CBC Wrongly Calls Election For Leftist Candidate - Only To Be Proven Wrong

Radio-Canada, the French-language branch of the CBC, called the Quebec City mayoral election race in favour of Marie-Josée Savard extremely early into the night, as she led her opponent by over ten points.

The Westphalian Times writes that "Savard has been the favourite candidate of Quebec’s left-wing media apparatus. Savard promised to build an expensive tramway in Quebec city despite the project’s numerous criticisms."

After CBC claimed Savard had been “elected”, all other media outlets followed and called the election. At 9 pm, Savard gave her victory speech.

As the night progressed, her lead shrank. At 10 PM EST, Savard was only ahead of her opponent by 1%.

At the end of the night, Bruno Marchand won the mayorship with 32.3% of the votes, defeating Savard by 834 votes.

"What a night, what a night," a jubilant Marchand said. "We have to say it's a big turn in our city's history tonight."

He thanked his team, noting that they had come a long way since the party was created in March this year.

"Let's remember, please, that a year from today we were at one per cent [of the votes]," he said. "No name, no party yet, a leader unknown by the public."

Marchand said his team was ready to bring some changes to the city, adding their mantra would be to leave no one behind.

"The challenges ahead of us are important and if we don't unite, we won't make it," he said.

In a statement issued Monday morning, Savard's party congratulated Marchand for his victory. The party said Savard wouldn't make any other comments.

CBC did not apologize to Savard for putting her in a difficult situation, giving a victory speech only to lose shortly after, nor to Marchand for wrongfully calling his defeat.

CBC's journalistic integrity has been in question for some time. The trust of Canadians in the publicly-funded media has been dwindling in the past years as the CBC has strayed further to the left of the political spectrum, often engaging in activism rather than journalism.