Programming note: POLICORNER will not publish next week. We’re back in your inbox on March 17.
Doug Ford has clinched a third majority — just not the clean-blue sweep he had in mind. Marit Stiles is in second, while Bonnie Crombie took home recognized status, though not enough to quell internal dissent.
The seat count is largely steady, but Thursday’s three-peat was a wake-up call for each leader — and may prove to be a make-or-break moment for the progressive movement.
Let’s dig in.
— For the Progressive Conservatives: Though voters shrugged at his pitch for a “stronger mandate,” Doug Ford still secured an 80-seat majority. He gained ground in the popular vote, climbing to 42.9 per cent from 40.8 per cent in 2022.
The gambit worked. Ford, on the pretext of a looming trade war with Washington, turned this rare winter election into a referendum on economic leadership. Though his rivals pivoted to his domestic record, voters, spooked by the uncertainty, stuck by him.
Yet, the Tories’ 90-to-100 seat goal came up short, securing three fewer than they won in the last election, pending a recount, with two key defeats: Patrice Barnes in Ajax and Christine Hogarth in Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
Expect the party’s ground game to face post-election soul-searching over why their well-resourced machine fell behind in some ridings, and won in others, albeit by tighter-than-expected margins.
The party stumbled in labour-friendly ridings like Windsor West or Niagara Falls, which were viewed as winnable. Ford’s polling guru conceded he was “surprised” with losses in Thunder Bay-Superior North, Mushkegowuk-James Bay, Humber River-Black Creek, Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, Niagara Centre, St. Catharines and Oshawa.
Meanwhile, at the eleventh-hour, according to two sources, extra resources were diverted to help Sheref Sabawy in Mississauga Erin-Mills, where ground-level vulnerabilities signaled a strategy of defense over expansion. “The question here is about the deployment of resources,” said another. “Would having a few more people in Kapuskasing or Humber River-Black Creek have made more of an impact than sending people to Ajax or Nepean?”
“Many campaigns were very well managed and had enough volunteers. But till the very end, ‘central’ was calling campaigns and moving people around with a moment’s notice,” one insider said, “and some campaigns were calling other managers begging them to send volunteers their way.”
“Some of the inexperienced campaign managers, what felt like it was their first time, especially in close races, didn’t make sense,” they added. “As if there’s a crunch for folks that are willing to put in that kind of work with those hours for pennies on the dollar.”
Privately, some concede the map is changing. The Liberals deepened their grip on areas predisposed to lean red. Eglinton-Lawrence, meanwhile, is staying blue, despite last-minute nomination chaos that turned it into a two-way brawl between Michelle Cooper and Vince Gasparro.
“At the same time, we picked up Hamilton Mountain and Algoma-Manitoulin, while also coming within four votes in Mushkegowuk-James Bay,” a source noted.
“What does it mean for Kory Teneycke and Nick Kouvalis?” another wondered. For his part, Kouvalis, the go-to pollster, says he’s “hang[ing] up the skates” after “a lot of winning and a bit of losing.”
— For the Liberals: Though Bonnie Crombie couldn’t win her own seat, a five-seat pickup put her over the threshold for recognized status.
She’s calling it a win and vowing to stay put as leader, but the knives are already out.
“She will be removed by a review if she doesn’t go herself,” texted one Liberal. “The team ran the worst campaign imaginable and it’s only for a few good local organizers that they've achieved party status. If she doesn’t go soon, it will be a bloody end.”
“The abysmal showing is made worse by the fact that many saw it coming,” a second said. “Bonnie and her team have to go… Liberals are done with this train wreck. Time to clean house and rebuild with competence.”
“The fact that Bonnie couldn’t win a single seat in the city she ran for ten years is the best indicator she doesn’t have what it takes to lead the province,” a third texted, calling her concession speech “graceless.”
“The promise of Bonnie Crombie was that she would deliver Peel,” a fourth added. “She could stay on only if she did a change of her entire leadership team. It’s similar to Dalton [McGuinty] in 1999, with the exception that he actually won his seat.”
Some are standing by Crombie. “If not her, who?” asked one strategist who didn’t support Crombie during the leadership race. “She brought our party back to the core roots: strong public policy.”
