Staff
Thunder Bay-Rainy River has gone red.
Local Liberal candidate Don Rusnak handily was elected as MP last night after garnering 44 percent of the vote.
Rusnak got 18,523 votes to beat out incumbent MP John Rafferty (NDP), who was a distant second with 12,439 (30 percent).
Conservative candidate Moe Comuzzi got 8,876 votes (21 percent) while Christy Radbourne (Green Party) earned 2,201 votes (five percent).
Voter turnout in the riding was 66.97 percent, with a total of 42,039 of 62,773 voters casting ballots.
This is nearly seven percent higher than in 2011, when the voter turnout was just 60 percent.
Thunder Bay-Superior also went Liberal, with candidate Patty Hajdu garnering 45 percent of the vote (19,969 votes).
NDP candidate Andrew Foulds was second with 10,339 (23 percent) while Conservative hopeful Richard Harvey garnered just 7,775 (17 percent).
But Kenora riding saw a nail-biter of an election yesterday, with Liberal candidate Bob Nault narrowly edging out NDP hopeful Howard Hampton.
Nault, who had served as Kenora-Rainy River MP from 1988-2004, got 10,898 votes (35.5 percent) to Hampton’s 10,379 (33.8 percent).
Incumbent MP Greg Rickford (Conservative) garnered 8,760 votes (28.5 percent).
Green Party candidate Ember C. McKillop got 501 votes (1.6 percent) while Independent candidate Kelvin Boucher-Chicago took 162 votes (0.5 percent).
