Election Platforms

• Doug Ford and the PCs campaigned on the notion that they are best positioned to lead Ontario through four years of the Trump administration in the United States and the looming trade war. Capitalizing on his role as chair of the Council of the Federation and the vacuum in leadership at the national level, Ford positioned himself as Captain Canada making two trips to Washington during the election campaign to make the case for Canada and Ontario
• The NDP, Liberals and Greens campaigned against the Ford government’s failures over the past six and a half years, namely failure to shore up our inadequate health care system, to right our crumbling education system, to make life affordable for Ontarians to get homes built and on the governments’ scandals, missteps and shortcomings such as the Green Belt scandal, relocating the Science Centre, redeveloping Ontario Place with an Austrian spa, unnecessarily accelerating the expansion of alcohol sales, opportunistically calling a snap election
• It was extremely challenging for these messages to break through the news cycle which was constantly dominated by the unpredictable and irrational American president and his talk of a trade war and annexing Canada
• Days before voters were to go to the polls, the Tories finally released their platform document which contained $40 billion in new spending

Turnout

• Although it edged upwards in 2014 (51%) and again in 2018 (57%), voter turnout in Ontario has been trending downward for quite some time. In 1971 it was 74%, 1990-64%, 1995-63%, 1999-58%, 2003-57%, 2007-52%, 2011-48%, 2014-51%, 2018-57%, 2022-44%
• Because of the cold and inclement weather that winter brings, voter turnout in winter elections is usually lower for winter elections than for elections held in warmer months
• Low voter turnout is thought to favour the PCs
• About 45% of eligible Ontario voters turned out to cast their ballots in the provincial election held on February 27, 2025, about 1% more that in the general election held in June 2022.
• Although 45% is a pretty sad level of voter participation, it’s surprising that it exceeded the June 2022 turnout

Popular Vote

• The Doug Ford led PCs won the popular vote with almost 43%
• Bonnie Crombie and her Liberals came in second on the popular vote tally winning almost 30% of the votes cast
• The NDP and their leader Marit Stiles carried about 18.5%
• The Greens led by Mike Schreiner won just under 6%
• While it is an often-quoted statistic, province-wide popular vote is largely irrelevant in our first past the post electoral system. For example, it’s possible for a party to win the province-wide popular vote in a general election but not win the most seats in the Ontario legislature and therefore not form government

Ridings Won

• There are 124 seats in the Ontario legislature and a party must win 63 seats to form a majority government
• There were no seismic shifts in the seat standings in the Ontario legislature following the February 27, 2025 general election
• All polling pointed to a PC majority government so the only race was for second place between the Official Opposition NDP from the previous parliament and the thought to be surging Liberals; that surge didn’t happen in an efficient way as the Liberal vote was spread thinly across the province
• The table below displays the seats won by each party in the 2022 general election, the number of seats each party held when the election was called (both the PCs and the NDP had banished members from their caucuses and those MPPs sat as Independents; there was also a byelection which the PCs lost to the Liberals)

Interesting Contests

• In our February newsletter we identified several ridings which we believed were “toss-ups” or could “flip” from the incumbent’s party to a different party; they were: Hamilton Centre, Parry Sound -Muskoka, Mississauga East-Cooksville, Toronto-St Paul’s, Algoma-Manitoulin
• Hamilton Centre wasn’t even close with the NDP winning with just over 38% of the vote followed by the Libs with 21 and Independent incumbent Sara Jama (originally elected as an NDP candidate but ejected from caucus) with about 15%
• In his fifth attempt in Parry Sound-Muskoka, Green Party candidate Matt Richter fell short once again, losing to incumbent Graydon Smith, who had served as minister of natural resources in the last parliament
• In Mississauga East-Cooksville, newly minted Liberal leader and former mayor of Mississauga failed in her bid to win a seat in the Ontario legislature. She lost to PC Silvia Gualtieri, mother-in-law of Patrick Brown, who had Brown’s army of support behind her.  Crombie has vowed to stay on as Liberal leader
• Toronto-St Paul’s was a battle between the twice-elected NDP incumbent Jill Andrew and Liberal candidate Stephanie Smyth, a former CP24 anchor and managing director. The Libs were able to flip the riding
• Algoma-Manitoulin was a similar situation to Hamilton Centre. Longtime NDP Michael Mantha was expelled from the NDP caucus and sat as an Independent.  Mantha to 12% of the vote away from the NDP and the contest was won by the PCs
• Other consequential ridings were:

1. In Sault Ste Marie, PC incumbent Ross Romanow did not seek re-election but the Tory candidate eked out a narrow victory over the NDP standard bearer by about 120 votes
2. Hamilton Mountain, where NDP incumbent decided to move on to the federal arena, flipped from NDP orange to Tory blue
3. The PCs held onto Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, a longtime NDP riding (remember Paul Miller) but won in 2022 by former football star Neil Lumsden
4. In Ajax, PC incumbent Patrice Barnes went down to defeat at the hands of Liberal candidate Robert Cerjanec in a traditionally Liberal riding (remember Joe Dickson)
5. Nepean hadn’t been represented by a Liberal since 1995 but the resignation of Lisa McLeod from elected politics created an opening for the Grit candidate Tyler Watt who was elected with more than 48% of the votes cast
6. The Liberals also flipped Don Valley North from blue to red in a contest that saw the Independent incumbent and former PC, Vincent Ke, split the right leaning vote allowing Liberal standard bearer Jonathan Tsao to sneak up the middle to victory with 43% of votes cast
7. The Tories were able to hang on in Eglinton-Lawrence where PC incumbent Robin Martin decided not to seek re-election but PC Fund executive director carried the party banner to victory

Going Forward

• We expect the Tories to get back to the business of governing quickly
• Among the first orders of business will be installing a new cabinet
• It’s our hope and expectation that Doug Downey will be reappointed as Attorney General to oversee the proclamation of the Bill 216 amendments to the Construction Act, that David Piccini will be reappointed as Minister of Labour Immigration Training and Skills Development to continue with the advancement of skilled trades careers and that Kinga Surma will be reappointed Minister of Infrastructure to lead the implementation of the government’s massive infrastructure program
• It appears from their campaign that the highest order of business will be preparing Ontario for the looming trade war with the United States
• The Tories election platform included $40 billion in new spending (without including the cost of the tunnel under the 401) and it will be interesting to see how these election promises are prioritized
• COCA looks forward to working with Premier Ford and his team to support success in our industry and secure broad prosperity across the province