“She will [stay as leader] and she should,” a second said. “Frankly, Liberals are tired of leadership races and she was the only leader that could have propelled us to party status.”
“I’m really proud of [the result],” president Kathryn McGarry said. “One of the things I'm very excited about is that we’ve gained status. Without it, the party had been under-resourced. The work leading up to this election was volunteer-based. It's a lot more money for us to be able to properly resource our party and support our caucus.”
But not everyone was buying it. “McGarry was walking around the party telling people — some emotional — how we are ‘very pleased with the result’ tonight,” one irked Liberal grumbled.
Over the weekend, the provincial council and caucus voted to unanimously support Crombie as leader. Crombie took the mic at an all-candidates meeting, pitching her plan to stay on. The mood was described as “tame.”
With Crombie looking to whether the upheaval and discontent with her campaign team, one missing face stood out: Darryn McArthur, who has been a senior advisor to the Liberal leader and was in charge of candidate recruitment, was conspicuously absent on Saturday. Word is he’s been iced out of the inner circle — and wasn’t even invited to the all-candidates call.
“The campaign team has been blaming her loss on Darryn and ‘organization,’ which is also Blue Knox and Miles Hopper, even though he wasn’t directly in charge of it,” a source said. “He’s the scapegoat.”
Update: One senior source disputed that McArthur was frozen out of Crombie’s inner circle, saying that he would continue to play a major role on the team.
“They didn’t listen to advice. They soiled themselves,” a senior Liberal said, with at least two name-checking Chad Walsh, Genevieve Tomney and D’arci McFadden.
Alexis Levine, Crombie’s liaison to council, will chair the post-election planning committee, including the campaign review and hiring.
In a 3-point defeat, Mississauga’s former mayor lost in East-Cooksville to Silvia Gualtieri, the mother-in-law of Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. Some blame Crombie's defeat on her last-minute pick. Without time to build a base, she struggled to connect. “Everyone just assumed it’s Bonnie and she’s going to win in Mississauga,” one Liberal said.
Others say it was the handiwork of Brown and Mississaga mayor Carolyn Parrish, working the phones and rallying their supporters to back Gualtieri. Parrish’s first post-election meeting was, in fact, with Crombie’s local rival.
And with that, one Conservative operative let it rip: “They refused to listen to the electorate, refused to answer the ballot question, refused to deal with their bad candidate and they lost.”
— For the NDP: Even with a shrinking vote share, Marit Stiles still landed in second.
The party maintained a grip on several strongholds, including Windsor West, Niagara Falls, Thunder Bay-Superior North, Hamilton Centre, Toronto Centre, University-Rosedale and Oshawa. York South-Weston and Sault Ste. Marie remained out of reach.
Jill Andrew lost to Stephanie Smyth in Toronto-St. Paul’s by 9.14 per cent. The former broadcaster had the strategic support of a well-organized base of Jewish voters.
Even with a 9.85-point drop in overall support, the vote share climbed in 24 of 28 orange-held ridings. Where voters perceived the party as the strongest progressive challenger, they mobilized behind it, explaining the climb despite the overall decline. The ground game, too, was strong. Rather than a broad, indiscriminate push, the party funneled resources to must-win districts to maximize turnout.
Ford “spent millions to flip London and Windsor, and he failed,” said a senior source, pointing to the get-out-the-vote machine and the orange brand’s clout. “I think New Democrats will be very happy with how Marit Stiles handled her first campaign, first debates and first platform,” they added.
“She’s a brilliant communicator and she’s great at connecting with people. I expect she’ll sail through the leadership review at the next convention.”
But there’s work to do. Stiles’ strong personal performance wasn’t enough to carry the party to government. “To make the next big move into government, they’ll need to get serious about strategy — Marit being the incredible campaigner she is, isn’t quite enough on its own for 65 seats,” the source said.
Privately, some say Stiles will need to clean house. While her leadership review is unlikely to face serious obstacles, many blame Stiles’ “very weak” leadership team for a lack of preparedness, forcing many local candidates to run independent-like campaigns with minimal support.
