An Explanation for Kathleen Wynne’s Surprising Majority
And other Observations on the 2014 Ontario General Election
Understandably, most of the attention immediately following the June 12th Ontario election was focused on the surprising achievement of a majority by the Liberals, a result predicted to my knowledge only by Frank Graves of the EKOS polling organization. A close examination of the final results released later in June reveals how that result occurred and some other interesting features of the election.
The anti-PC vote coalesces behind the Liberals in most parts of Ontario, but the NDP builds on its by-election gains in Southwest Ontario and Niagara Falls
The election was a stunning setback for Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives. Their share of the popular vote fell 4.1 percentage points to its lowest level since 1990 (31.3%). They lost 9 of the 37 seats they held at dissolution: 8 to the Liberals, and Oshawa to the NDP. They increased their share of the vote in only 17 of the 107 constituencies, and in only nine of these did they come closer to winning than in 2011. Most of the constituencies where their share of the vote improved were in Scarborough and in south and west Toronto where they remained far behind the winning candidates.
The woes of the PC’s were compounded by a remarkably efficient coalescing of the non-PC vote. Although both the Liberals and the NDP share of the vote province-wide increased only by 1% compared to the 2011 election, the Liberals made a net gain of five seats and the NDP a net gain of four. While Graves correctly predicted the Liberal majority, he mistakenly believed it would occur as a result of a province-wide collapse in NDP support.
The Liberal seat gains were mainly in Central Ontario and in downtown South Toronto, where their share of the vote rose by 6.1 percentage points and by 4.3 percentage points respectively enabling them to capture four seats from the PCs in the former region and three seats from the NDP in the latter. They also won Halton, Burlington and Cambridge from the PCs. The NDP share of the vote declined in all the constituencies won by the Liberals from the PCs except Durham and fell sharply (by 8.7 percentage points) in downtown south Toronto. The Liberals also recaptured Etobicoke Lakeshore from the PCs which they had lost in an August 2013 by-election.
The NDP held their by-election gains in Kitchener-Waterloo (from the PCs) and in Niagara Falls, London West and Windsor Tecumseh (from the Liberals). In addition they picked up Oshawa from the PCs and Sudbury and Windsor West from the Liberals to offset their losses to the Liberals in downtown Toronto. Their share of the vote rose sharply in Southwest Ontario (from 27.6% to 40.1%) while the Liberal share collapsed (falling from 33.8% to 22.9%). They narrowly avoided being completely shut out in the region by barely hanging on in London North Centre.
In short, in key individual seats and regions there was a decisive rallying of the non-PC vote behind either the Liberals or the NDP leading to an exchange of seats between the two parties in some areas and PC losses in others.

Good News for Women
The number of female candidates elected rose from 32 in 2011 to 38 in 2014 as Kathleen Wynne became the first elected woman Premier of Ontario. Women now account for 35.5% of the members of the Ontario legislature- up from 29.9% in 2011. This was welcome news for advancement of women in Canadian politics following a bad recent stretch. Just a year ago there were five female Premiers in Canada, but with the defeat of Pauline Marois in the Quebec election and the forced resignations of Allison Redford in Alberta and Kathy Dunderdale in Newfoundland and Labrador only two now remain: Wynne and Christy Clark in British Columbia.
Good News for Citizen Engagement
After falling to an all-time low of 48.0% in 2011 many were predicting that voter turnout in Ontario would decline again for the sixth consecutive election on June 12. However, while a bare majority of eligible voters cast valid ballots, turnout surprisingly rose to 52.1% province-wide, the highest rate since 2003, and in 104 of the 107 constituencies. The only exceptions were Essex, Timmins-James Bay and Windsor Tecumseh, won by the NDP with landslide margins.
A Modest Revival for the Greens
After seeing their share of the vote fall to a derisory 2.9% in 2011 the Green Party staged a modest revival, polling 4.8% in 2014. They finished third in three constituencies (compared to one in 2011) and received more than 15% of the vote in all three- a threshold they were unable to cross in 2011. Specifically, they polled 19.3% of the vote in both Guelph and Parry-Sound Muskoka and 16.6% of the vote in Dufferin- Caledon.

Memories of Spadina By-Elections Past

Watching the results come in from the Trinity-Spadina federal by-election on June 30th (one of four federal by-elections held that day) brought back memories of another summer federal by-election in the old Spadina riding thirty-three years ago in August 1981.
In an attempt to get his principal secretary, Jim Coutts, into the House of Commons then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had appointed the sitting Liberal member, Peter Stollery to the Senate. The Progressive Conservative candidate was noted journalist, Laura Sabia. The NDP candidate was municipal councillor, Dan Heap. There were also a scattering of minor party and independent candidates.
Although Statistics Canada had not yet confirmed it , the country had just entered the severe recession of 1981-82 which would ultimately bring down the Liberals and pave the way for the Mulroney PC sweep of 1984. I was then working in the federal Progressive Conservative caucus research office and was not directly involved in the campaign, but was kept apprised of developments by several friends who were.
With a strong candidate in Laura Sabia, it became clear early in the campaign that for the first time in several years the PCs were competitive in the riding and that, contrary to all expectations, the election would not be a coronation for Jim Coutts. So, on election night my friends hopefully gathered at Laura’s election headquarters to await the results. They were initially thrilled to find that the race indeed was a three-way nail biter. However, as the evening wore on, it became apparent that a PC victory was not going to happen and that Jim Coutts was the probable winner. A pall of disappointment fell over the headquarters. Then word arrived that Dan Heap had been elected on the strength of late-reporting polls south of Bloor Street. The PC headquarters erupted with cheering and campaign workers embraced each other as moral victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat. As a friend who was there told me on his return to Ottawa, uninformed observers would have assumed they were in NDP, not PC headquarters.
It would be hard to imagine a similar response in Conservative headquarters on June 30th had Joe Cressy defeated Adam Vaughan, the candidate of the son of Prime Minister Trudeau, and held on to the successor constituency of Trinity-Spadina for the NDP. It was the same place, but another time and a very different and non-Progressive Conservative party.