Looks like he survived the Covid crisis handily: solid majority, 80 seats out of 124.
NDP to be official Opposition, with about 30 seats.
Liberal leader Del Ducca lost his own seat.
Great news! I’m not partisan in that I don’t consistently vote for any particular party, though I’m generally progressive and left-leaning and federally I’ve generally voted Liberal and always for Trudeau. But in Ontario Doug Ford IME is a competent premier, and the Ontario Liberals have been persistent grifters. I’m happy to see them sidelined, at least temporarily. I only wish the Ontario NDP had done a little better.
I thought Ford handled Covid reasonably well. One can debate the environmental impact and location of highways North of TO, but if you’ve lived there you understand the status quo is not acceptable. I’m okay with the result.
Ford is far from perfect. The other parties did not come up with alternatives to his policies that seemed markedly better. Doubt Del Duca will last too long. He did pay off a big debt and had a tough job. Horvath could get into the papers and make her points. Del Duca was largely absent from the conversation until very recently.
Del Duca is out. While he worked well behind the scene to raise money and clear the massive debt, he was invisible to the public since he was chosen as party leader. Not having a seat in government made it worse. Not regaining party status is going to make it that much harder for the next leader.
Del Ducca resigns as Liberal leader:
I should highlight that while the Liberals got (slightly) MORE votes then the NDP they still only got 8 seats to the NDP’s 31.
There is a significant anti-democratic manner in how FPTP allocates representation in party systems. It’s real, reoccurring, and something that needs not exist in modern provincial politics. Almost any thoughtful application of a proportionally representative system would be better then FPTP and could allow for a deeper engagement of people with the real policy decisions that affects their lives.
I read the turnout was 39%. This is terribly low.
Was there just a lot of apathy among voters? A sense that the election didn’t matter anyway? Thinking along the lines of “the leaders are all crap”?
At any rate, it looks like Ford gets a majority and complete control of the legislature with only 16% of the eligible voter support. (and yes, I know the other parties got even less)
It was very hard to get excited by this election and the choices.
Lowest voter turnout in history!
Horvath has also resigned.
The NDP are traditionally more tolerant of unsuccessful leaders, but I guess four lost elections exceeds even their tolerance.
That’s too bad. I liked her.
As for the low turnout, yeah, I think no one was really excited about this election. As I said before, Ford was generally judged competent and the others were pretty much non-starters. I confess that I didn’t vote myself, but only because I’m in a solidly Conservative riding and the Conservative MPP was guaranteed to win anyway. I do make a point of voting federally, even though I know that, again, the Conservative will win, just to help boost the popular vote numbers for the Liberals or NDP (depending on how radical I’m feeling! 
).
I suspect Horvath resigned because she wanted to, said this election would determine her future, and has led for many years.
The Liberals are re-examining how they choose leaders. But I do not recall many people wanting the job, and Del Duca addressed its debts like a Lannister. The problem was not articulating attractive alternatives to policies, not getting .publicity and making oneself known before the election. Charisma has rarely been a huge factor in Canadian elections.
The election was boring, and honestly I think most voters in Ontario are exhausted. Ford was terrible his first year or so but we’ve had +2 years of covid, restrictions, vaccinations and now a Ukrainian war/inflation hit. His first year or so was pretty much forgotten. So it came down to how well did he do with covid and the answer is not too bad.
Covid, in fact, forced Ford to be the centrist Premier Ontario voters like. He told his moron base to shut up and get the shot, he imposed lock downs, the vaccination program was alright-ish. You might think old age homes would be a problem for him, but we seems to have shrugged and said “what are ya gonna do?” - and it’s been a unaddressed problem for a while.
The NDP are splitting the educated/managerial class with the Liberals and seem to have left the blue collar union groups to fend for themselves…so they’ve gone to the “we build stuff” Progressive Conservatives.
I’m not sure what the Liberals will do. The leader was competent, had some policies that were reasonable but the legacy of their previous 15 years in power was going to be very hard to overcome. I maintain that had the PC’s not screwed up and actually beat the Liberals in 2011 the whole right wing rage machine might have been far more muted than it turned into.
This may be an advantage. I doubt the perpetually angry amount to much more than fifteen percent at best. They will continue to split the “reasonable right” by voting for other parties.
Ford won since no alternatives were better. I’m okay with this, providing a majority government doesn’t cause too much excitement. I’d like more economic focus.
Weirdly, they got fewer votes than the Liberals, but crushed them in seats.
I don’t think Ford IS a very competent premier, and his performance on the COVID file wasn’t any better than anyone else. However, Del Duca was an absolute potato of a party leader, and Horvath has been at it for a long time. Neither opposition party presented any sort of affirmative, clear platform with a small number of easily communicated goals. They were sensationally uninspiring. Ford was re-elected by inertia.
The Canadian way! 
It kind of is, yeah.
Perhaps as one might expect, there is a lot of social media shrieking that this election will now destroy Ontario. Of course it won’t, but I strongly suspect by 2026 we’ll be sick of Doug Ford. I think his weaknesses will be much more apparent when times are a bit more normal.
I am really not sure what the Ford government’s vision is. I do like that they’re willing to build highways; Christ knows we need them. They do not, however, seem to have a realistic plan for problems like affordable housing or a better health care system.
I agree with all of that, except give some points to Ford for Covid, which I actually do think he handled better than most. Even inertia will probably make his re-election difficult - so the Liberals need to choose a highly competent leader. This will also be a challenge as it was when Trudeau took over whatever dregs remained. Ditto the New Dens.
The problem with that is, the stuff he did right was just him doing what the doctors told him to do. The stuff he did on his own initiative were pretty much all garbage.
Here we differ. Medical advice is very important but doctors are not thinking about other issues like the economy or civil rights. I honestly felt Ford struck a reasonable balance, which I did not expect. However, there are certainly many other issues where he has been less successful. It is easy to judge after a crisis but Ford and other politicians handled Covid passably well, not perfectly, and one does not have to look too far south to find the pudding and its proof.