“We did as well as we did because of our people on the ground: our voter contact organizers, our constituency staff, our candidates who put their names forward, our volunteers and donors,” one organizer said. “We did it despite the leadership team, not because of them.”
Another organizer gave the team a pass. “We weren’t 100% prepared, but who is in a snap election?”
{{LINE}}
— An NDP MPP will meet with the Liberal president to strategize on how to avoid a progressive vote split.
— Doug Ford is “disappointed” he couldn’t hit the 90-to-100 seat goal.
— Martin Regg Cohn says each leader is “licking their wounds.”
— Sean Speer has a question: “Doug Ford keeps winning — but for what?” Edward Keenan asked: “But did everyone kind of lose?”
— Adam Radwanski digs into how Ford “has overcome his liabilities to own the moment.”
— Allan Gregg says the NDP and Liberals should rethink following yet another brutal night for progressives.
— Ford’s gamble paid off, Brian Lilley says.
— But Bonnie Crombie’s gamble didn’t, Joe Warmington writes.
— Beth Wilson and Anna Fitzpatrick argue that the government’s policies should acknowledge the fact that most people did not vote blue.
— Ford says he’s slapping a 25 per cent export tax on electricity to Minnesota, Michigan and New York.
— The LCBO has pulled all American booze from the shelves at his direction.
— Brampton’s mayor is countering Trump’s tariffs with a “Made in Canada” procurement policy.
— In Burlington, councillors aren’t too happy that Marianne Meed Ward used her strong mayor powers to develop a Buy Canadian Taskforce.
{{LINE}}
Thank you for reading POLICORNER. Are you Doug Ford? Bonnie Crombie? Marit Stiles? What are your thoughts about Thursday’s election? Drop a line and I’ll keep you anon, just like those mysterious sources you’re still curious about.
Have a brand or message? Looking to grab the attention of the province’s top and most powerful political players during the election? Ad rates are available upon request.
Programming note: POLICORNER will not publish next week. We’re back in your inbox on March 17.
Doug Ford has clinched a third majority — just not the clean-blue sweep he had in mind. Marit Stiles is in second, while Bonnie Crombie took home recognized status, though not enough to quell internal dissent.
The seat count is largely steady, but Thursday’s three-peat was a wake-up call for each leader — and may prove to be a make-or-break moment for the progressive movement.
Let’s dig in.
— For the Progressive Conservatives: Though voters shrugged at his pitch for a “stronger mandate,” Doug Ford still secured an 80-seat majority. He gained ground in the popular vote, climbing to 42.9 per cent from 40.8 per cent in 2022.
The gambit worked. Ford, on the pretext of a looming trade war with Washington, turned this rare winter election into a referendum on economic leadership. Though his rivals pivoted to his domestic record, voters, spooked by the uncertainty, stuck by him.
Yet, the Tories’ 90-to-100 seat goal came up short, securing three fewer than they won in the last election, pending a recount, with two key defeats: Patrice Barnes in Ajax and Christine Hogarth in Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
Expect the party’s ground game to face post-election soul-searching over why their well-resourced machine fell behind in some ridings, and won in others, albeit by tighter-than-expected margins.
The party stumbled in labour-friendly ridings like Windsor West or Niagara Falls, which were viewed as winnable. Ford’s polling guru conceded he was “surprised” with losses in Thunder Bay-Superior North, Mushkegowuk-James Bay, Humber River-Black Creek, Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, Niagara Centre, St. Catharines and Oshawa.
Meanwhile, at the eleventh-hour, according to two sources, extra resources were diverted to help Sheref Sabawy in Mississauga Erin-Mills, where ground-level vulnerabilities signaled a strategy of defense over expansion. “The question here is about the deployment of resources,” said another. “Would having a few more people in Kapuskasing or Humber River-Black Creek have made more of an impact than sending people to Ajax or Nepean?”
“Many campaigns were very well managed and had enough volunteers. But till the very end, ‘central’ was calling campaigns and moving people around with a moment’s notice,” one insider said, “and some campaigns were calling other managers begging them to send volunteers their way.”
“Some of the inexperienced campaign managers, what felt like it was their first time, especially in close races, didn’t make sense,” they added. “As if there’s a crunch for folks that are willing to put in that kind of work with those hours for pennies on the dollar.”
