People's Party candidate Greg Galante admitted he is disappointed with the results coming in election night, saying "I don't do anything with the intention of losing. That was a tall mountain to climb."
But he sees a positive outcome from his effort.
"We're on track to more than double our vote count in the riding from the last election so that's a good thing for the party," he told BayToday by phone from his home.
In 2019 Mark King got 2,403 votes as the PPC candidate, almost 16,000 less than the winner Liberal Anthony Rota.
This time out, it looks like Galante will close the gap considerably.
See: Profile: Greg Galante says PPC will say no to vaccine passports and drastically cut immigration
King finished fifth, behind the Green Party.
It appears the PPC will finish last again, but with a much higher tally. With 30 per cent of the polls still to report, Galante had already reached last election's total.
Galante says he was getting a lot of engagement from Millenials, young parents, and health care workers over their concern about the vaccine passports which was the main plank in his campaign platform.
"Having never done it before I was pleasantly surprised. A lot of good engagement and not a lot of negative engagement
"But I think the quick call on the campaign hurt us. Anthony Rota's team was ready to go so it took us a good couple of weeks to get ramped up with our signs and our volunteer group. Other than that I don't really have any complaints."
Galante says he'll still support the PPC leader despite Maxime Bernier's unsuccessful attempt at a seat and is optimistic for the future of the party.
"We'll probably cross a million votes which is triple last time, and it took the Greens over 30 years to get there," he said.
