Kathleen Wynne pulled out an even stronger Liberal government, winning about 10 more seats at the expense of the Progressive Conservatives. The Liberals now have a majority government.
The Liberals went up from 48 seats in the 107-seat legislature to approximately 59 seats. The PC Party fell from 37 seats to about 27 seats. The NDP started at 21 seats to about 21 seats.
"Thank you for voting to build Ontario up," Premier Wynne said in her victory speech.
PC Leader Tim Hudak resigned as opposition leader, but will remain on as a MPP.
"Nobody should take this result as an endorsement of the status quo," Hudak said.
NDP leader Andrea Horwath will have approximately the same number of seats, but lost power in the exchange. Horwath spurred the election by rejecting the Liberal government budget; in a minority government, the NDP had influence on Liberal Party decisions. In a Liberal majority government, the NDP lost that power for several years.
Hudak had trouble with math and numbers in the campaign. The focus was on 1,000,000 promised jobs, never mind that a job kept for 8 years was 8 jobs with the PC math. But voters likely focused on 100,000, the number of public-sector jobs Hudak vowed to eliminate.
Horwath said she will remain in leadership of the NDP.
"New Democrats are fighters. And we'll continue to keep fighting for the things that matter most."
2014 Ontario election preview; election set for June 12
Canada is losing female premiers: Politics or sexism?
Kathleen Wynne is Ontario's first female and Canada's first openly gay premier
Premier Wynne has a tough road ahead of her. The Ontario economy has struggled with the loss of manufacturer jobs. The debt is high, in part because of the loss of those jobs.
With a majority government, Wynne won't have excuses in the next election. She has been the leader for less than 18 months in a minority government. Now she has a majority government.
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While we don't have final numbers, the voter turnout was more than 50 percent, a slight improvement from a downward scaling trend. The 2011 turnout was 48.2%, an all-time low (all numbers from Elections Ontario; some media outlets were reporting 49.2%). We'll see how close the 2014 mark came to the 2007 mark (52.1%) or 2003 mark (56.8%). In 1990, 64.4% of eligible voters turned out. Democracy going in the wrong direction, but maybe not on Thursday.
We shouldn't get too excited about a slight uptick in voter turnout. Voters had an option to decline a ballot but would show up in the turnout.
Doing so became a vote for "none of the above." In the closing minutes of the leaders debate, moderator Steve Paikin encouraged viewers to vote, "even if you decline your ballot."
The option is allowed under Section 53 of Ontario's Election Act.
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If Kathleen Wynne had lost, her gender and sexual orientation would not have been an issue. The attacks on the Liberals stemmed mostly to her predecessor: Dalton McGuinty.
Still, we can now say that Wynne is the first female and openly gay premier elected in Ontario. And keeping a Wynne government means Canada still has 2 female premiers; regular readers know that number has shrunk from 5 at the beginning of the calendar year.
Between Wynne and B.C.'s Christy Clark, the number won't shrink any further anytime soon. That number may also not get bigger anytime soon.
photo credit: Steve Russell / Toronto Star
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