definitely not seeing the breakthrough they wanted,” Farrell said. “There are a few ridings in Ontario and out east where it looks like they may have spoiled the Conservatives chances, but in terms of the London area, these ridings are . . . so solidly Conservative we don't even need to pay attention to the PPC.”

With 51.4 per cent of the vote, Huron-bruce Conservative Ben Lobb won the largest share of the vote in the six-riding area. The PPC netted 7.4 per cent, its lowest vote share in the region.

Lambton-kent-middlesex Conservative Lianne Rood won a second term by a 28-point margin, highest in the six-riding region. The party's narrowest area margin of victory was in Chatham-kent-leamington, where Dave Epp finished about 12 points up on Liberal Greg Hetherington.

Lobb and John Nater in neighbouring Perth-wellington were the only area Conservatives to increase their vote share from 2019.

Rood and Dave Mackenzie in Oxford saw their vote share stay relatively stable.