“Are you sure?”
When prompted by her campaign manager, Alice Wong was understandably hesitant to emerge victorious for a third term from a back room with six of the 177 polls still to be counted.
After all, it had been a rollercoaster evening of emotion as she trailed so far behind her main rival in her Richmond Centre riding that CTV prematurely declared the Liberal’s Lawrence Woo the winner at around 8:05 p.m.
She then came storming back into a commanding lead, before seeing that gap close again with a handful of polls to be counted.
But after sitting for two hours in what appeared to be a dark room on the second floor of her Westminster Highway and No. 2 Road campaign office, Wong was assured by campaign manager Sacha “too close to call” Peter that it was safe for her to finally show face.
By 10:24 p.m., as the vast majority of the country knew who their elected MPs were in a new Liberal majority government, Wong was declared the unofficial winner with only a few polls remaining and boasting an apparently unassailable 286-vote lead.
“There were only a certain amount of polls counted, so I was still patiently waiting,” Wong said, seconds after her victory speech, when asked by the News what was going through her mind when CTV wrongly touted Woo as triumphant.
“Very often, things can change and that’s exactly what happened.”
The drama started to unfold shortly after CTV’s blunder, when Wong’s campaign manager, after promising to unveil her at 8:30 p.m., announced to a rather sombre room of supporters that he was hanging back, as less than a third of the polls had been counted.
It proved to be a wise move as Peter, gambling on a swing from thousands of advanced votes that may have still to be counted, suggested that all was not lost.
Just over two hours later, at about 10:45 p.m., Wong was re-elected for a second time and for a third term, with 17,693 votes or 43.5 per cent of the ballots cast.
In the end, Woo was only 463 votes shy of a seat in Ottawa, with 17,230 markers and 42.3 per cent of the ballots cast.
Asked why she managed to succeed where so many of her Tory compatriots failed from coast to coast, Wong said the “people of Richmond recognize how hard I work for them.
“I truly represent their voice and I will continue to do that for the next four years.”
Moments earlier, and to rapturous applause, Wong entered the room and simply said, “what a night.”
And referring to the shocking turnaround from a Conservative to a Liberal majority under Justin Trudeau, Wong said, “Tonight is a night of mixed feelings.
“…but I want to thank the Prime Minister…who visited us here in Richmond.
“It looks like we are no longer in government, but I will be able to hold the new government to account here in Richmond.”
Wong’s other rivals, Vincent Chiu of the Greens got just 1,152 votes or 2.8 per cent, while the NDP’s Jack Trovato garnered 4,613, or 11.3 per cent.
The new Richmond Centre riding saw an overall voter turnout of 58.9 per cent, not including those who registered on election day. In 2011 the turnout in the Richmond riding was 51.0 per cent.