Privately, some concede the map is changing. The Liberals deepened their grip on areas predisposed to lean red. Eglinton-Lawrence, meanwhile, is staying blue, despite last-minute nomination chaos that turned it into a two-way brawl between Michelle Cooper and Vince Gasparro.
“At the same time, we picked up Hamilton Mountain and Algoma-Manitoulin, while also coming within four votes in Mushkegowuk-James Bay,” a source noted.
“What does it mean for Kory Teneycke and Nick Kouvalis?” another wondered. For his part, Kouvalis, the go-to pollster, says he’s “hang[ing] up the skates” after “a lot of winning and a bit of losing.”
— For the Liberals: Though Bonnie Crombie couldn’t win her own seat, a five-seat pickup put her over the threshold for recognized status.
She’s calling it a win and vowing to stay put as leader, but the knives are already out.
“She will be removed by a review if she doesn’t go herself,” texted one Liberal. “The team ran the worst campaign imaginable and it’s only for a few good local organizers that they've achieved party status. If she doesn’t go soon, it will be a bloody end.”
“The abysmal showing is made worse by the fact that many saw it coming,” a second said. “Bonnie and her team have to go… Liberals are done with this train wreck. Time to clean house and rebuild with competence.”
“The fact that Bonnie couldn’t win a single seat in the city she ran for ten years is the best indicator she doesn’t have what it takes to lead the province,” a third texted, calling her concession speech “graceless.”
“The promise of Bonnie Crombie was that she would deliver Peel,” a fourth added. “She could stay on only if she did a change of her entire leadership team. It’s similar to Dalton [McGuinty] in 1999, with the exception that he actually won his seat.”
Some are standing by Crombie. “If not her, who?” asked one strategist who didn’t support Crombie during the leadership race. “She brought our party back to the core roots: strong public policy.”
“She will [stay as leader] and she should,” a second said. “Frankly, Liberals are tired of leadership races and she was the only leader that could have propelled us to party status.”
“I’m really proud of [the result],” president Kathryn McGarry said. “One of the things I'm very excited about is that we’ve gained status. Without it, the party had been under-resourced. The work leading up to this election was volunteer-based. It's a lot more money for us to be able to properly resource our party and support our caucus.”
But not everyone was buying it. “McGarry was walking around the party telling people — some emotional — how we are ‘very pleased with the result’ tonight,” one irked Liberal grumbled.
Over the weekend, the provincial council and caucus voted to unanimously support Crombie as leader. Crombie took the mic at an all-candidates meeting, pitching her plan to stay on. The mood was described as “tame.”
With Crombie looking to whether the upheaval and discontent with her campaign team, one missing face stood out: Darryn McArthur, who has been a senior advisor to the Liberal leader and was in charge of candidate recruitment, was conspicuously absent on Saturday. Word is he’s been iced out of the inner circle — and wasn’t even invited to the all-candidates call.
“The campaign team has been blaming her loss on Darryn and ‘organization,’ which is also Blue Knox and Miles Hopper, even though he wasn’t directly in charge of it,” a source said. “He’s the scapegoat.”
Update: One senior source disputed that McArthur was frozen out of Crombie’s inner circle, saying that he would continue to play a major role on the team.
“They didn’t listen to advice. They soiled themselves,” a senior Liberal said, with at least two name-checking Chad Walsh, Genevieve Tomney and D’arci McFadden.
Alexis Levine, Crombie’s liaison to council, will chair the post-election planning committee, including the campaign review and hiring.
In a 3-point defeat, Mississauga’s former mayor lost in East-Cooksville to Silvia Gualtieri, the mother-in-law of Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. Some blame Crombie's defeat on her last-minute pick. Without time to build a base, she struggled to connect. “Everyone just assumed it’s Bonnie and she’s going to win in Mississauga,” one Liberal said.
Others say it was the handiwork of Brown and Mississaga mayor Carolyn Parrish, working the phones and rallying their supporters to back Gualtieri. Parrish’s first post-election meeting was, in fact, with Crombie’s local rival.
And with that, one Conservative operative let it rip: “They refused to listen to the electorate, refused to answer the ballot question, refused to deal with their bad candidate and they lost.”
