Congratulations to the Ontario Liberals!

The Liberals did it! They won a fourth consecutive term in office. They even won a majority government. They have 58 seats. This is approximately where I thought the Liberals could get to in the campaign but I also often wondered whether my estimations were too good to be true.  I could see the signs that the NDP was losing its base in downtown Toronto as many past NDP voters switched to the Liberals because of Kathleen Wynne’s left-leaning platform and their anger at Andrea Horwath rejecting the budget that the Liberal platform was based on and offering nothing comparable in the NDP platform. The most shocking Liberal pickup of the night was Durham. Durham is known for its conservatism and retiring PC MPP John O’Toole won it by wide margins during the Liberal wins in 2003, 2007 and 2011. But it sounds like the new Tory candidate got complacent assuming it was a safe seat and was caught flat-footed by a well-organized Liberal campaign who were running local trustee Granville Anderson. But it can’t just be organization that defeated the Tories in Durham. Their vote dropped all the way from 49% to 34%. This result demonstrates that Wynne was able to win over disaffected Tories with her left-leaning platform as well. It seems many past Tory voters were so turned off by Hudak’s right-wing platform that included a pledge to fire 100,000 public sector workers that they voted for Wynne’s party. Although in a 2012 federal by-election in the Durham riding federally the Liberals only got 17%, I would say that this provincial election result in Durham also shows that Durham is shifting to the left as the Clarington part of the riding which included Bomanville undergoes rapid growth. The NDP got about 24% of the riding, which is an increase from the 2011 election and is a strong showing especially considering that Durham was one of the last ridings in all of Ontario to nominate an NDP candidate and that NDP candidate was not nominated until shortly before  Elections Ontario’s candidate nomination deadline passed.

 The Liberals also won Trinity-Spadina by a huge margin. I saw this coming as I heard the Liberal candidate had strong organization. The Liberals also won back Davenport and beat back an NDP challenge in York South-Weston. It was surprising how close the race in York West was, however. Longtime Liberal incumbent Mario Sergio was only re-elected by 7 percentage points. This was one of the few ridings in the GTA where the NDP gained ground from 2011. They also gained ground in their 2011 pickup of Bramelea-Gore-Malton, where the NDP increased their vote to 44%. The NDP also gained ground in neighbouring Brampton-Springdale, where they went up to 31% and the Tories dropped all the way to 24% from 36% in 2011. The Liberals won the riding with new Liberal candidate Harinder Malhi, who won around 39%. Malhi is the daughter of former Bramelea-Gore-Malton Liberal MP Gurbax Singh Malhi, whose riding included part of the current Brampton-Springdale prior to the 2004 federal election. As her father had represented part of the area she had some name recognition that helped her fight off an NDP onslaught in the riding. The Liberals gained Newmarket-Aurora with local Aurora councillor Chris Ballard. This is the second time Newmarket-Aurora has gone Liberal federally or provincially since it existed as a riding. The other time was federally in 2006 when Belinda Stronach was running for re-election as a Liberal after having crossed the floor from the Conservatives. The Liberals also astonishingly picked up the Cambridge riding. The Ontario Liberals had never won the Cambridge riding since it was first created in 1975. The riding flipped back and forth between the NDP and the PCs all the way from 1975 to 2014. The hard work of Liberal candidate Kathryn McGarry, who had been running in the riding since the 2007 Ontario election, obviously paid off. They managed to win it by about 6 percentage points. The Liberals also picked up Burlington and Halton. Burlington was a major pickup since the PCs had held it for 70 years, in other words all the way since 1943. In Halton, they beat long-time Tory incumbent Ted Chudleigh by about 7 percentage points. This result wasn’t so surprising in that in the 2007 Ontario election, the Liberals came within 170 votes of winning the Halton riding and it was being heavily targeted by the Liberals this time along with Cambridge and Burlington. I think this is how the Liberals won their majority, by specifically targeting the ridings that they needed to win. That they won so many seats that they didn’t hold shows that the Liberals have a strong organization. Liberal blogger Warren Kinsella’s assertion last year that from 2000 to 2012 the Ontario Liberals had the best organization of all the provincial parties but that that organization was gone in 2013 after Wynne had become leader appears to have been incorrect. The Liberals also won Beaches-East York by about 400 votes. This is another amazing win because until now the incumbent Michael Prue of the NDP has seemed unbeatable. Prue enjoyed immense personal popularity in the East York part of the riding because he was a very popular mayor of East York from 1994 to 1997. Prue has always won by big margins until now but was obviously hurt by Andrea Horwath’s drop of popularity in Toronto. Liberal candidate Arthur Potts was helped by Wynne’s popularity in Toronto plus a very well organized campaign team. The Liberals have come closer to Prue in each election since 2003. In 2003 they lost by 27 points, in 2007 they lost by 19 points and in 2011 they lost by 10 points. I always knew winning Beaches-East York would be key to the Liberals getting a majority and was hoping the Liberals could close the gap despite Prue’s personal popularity. It was close but they managed to do it.

I regret that the Liberals lost an incumbent because Theresa Piruzza lost in Windsor West. I also regret that the Liberals lost an open seat in Sudbury. Meanwhile, Oak Ridges-Markham, the sprawling suburban riding in York Region, has again proved its bellwether status. Both federally and provincially it has elected whichever party won the province of Ontario as a whole. Although it elected an opposition Liberal member in the 2006 federal election, the Liberals had narrowly won Ontario as a whole in that losing campaign. This time incumbent Dr. Helena Jaczek was able to beat her Tory opponent by 8 percentage points for her third win in a row. Meanwhile as I mentioned Newmarket-Aurora went Liberal after Tory incumbent Frank Klees retired. Klees’ personal popularity had kept the riding Tory previously. Meanwhile there is a judicial recount in Thornhill after Liberal Sandra Yeung Racco’s 85 vote win on Election Night was reversed by Elections Ontario into an 85 vote win for PC incumbent Gila Martow. The recount starts on June 23.

Like I mentioned before, the Liberals also won back the Davenport riding with Liberal candidate Christina Martins by about 6 percentage points over NDP incumbent Jonah Schein. The Liberals also won back Etobicoke--Lakeshore by a little under 13 percentage points with Toronto Councillor Peter Milczyn. The Liberals had lost the riding in a by-election last August to PC candidate Doug Holyday, who was the Deputy Mayor of Toronto and served as the last Mayor of Etobicoke from 1994 to 1997. Milczyn had only lost the riding in the by-election by 5 percentage points despite Holyday’s personal popularity.

In conclusion I’d like to congratulate the Liberals on a well-earned and well-deserved majority victory!