montreal election 2025: get ready for recounts in neck-and-neck races
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people cast their votes during the municipal election in montreal on sunday, nov. 2, 2025.
pierre obendrauf
/
montreal gazette
with winning margins in the single digits — and even a tie — get ready for possible recounts in several montreal boroughs and island suburbs.
in the côte-des-neiges—notre-dame-de-grâce borough, only six votes separated ensemble montréal, the party of newly elected montreal mayor soraya martinez ferrada, and luc rabouin’s projet montréal in the côte-des-neiges district. projet montréal candidate émilie brière beat ensemble montréal’s yvonne nguyen by the narrow margin to take the city council seat. there were 113 rejected ballots.
veteran city councillor mary deros of ensemble montréal also lost by six votes to projet montréal’s elvira carhuallanqui in the parc-extension district of the villeray—st-michel—parc-extension borough. there were 211 rejected ballots.
and martinez ferrada’s designated city executive committee chairperson, claude pinard, eked out a slim victory for his city council seat, beating incumbent robert beaudry of projet montréal by 13 votes in the saint-jacques district of the ville-marie borough.
in lachine, the borough mayor position had initially shown a margin of victory of a single vote, but that was updated to 26 votes during verification of the talllies. julie-pascale provost, the ensemble montréal candidate, edged out incumbent maja vodanovic of projet montréal in that race with 5,056 votes to 5,030. there were 289 rejected ballots. lachine’s city councillor race was even closer, with ensemble’s dominic roussel finishing only eight votes ahead of projet’s myriam grondin. that race saw 413 rejected ballots.
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as close as some races were, there was no closer contest than one of the city council seats in the demerged island suburb of montréal-est. audrey bordeleau and julie larivée, the two candidates for district 1, tied with 81 votes apiece. there were 10 rejected ballots. barely one-third of the 517 eligible voters in the district cast a vote.
there will be a request for a recount in the island suburb of côte-st-luc, where incumbent mayor mitchell brownstein appeared to have beaten his only rival, david tordjman, by 50 votes, but a revision to the vote count gave tordjman a single-vote win. there were 229 rejected ballots out of 8,620 cast.
tordjman had told the gazette before the result change that he was requesting a recount “to make sure every vote counts and every voice is heard.”
a close race doesn’t necessarily lead to a recount.
in the island suburb of hampstead, incumbent mayor jeremy levi garnered 26 more votes than second-place finisher jack edery to win a second term.
“i don’t think there’s a great need for a recount,” edery, who spent 16 years as a hampstead city councillor, said on monday morning. “it was very close. i was there the whole night and watching (the counting of ballots). i feel fairly comfortable with the results. … that’s the nature of democracy.”
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there were spoiled ballots, but for both himself and levi, he added. so a recount wouldn’t make much of a difference, he said.
“the rich person is the person who is happy with what he has,” edery said, citing a saying in judaism to reflect on his loss. “and i’m happy with what i have. so i’m fine.”
if anything, edery said he hopes the close race will be a message to levi that “some changes need to be made. we need to focus on the business of the town and maybe we should just get back to taking care of things.
“when you get a squeaky kind of mandate, you have to take it with humility,” edery said.
other tight races in montreal included the city council seat in sault-au-récollet district in the ahuntsic-cartierville borough, where projet montréal’s carla beauvais beat ensemble montréal’s joanne lacombe by 62 votes. there were 265 rejected ballots.
verdun’s borough mayor race was also close, with projet montréal’s céline-audrey beauregard beating ensemble montréal’s geneviève desautels by 45 votes, with 778 rejected ballots in that race.
in the rivière-des-prairies—pointe-aux-trembles borough, marie-claude baril of projet montréal won the pointe-aux-trembles borough council seat by 76 votes over laurie dupuis of ensemble montréal. there were 338 rejected ballots.
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and in île-bizard—ste-geneviève, incumbent ensemble montréal borough councillor richard bélanger beat projet montréal challenger guillaume côté by only 11 votes.
ensemble montréal and projet montréal did not respond when asked whether either intends to ask for recounts.
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