— For the NDP: Even with a shrinking vote share, Marit Stiles still landed in second.
The party maintained a grip on several strongholds, including Windsor West, Niagara Falls, Thunder Bay-Superior North, Hamilton Centre, Toronto Centre, University-Rosedale and Oshawa. York South-Weston and Sault Ste. Marie remained out of reach.
Jill Andrew lost to Stephanie Smyth in Toronto-St. Paul’s by 9.14 per cent. The former broadcaster had the strategic support of a well-organized base of Jewish voters.
Even with a 9.85-point drop in overall support, the vote share climbed in 24 of 28 orange-held ridings. Where voters perceived the party as the strongest progressive challenger, they mobilized behind it, explaining the climb despite the overall decline. The ground game, too, was strong. Rather than a broad, indiscriminate push, the party funneled resources to must-win districts to maximize turnout.
Ford “spent millions to flip London and Windsor, and he failed,” said a senior source, pointing to the get-out-the-vote machine and the orange brand’s clout. “I think New Democrats will be very happy with how Marit Stiles handled her first campaign, first debates and first platform,” they added.
“She’s a brilliant communicator and she’s great at connecting with people. I expect she’ll sail through the leadership review at the next convention.”
But there’s work to do. Stiles’ strong personal performance wasn’t enough to carry the party to government. “To make the next big move into government, they’ll need to get serious about strategy — Marit being the incredible campaigner she is, isn’t quite enough on its own for 65 seats,” the source said.
Privately, some say Stiles will need to clean house. While her leadership review is unlikely to face serious obstacles, many blame Stiles’ “very weak” leadership team for a lack of preparedness, forcing many local candidates to run independent-like campaigns with minimal support.
“We did as well as we did because of our people on the ground: our voter contact organizers, our constituency staff, our candidates who put their names forward, our volunteers and donors,” one organizer said. “We did it despite the leadership team, not because of them.”
Another organizer gave the team a pass. “We weren’t 100% prepared, but who is in a snap election?”
{{LINE}}
— An NDP MPP will meet with the Liberal president to strategize on how to avoid a progressive vote split.
— Doug Ford is “disappointed” he couldn’t hit the 90-to-100 seat goal.
— Martin Regg Cohn says each leader is “licking their wounds.”
— Sean Speer has a question: “Doug Ford keeps winning — but for what?” Edward Keenan asked: “But did everyone kind of lose?”
— Adam Radwanski digs into how Ford “has overcome his liabilities to own the moment.”
— Allan Gregg says the NDP and Liberals should rethink following yet another brutal night for progressives.
— Ford’s gamble paid off, Brian Lilley says.
— But Bonnie Crombie’s gamble didn’t, Joe Warmington writes.
— Beth Wilson and Anna Fitzpatrick argue that the government’s policies should acknowledge the fact that most people did not vote blue.
— Ford says he’s slapping a 25 per cent export tax on electricity to Minnesota, Michigan and New York.
— The LCBO has pulled all American booze from the shelves at his direction.
— Brampton’s mayor is countering Trump’s tariffs with a “Made in Canada” procurement policy.
— In Burlington, councillors aren’t too happy that Marianne Meed Ward used her strong mayor powers to develop a Buy Canadian Taskforce.
{{LINE}}
Thank you for reading POLICORNER. Are you Doug Ford? Bonnie Crombie? Marit Stiles? What are your thoughts about Thursday’s election? Drop a line and I’ll keep you anon, just like those mysterious sources you’re still curious about.
Have a brand or message? Looking to grab the attention of the province’s top and most powerful political players during the election? Ad rates are available upon request.
Programming note: POLICORNER will not publish next week. We’re back in your inbox on March 17.
Doug Ford has clinched a third majority — just not the clean-blue sweep he had in mind. Marit Stiles is in second, while Bonnie Crombie took home recognized status, though not enough to quell internal dissent.
The seat count is largely steady, but Thursday’s three-peat was a wake-up call for each leader — and may prove to be a make-or-break moment for the progressive movement.
Let’s dig in.
