Hamilton Centre NDP candidate Matthew Green became the latest controversial local politician to lose an election on Monday.
Residents in the riding instead elected Aslam Rana of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Green’s poor election result came as a shock since the riding of Hamilton Centre has voted in an NDP candidate at the federal level in every election since the riding’s creation in 2004.
Similarly, at the provincial level, the modern-day version of the riding has gone NDP in every election since its creation in 2007.
Historically, other parties have not even come close to beating the NDP in the riding.
For example, in the 2021 federal election, Green won with 20,105 votes (48.70 per cent), while the closest candidate was Margaret Bennett of the Liberals, who finished 9,164 votes (22.2 per cent) behind him.
This time, Green received 16,577 votes, which translated to only 29.08 per cent – almost 20 percentage points lower than in 2021.
Making the results even more unexpected, Green finished in third place behind the Liberals and the Conservatives.
Meanwhile, Liberal candidate Aslam Rana received 21,458 votes (37.64 per cent), increasing his party’s vote share by almost 11 percentage points compared to 2021.
Conservative candidate Hayden Lawrence increased his party’s vote share as well, receiving 29.94 per cent – almost 13.5 percentage points higher than in 2021.
It should be noted that between 2021 and 2025, the number of eligible voters in the riding increased from 74,721 to 91,294, which could have been a factor in Green’s loss.
The number of eligible voters increased due to intensification within downtown and riding redistribution, which added parts of East Hamilton to Hamilton Centre.
It is also possible that recent immigrants in the riding became Canadian citizens within that time frame, earning them the right to vote.
In losing the election, Green became the latest controversial NDP candidate to receive a disappointing result.
In the provincial election at the end of April, radical left-wing “abolish the police” advocate Kojo Damptey, who ran for the NDP in their longtime stronghold of Hamilton Mountain, took his party’s share of the vote down by over 18 percentage points as he came in third place.
Likewise, controversial politician Sarah Jama, formerly of the Ontario NDP, came in fourth place in the provincial election at the end of April while running as an Independent.
She saw her share of the vote drop from 54.22 per cent when she ran under the NDP banner in a 2023 by-election down to just 14.9 per cent in what was a loss of 39.32 percentage points.
It should be noted that Hamilton Councillor Cameron Kroetsch (Ward 2 – Downtown Hamilton) strongly supported Jama’s election campaign alongside Councillor Nrinder Nann (Ward 3 – East Hamilton).
Kroetsch also endorsed Green in the federal election.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
