Liberals sweep Laval island clean, again

A predictable sweep, considering the PQ and ADQ leaders' caravans made but a single appearance each on Île-Jésus during the 33-day campaign, indicating they held little hope of making any gains. The Liberal victories, however, were dampened by an anemic voter turnout of 55.6%, two points lower than the rest of the province which registered the lowest numbers since 1927.

Although he won a third successive mandate in Laval-des-Rapides, Alain Paquet had the toughest challenge, outdistancing the PQ's Marc Demers by 1,287, the lowest margin of the five Liberals on Laval island.

In Mille-Îles, the Liberals added a new member to the Laval team, with Francine Charbonneau succeeding the retired Maurice Clermont, finishing 3,210 votes ahead of the PQ's Donato Centomo, recording the third strongest majority after colleagues Guy Ouellette (Chomedey) and Vincent Auclair (Vimont).

The only shadow cast on the Liberal sweep was the poor turnout of Laval voters, with the figures dropping a whopping 16% from those of 2007 (to 55% from 71%). In all, 40,000 less voters went to the ballot box in Laval ridings in 2008, this despite the fact that 8,000 more eligible electors had been added to the list.

It was in Chomedey that voters stayed away in the greatest numbers, with the turnout dropping to 44.81% from 62.9% in 2007. Of note, Chomedey has elected Liberals in every election since 1960, when Jean-Noël Lavoie first carried the riding for them in 1960, followed by Lise Bacon (1980-1994) and Thomas Mulcair (1994-2007).

At the other end of the scale, it was in Vimont where Laval voters came out in greatest numbers, with 60.34% of them casting ballots. But on the flip side, although Vimont attracted a larger percentage than the provincial average, the turn out still dropped substantially, from 76.13% in 2007 to 60.34% in 2008.