Kubinec wins by a nose
Maureen Kubinec claims BMW riding by 341 votes
It was too close to call for nearly three hours after the polls closed Monday night, but in the end Progressive Conservative candidate Maureen Kubinec won by a slim margin.
Kubinec was neck-in-neck with Wildrose candidate Link Byfield for most of the evening, until past 11 p.m. With only four polls remaining, it became clear she had won and she delivered her victory speech.
“Elated. That would be the word,” she told the Westlock News soon after. “I’m feeling very excited, and very humbled by it as well. I know we’re in for a lot of work and I’m up for the challenge.”
She said she was not surprised the race was as close as it was; she was expecting tough battle from the start.
“I knew from the day I won the nomination that it was going to be a close race. I felt it in my bones,” she said.
Kubinec added she was thankful for all the hard work her many volunteers put in, noting she could not have done it without them. The next step will be learning in detail what the job entails.
“I certainly know what a lot of it entails, but the detail of what we need to do is at the top of my mind,” she said.
As of 11:30 p.m. with all 82 polls reporting, Kubinec had 7,447 votes and Byfield had 7,106. The third and fourth place candidates were also neck-in-neck, with New Democrat Trudy Grebenstein taking 983 votes and Liberal candidate Leslie Penny taking 929. EverGreen candidate Lisa Grant had 188 votes.
Between the two front-runners, the trend that emerged early on was that while rural polling stations tended to favour Byfield, Kubinec had the bit of an edge in the riding’s major towns.
In Kubinec’s home polling station of Linaria, she got 41 votes to Byfield’s 55. Meanwhile in Byfield’s home polling station of Riviere Qui Barre, he got 157 votes to Kubinec’s 95.
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