Ontario Liberals Reduced to a Minority

Voter turnout plummets as one of the more forgettable campaigns in recent years draws to an end.

Dalton McGuinty's Liberals will form the next government of Ontario, but they fell just one seat short of holding a true majority as both the NDP and Progressive Conservatives made gains at their expense. The Liberals ended up with 53 seats, just one seat short of the 54 needed for a majority. However, due to a parliamentary tradition that sees the party in power select a speaker of the house from the Opposition, the Liberals essentially have a majority, as the speaker only votes in the case of a tie, and, in those situations, tends to vote with the party in power. Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives gained 12 seats from their 25 to give them 37, as most of rural Ontario was painted Tory blue. Andrea Horwath's NDP also increased their seat count, particularly in southern Ontario, adding seven seats to give her party a total of 17. The Green Party was shut out once again.

These results no doubt are a rebuke of McGuinty's last eight years in power, although not a deep enough one to unseat the man in favour of one of his two inexperienced rivals. McGuinty is essentially one byelection away from either a true majority or a true minority, meaning he has to be careful to tiptoe around any new controversial initiatives, and perhaps, God forbid, actually reach across the aisle for bi- or tri-partisan support. Such actions might even help raise voter turnout next time around, as only 49 per cent of eligible voters bothered to cast ballots yesterday. So, in a sense, everybody's a loser in this election – McGuinty didn't get his third consecutive majority, the PCs remain the Opposition despite all polls before the campaign pointing to them sweeping into power, the NDP couldn't make the most out of the federal NDP's "Orange wave," the Green Party couldn't win a seat, and the public couldn't uphold their end of the bargain in actually voting. If the Toronto Maple Leafs hadn't shut out the Montreal Canadiens last night, this could have gone down as one of the more depressing nights in Ontario history.