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Campaign street fight: Mississauga-Erindale

The cost of transit is one of the key concerns for Nanette Manzana.

The two-way race in Mississauga-Erindale riding could be decided by people like Nanette Manzana and Narendra Thomare.

With one of the closest races in the last election — a 397 vote margin that saw the Conservative candidate snag a traditional Liberal stronghold — voters and candidates alike know that every vote counts on May 2.

"I heard from friends, from different people, they just can't make up their mind whom to choose," said Manzana.

Conservative Bob Dechert ousted Liberal Omar Alghabra in 2008, creating one of the few blue indents in a sea of GTA red that helped strengthen Stephen Harper's minority. With the Conservative party 12 ridings short of the highly-sought majority, the party not only needs to win more seats, but hold onto ridings like Mississauga-Erindale.

"The Conservatives won by less than one per cent margin," said University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman. "Now that's a toss up."

Both the Conservative and Liberal camps are working hard to knock on every one of the riding's 51,000 doors. It's no small feat considering its the sixth most populous riding in Canada, at about 143,000 people.

The largely middle-class riding is a patchwork of Conservative and Liberal supporters. Both frontrunners topped more than 23,000 votes each in 2008. The New Democrats trailed at a distant third with 4,774 votes. The Green Party candidate had 3,636.

The riding made headlines early in the election campaign when the former NDP candidate, Mustafa Rizvi, endorsed the Conservatives to try to help them reach a majority rather.

Dechert says he’s “reasonably confident” the Conservatives can continue to hold the traditional Liberal stronghold. “But we take nothing for granted and continue to work hard,” said Dechert.

To win over constituents, Dechert says he's reminding them of his record while in office over the past two years, citing a slew of projects from new social housing units, GO Transit station expansion and the construction of a college.

Alghabra says some of the projects, such as the GO Transit station expansion, were approved during his time in office.

While busy with traditional canvassing, Alghabra is also employing unconventional methods to try to reach out to the electorate. He's posted two YouTube video spots that play more on humour than politics, one with a light-hearted cartoon about his path into the political arena and the other featuring children struggling to pronounce his name. A third video is in the works.

"I’m confident that we’re doing everything we can," said Alghabra. "I’m confident that we are on the right side.

But while many voters in Mississauga-Erindale asked informally about who they plan to vote for were firm about their choice, a significant number of undecideds are still weighing their options as the election enters its final stretch.

Both Manzana and Thomare are leaning away from the party they voted for in 2008.

"My heart says Conservative but my head is not exactly there," says Thomare.

Thomare is watching the election play out on the national stage, rather than his own riding — and is not happy with what he's seen from the party he typically votes for.

"I don't like the way Stephen Harper goes about controlling everything," said Thomare. "That's not exactly democracy in my mind."

For Manzana, the day-to-day economic realities of putting two children through university weigh heavily on her mind and may sway her vote from the Liberals. Of particular concern is transit since the two children attend university in Kitchener and Toronto.

Her gasoline budget has recently doubled and the cost of transit passes for the family is almost $1,000 per month.

"It really affects us very much," said Manzana. "We’re just salaried people."

Mississauga-Erindale, as with many urban ridings, is a mixture of middle-class, diverse families. It includes the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus, currently the only post-secondary option in Mississauga, Canada's sixth largest municipality.

"What they have in common is they have new houses, relatively large mortgages, there are two parents who are working," says Dechert. "They have one to three children. They want to know that their job is safe. They want their taxes kept low and their streets kept safe for their children."

Dechert's win in the riding, created in 2003 largely out of the old Mississauga Centre riding, marked the first non-Liberal win there in 20 years.

But it remains to be seen if the Conservatives can hold on to the riding.

Though Thomare is watching the election closely, he doubts anything his local candidates could say or do to sway his vote.

"It's pretty clear to me that nothing is really going to change in the next two weeks. It's really what I think. My thoughts."

The candidates will just have to wait and see.