Dean’s machine harvests 7th victory in west Niagara

Conservative incumbent Dean Allison won his riding for the seventh time in a row and bucked the trend of close local races in his stronghold of Niagara West, winning more than 46 per cent of the votes cast Monday.

You never take any election for granted," Allison said. You are always grateful when people put their trust in you."

With 97 per cent of the polls reporting, Allison had 23,252 votes, for about 46 per cent of the votes counted.

Ian Bingham, the Liberal runner-up, finished with 15,156 votes and 30 per cent of the votes cast.

Allison has won the past three elections by an average margin of about 12,000 votes in the riding, which includes West Lincoln, Lincoln, Grimsby, Pelham and Wainfleet. His only loss in west Niagara was the first time he ran in 2000 in the old Erie-Lincoln riding.

Monday night, Niagara West was the first of the four Niagara ridings national pundits declared over.

The closest of Allison's past races was in 2019, when he won with a 7,018 vote margin. Allison was well on his way to matching or surpassing that margin of victory again with an 8,096 lead when this story was filed.

There's a lot of frustration on the ground," Allison said. I still haven't had a chance sit down and analyze all the numbers, and there are still ballots left to be counted. But, at this early point, when I look at it from a national perspective, my goodness, it gives me a sense of deja vu.

It looks the same, or pretty close to the same, as we left off just five weeks ago."

Nameer Rahman, the NDP candidate, received 6,252 votes for 12.9 per cent of the vote.

Allison said voter engagement picked up after Labour Day as the races heated up nationally.

A lot of stories you hear are anecdotal, but there was a high level of frustration on the doorstep," Allison said. There was not a ton of engagement before Labour Day weekend. People were not really into it and not paying much attention.

The last couple of weeks, I heard people saying they didn't really understand why we were having an election - and that is probably reflective of the results we see across the country."

There were questions about whether the People's Party of Canada might reduce the margin enough to bring Allison's challengers within striking distance. Shaunalee Derkson drew 3,363 votes, but that total wasn't enough to have much of an impact. She did, however, more than triple the 869 votes Miles Morton pulled for the party in 2019.

Derkson's total represented 7.2 per cent of the electorate.

Did we miss an opportunity with some of the people that feel disaffected with the Liberal party?" Allison asked. There may be an opportunity there where we can still maintain our values, but at the same time appeal to those who voted for the PPC.

A lot of people said Erin (O'Toole) had policies that tacked to the middle with issues like mental health and policies on addiction and counselling centres. These are all things I think the government should be doing a better job on. They are important issues, especially given the year we've come through and the stress it has put on so many people."

Green party candidate Joanna Kocsis had received 1,473 for 2.9 per cent of the vote at midnight.

Harold Jonker of the Christian Heritage Party had 626 votes, or 1.2 per cent of the electorate that voted.

Bill Sawchuk is a St. Catharines-based reporter with the Standard. Reach him via email: william.sawchuk@niagaradailies.com