There are currently 338 seats in the House of Commons, so a party needs to capture 170 seats to hold a majority.
At the call of the election there were 155 Liberals, 119 Conservative Party of Canada, 32 Bloc Quebecois, 24 New Democrats, two Green Party, five independents and one vacant seat.
In Saskatchewan there are 14 federal ridings including the local Yorkton-Melville.
The local riding extends south to the Qu’Appelle River as its southern boundary, with the eastern side running along the Manitoba border. The northern boundary is the communities of Mistatim and Hudson Bay roughly along is near Highway 3. The western boundary along a route defined by rural municipal boundaries and includes the communities of Bjorkdale, St. Brieux, Watson, Wadena, Foam Lake and Lemburg.
The riding has been held most recently by Conservative Cathay Wagantall, who won the seat in 2015, and was re-elected in 2019.
In 2019, Wagantall collected 28,972 votes, more than 75 per cent of the votes cast. New Democrat Carter Antoine was second with 4,578 votes, followed by Liberal Connor Moen 2,366, Stacey Weibe of the Green Party with 1,032 and People’s Party of Canada candidate Ryan Schultz with 902.
Wagantall is only the third MP in the riding’s history, with New Democrat Lorne Nystrom winning in 1968 when the riding was first created, and holding the seat for 25-years.
Nystrom lost the 1993 election to then-Reform Party member Garry Breitkreuz. Later Breitkreuz, representing the Alliance and Conservative Parties, held the seat until 2015.
The Tories held onto the seat in the 2015 election with Cathay Wagantall’s victory. Wagantall was re-elected in 2019.
