By 10:45 p. m. Tuesday Sweet’s campaign manager, Dan Muys, was confident enough in his candidate’s 2-to-1 margin over Liberal challenger Arlene MacFarlane-VanderBeek to announce victory to supporters at Flamborough Hills Golf Club.

With 83,587 voters registered in the riding’s 253 polls, Liberal supporters were hoping to make up the difference as polls from Westdale and Dundas were reported, but it was not to be.

“This is not what we worked for,” MacFarlane-VanderBeek told about 40 supporters at her Dundas campaign office as she thanked them for their hard work. “I’m sorry we didn’t win, but there were good candidates out there and there will be another election.”

For NDP candidate Gordon Guyatt, his fourth defeat in his attempt to gain the federal ADFW seat was “bittersweet.” However, he was buoyed by the party’s success across Hamilton. He praised the 50-100 people who “worked very, very hard” on his campaign over the past five weeks.

Preliminary results posted on the Elections Canada website report that Sweet ended the night with 26,297 votes (46.4 per cent), up from the 24,523 votes (39.1 per cent) he received in 2006. MacFarlane-VanderBeek garnered 15,422 votes (27.2 per cent), Guyatt finished with 9,633 votes (17 per cent) and Green Party candidate Peter Ormond earned 5,209 votes (9.2 per cent). Marxist-Leninist candidate Jamilé Ghaddar finished with 158 votes (.3 per cent).

- With files from Dianne Cornish, Mike Pearson and Catherine O’Hara