How the Liberals came up short in Ontario — and lost their majority bid

Winning a fourth mandate and returning to power was certainly a victory for the federal Liberals, but it was marred by a disappointing showing in Ontario which played a significant role in costing them a majority.

"Obviously, if you compare to where the Liberals were three months ago, it was an unbelievably amazing result in Ontario. But I think it would be fair to say that to get to a majority government, they needed to hold their own in Ontario," said Dan Arnold, chief strategy officer for the research firm Pollara and former research strategist for Justin Trudeau's Liberals.

"I think you could at least say that their inability to, or the fact that they lost seats in Ontario, is probably the reason it's a minority as opposed to majority government."

The Liberal Party did end up winning 69 seats, the most in the province, with 49.6 per cent of the popular vote.

But the Conservatives weren't far behind, winning 53 seats and 44 per cent popular vote. It was a net gain for the Conservatives of 16 seats, and loss of nine for the Liberals. The NDP's five seats in the province were wiped out.

The results seemed to defy some projections. Éric Grenier, a polls and elections analyst who writes The Writ newsletter and runs CBC's Poll Tracker, had projected the Liberals to win 82 seats and the Conservatives 38.

"This was where the surprise came in, primarily in York Region of the Greater Toronto Area and in southwestern Ontario. The Conservatives beat their polls in Ontario by a small amount, but their vote proved more efficient than expected," Grenier wrote.

The results in Ontario looked very different than they did during the Trudeau years, Arnold said. The Liberals this election did do better in the Ottawa area, most notably picking up Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's seat in Carleton. And in some Toronto ridings, their win margins were much larger than before, he said.

The Liberals scored victories in places like Peterborough and the Bay of Quinte, parts of the province where they did better than they had in past couple elections.

But there were other parts on the province where they recorded some big losses, including in the 905 region and ridings like Brampton West, Cambridge, Markham-Unionville, Newmarket-Aurora, and Vaughan-Woodbridge, all won by Conservatives.

For example, Liberal candidate Francesco Sorbara won three times under Trudeau in Vaughan-Woodbridge but lost Monday by 20 percentage points, Arnold noted. As well, Brampton West Liberal candidate Kamal Khera, a cabinet minister in both Trudeau and Carney governments, lost in her riding, despite winning in 2021 by over 20 points.

"So there's some very dramatic swings there," he said.

As to why the political shift, voters in that particular area may have been more sensitive to issues like affordability and housing pressures over the last couple years, issues that Poilievre had zeroed in on during the campaign and before, Arnold said.

"For a lot of voters there, that probably trumped the Trump factor when they were kind of ranking their priorities" Arnold said.

David Coletto, founder and CEO of Abacus Data, echoed that millennial and Gen X voters in the Greater Toronto Area whose mortgage payments went up substantially over the last years of the Trudeau government may have turned to the Conservatives.

Those issues may have been muted when Trump was the main factor but in the final two weeks of the campaign, based on Abacus tracking, the concerns about Trump faded and gave the Conservatives an opening to make the case for change, Coletto said.

Affordability and crime were two issues that mattered to a lot of voters in that 905 region that worked against the Liberals, he said.

He said in many parts of the 905 area, there was the perception that crime, particularly auto thefts, had gotten out of hand, and that was linked to the Trudeau years.

"And I think the Conservatives in the final week-and-a-half of the campaign really tried to put a focus on that," Coletto said.

But there was also the opening up of the "boots versus suits" dynamic in Ontario that has become a political advantage for Conservatives, he said.

That the Conservatives won both Windsor ridings may be an in indication of the slight realignment of the party — to get those working-class, private-sector, unionized voters in the trades, manufacturing and natural resource sectors into their camp, Coletto said.

"The absolute devastation of the NDP really opened that up," he said. The GTA was was a roadblock for the Liberals in a way but Conservatives made some important gains in other parts of the province."

Arnold added that the Liberals ate the NDP vote in many parts of the province, but there wasn't as much NDP vote to begin with in the 905, which hurt the Liberals in terms of growth.

"The biggest dynamic of this campaign was the fall of the NDP. And in places where the fall of the NDP helped the Liberals, like in Peterborough, that's a great night for them. But in places where either there wasn't as much NDP to fall or it went more to the Conservatives or split evenly, those are the places where I think they struggled more in Ontario."

Laura Stephenson, professor of political science at Western University, said in some ridings like London Fanshawe and Windsor West, in which the NDP incumbent lost to a Conservative, there was likely vote-splitting on the left.

Prior to Carney becoming the leader, there may have been strong support going to the NDP incumbent. In this case, it's likely that some stayed with the NDP incumbent but others went to the Liberal candidates, she sad.

"So it was almost like a failure of co-ordination on the progressive side," she said.

Stephenson also suggested the Doug Ford factor should also not be ruled out for Liberal challenges in the province.

"There's a lot of people in Ontario who do feel more conservative right now," she said. "Obviously there are differences at the federal level, but you know, we have to account for the fact that there will be this baseline level of more right-ish support."