PCs take early lead after polls close on Prince Edward Island | CBC News

Polls have closed in Prince Edward Island’s provincial election and the Progressive Conservatives have taken an early lead as advance poll results roll in.

For by-the-minute results district by district, check out our P.E.I. Votes live election page.

When the P.E.I. legislature was dissolved in early March, the Progressive Conservatives had 15 seats; the Greens had eight seats, forming the Official Opposition; the Liberals had four seats; and the NDP and Island Party had none. 

After winning the 2019 P.E.I. election, the PCs formed a minority government led by Dennis King. Within two and a half years, two Liberal MLAs had resigned and the PCs were able to flip the districts, giving the King government a slim majority.

At his March 6 nomination meeting in District 15: Brackley-Hunter River, King announced that an election would take place on April 3.

Advance vote turnout heading into Monday was at 34 per cent, with tens of thousands more voters heading to the polls Monday. Polls closed at 7 p.m. AT.

Advance votes were counted first in the expectation that those results would be released shortly after polls closed. 

Turnout in the advance polls was down compared to 2019. The overall turnout last election was 77 per cent, making it at the second-lowest turnout on Prince Edward Island in the last 60 years.

PCs entered campaign high in opinion polls 

In the latest poll conducted by Mainstreet Research on March 27 and 28, the PCs were riding high, with close to half of decided voters on Prince Edward Island prepared to vote for the party.

The Greens and Liberals were neck and neck with 22 per cent of decided voters supporting them, and the NDP fourth with 5 per cent.

The polI came from phone calls made to 962 Islanders and had a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.

The PCs had the bulk of their support in the last election in eastern and central P.E.I., with 19,607 of their 30,415 overall votes coming from these regions.

Most of the Greens’ support came from Charlottetown, central P.E.I. and the Summerside-Tyne Valley-Evangeline area, with 18,391 of their 25,302 votes coming from districts there. 

The Liberals’ biggest vote share come from West Prince, the Summerside-Tyne Valley-Evangeline area, and Charlottetown, with 13,533 of their 24,346 votes from these districts.