By Jayvon Lake and Taylor Broderick
BELLEVILLE – Loyalist students are happy today with the red tide that overtook the Bay of Quinte region and most of Canada Monday night as a Liberal majority swept the country in the federal election.
Liberal leader Justin Trudeau will be the next prime minister of Canada, winning 184 seats. The Conservative party followed with 99 seats. And, the NDP had 44 seats.
In the Quinte region, Liberal candidates won in all three ridings for Northumberland-Peterborough South, Bay of Quinte and Hastings-Lennox and Addington.
Loyalist College students interviewed by QNetNews were all positive about Trudeau, 43, because he is younger and many students say they can better relate with him as a leader. Conservative leader Stephen Harper is 56-years-old and NDP leader Tom Mulcair is 60.
Kevin Kocherry, a pre-health student, says he thinks Trudeau is reliable and will lead for a long time to come.
Shannon Cormier, a social service worker student, said the student who voted influenced the outcome.
“Because the younger generation is coming up and actually voting, I thought Trudeau was going to win,” she says.
Malik Grant, a student in the Recreation and Leisure Services program at the College, says the younger generation is seeing Liberal as a smarter choice.
“Nowadays, kids are growing up and seeing the world for themselves and they know Stephen Harper isn’t the right way to go and Justin is,” he said.
As Grant noted, Belleville, and its surrounding area turned out to be mostly Liberal, even in ridings that were considered more Conservative in the past.
For the Bay of Quinte Riding, former Belleville mayor, Neil Ellis, took more than 50 per cent of the votes. Conservative candidate Jodie Jenkins followed with 34 per cent of votes and Terry Cassidy of the NDP took 12 per cent of votes.
In the 2011 election, in the old riding of Prince Edward-Hastings, Conservatives took 57 per cent of the votes for this riding. Liberals held 16 per cent of votes and NDP had 20 per cent.
In Northumberland-Peterborough South, Kim Rudd won with over 41 per cent of votes swinging in her favor. Rudd beat out Adam Moulton of the Conservative Party and NDP candidate Russ Christianson.
In 2011, this riding, which was previously named Northumberland-Quinte West, had a 53 per cent of voting rate for the Conservative Party. Liberals took second in the riding with 21 per cent and NDP finished closely behind with 20 per cent of the votes.
One of the more surprising Liberal wins this year came from the Hastings-Lennox and Addington riding when Liberal Mike Bossio won over Conservative candidate Daryl Kramp, who had held the riding for over 10 years. It was a close race between the two men but Bossio won with just 373 more votes than Kramp.
In 2011, the Hastings-Lennox and Addington riding, previously known as the Prince Edward-Hastings riding, 53 per cent of votes went to Kramp. NDP had 23 per cent and Liberals trailed in third place with 18 per cent.
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