Article content
Durham Region is staying true blue with Jamil Jivani winning by a wide margin in Monday’s federal byelection.
Article content
The region has been held by the Tories for two decades and won’t be changing after voters went to the polls to elect a new member of Parliament.
Article content
The byelection was called in January after Erin O’Toole announced his retirement from politics and resigned from his seat last year. O’Toole, who was among those congratulating Jivani on social media as he pulled away in the race with a more than 30-percentage-point lead, held the riding for the Conservatives for 11 years and also led the party in the 2021 federal election.
Article content
“I know he will be a strong voice for Durham in Ottawa,” O’Toole said Monday night on X.
Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre also congratulated the “common sense Conservative” on the victory at about 10 p.m.
Article content
Jivani jumped to an early lead and never looked back. As of late Monday night, he had secured 56% of the votes with 93% of the polls reporting.
His closest competitor, the Liberals’ Robert Rock, was in second with 22.5%, followed by the New Democratic Party’s Chris Borgia with 10.5%.
Jivani is a conservative commentator and author and penned opinion columns for the Toronto Sun before throwing his hat in the federal ring.
The 36-year-old is the founder of the Policing Literacy Initiative and Teachers Beyond the Classroom. He sat on Premier Doug Ford’s council on equality of opportunity and was appointed the advocate for community opportunities for the Ford government.
Recommended from Editorial
Jivani was born in Toronto to an immigrant father from Kenya and a Scottish-Irish mother from the U.K. He attended Humber College, York University and in 2013 earned his juris doctor from Yale Law School.
The byelection comes as public polling suggests Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives hold a double-digit lead over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
Durham has roughly 116,250 registered voters and includes a mix of suburban and rural areas.
O’Toole won re-election by at least nine percentage points in 2015, 2019 and 2021.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO
Share this article in your social network
