Branden Leslie was re-elected as the Member of Parliament for Portage-Lisgar by a wide margin Monday night.
At press time, with 194 of 195 polls reporting, Leslie had received 31,687 votes, or 69.5 per cent.
His nearest competitor was Liberal Robert Kreis (10,358 votes) followed by New Democratic Party candidate Lisa Tessier (1,984 votes), People’s Party of Canada’s Kevin Larson (973 votes), and the Green Party’s Janine G. Gibson (592 votes).
Voter turnout was nearly 68 per cent of registered voters.
Elsewhere in the region, the preliminary results had Conservative Ted Falk retain his seat in the Provencher riding with 34,194 votes, 66 per cent of those cast. He beat out the Liberal’s Trevor Kirczenow (13,450 votes), NDP’s Brandy Schmidt (2,367 votes), PPC candidate Noël Gautron (940 votes), and the Green Party’s Blair Mahaffy (699 votes)
In Brandon-Souris, Grant Jackson won the seat for the Conservatives with 27,118 votes, besting Liberal candidate Ghazanfar Ali Tarar (10,075) and the NDP’s Quentin Robinson (6,276 votes)
Nationally, the Liberals, led by Mark Carney, won their fourth consecutive government with 43.5 per cent of the vote at press time, winning 168 seats. The Conservatives were set to form the Official Opposition with 144 seats.