— For the Progressive Conservatives: Though voters shrugged at his pitch for a “stronger mandate,” Doug Ford still secured an 80-seat majority. He gained ground in the popular vote, climbing to 42.9 per cent from 40.8 per cent in 2022.
The gambit worked. Ford, on the pretext of a looming trade war with Washington, turned this rare winter election into a referendum on economic leadership. Though his rivals pivoted to his domestic record, voters, spooked by the uncertainty, stuck by him.
Yet, the Tories’ 90-to-100 seat goal came up short, securing three fewer than they won in the last election, pending a recount, with two key defeats: Patrice Barnes in Ajax and Christine Hogarth in Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
Expect the party’s ground game to face post-election soul-searching over why their well-resourced machine fell behind in some ridings, and won in others, albeit by tighter-than-expected margins.
The party stumbled in labour-friendly ridings like Windsor West or Niagara Falls, which were viewed as winnable. Ford’s polling guru conceded he was “surprised” with losses in Thunder Bay-Superior North, Mushkegowuk-James Bay, Humber River-Black Creek, Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, Niagara Centre, St. Catharines and Oshawa.
Meanwhile, at the eleventh-hour, according to two sources, extra resources were diverted to help Sheref Sabawy in Mississauga Erin-Mills, where ground-level vulnerabilities signaled a strategy of defense over expansion. “The question here is about the deployment of resources,” said another. “Would having a few more people in Kapuskasing or Humber River-Black Creek have made more of an impact than sending people to Ajax or Nepean?”
“Many campaigns were very well managed and had enough volunteers. But till the very end, ‘central’ was calling campaigns and moving people around with a moment’s notice,” one insider said, “and some campaigns were calling other managers begging them to send volunteers their way.”
“Some of the inexperienced campaign managers, what felt like it was their first time, especially in close races, didn’t make sense,” they added. “As if there’s a crunch for folks that are willing to put in that kind of work with those hours for pennies on the dollar.”
Privately, some concede the map is changing. The Liberals deepened their grip on areas predisposed to lean red. Eglinton-Lawrence, meanwhile, is staying blue, despite last-minute nomination chaos that turned it into a two-way brawl between Michelle Cooper and Vince Gasparro.
“At the same time, we picked up Hamilton Mountain and Algoma-Manitoulin, while also coming within four votes in Mushkegowuk-James Bay,” a source noted.
“What does it mean for Kory Teneycke and Nick Kouvalis?” another wondered. For his part, Kouvalis, the go-to pollster, says he’s “hang[ing] up the skates” after “a lot of winning and a bit of losing.”
— For the Liberals: Though Bonnie Crombie couldn’t win her own seat, a five-seat pickup put her over the threshold for recognized status.
She’s calling it a win and vowing to stay put as leader, but the knives are already out.
“She will be removed by a review if she doesn’t go herself,” texted one Liberal. “The team ran the worst campaign imaginable and it’s only for a few good local organizers that they've achieved party status. If she doesn’t go soon, it will be a bloody end.”
“The abysmal showing is made worse by the fact that many saw it coming,” a second said. “Bonnie and her team have to go… Liberals are done with this train wreck. Time to clean house and rebuild with competence.”
“The fact that Bonnie couldn’t win a single seat in the city she ran for ten years is the best indicator she doesn’t have what it takes to lead the province,” a third texted, calling her concession speech “graceless.”
“The promise of Bonnie Crombie was that she would deliver Peel,” a fourth added. “She could stay on only if she did a change of her entire leadership team. It’s similar to Dalton [McGuinty] in 1999, with the exception that he actually won his seat.”
Some are standing by Crombie. “If not her, who?” asked one strategist who didn’t support Crombie during the leadership race. “She brought our party back to the core roots: strong public policy.”
“She will [stay as leader] and she should,” a second said. “Frankly, Liberals are tired of leadership races and she was the only leader that could have propelled us to party status.”
“I’m really proud of [the result],” president Kathryn McGarry said. “One of the things I'm very excited about is that we’ve gained status. Without it, the party had been under-resourced. The work leading up to this election was volunteer-based. It's a lot more money for us to be able to properly resource our party and support our caucus.”
But not everyone was buying it. “McGarry was walking around the party telling people — some emotional — how we are ‘very pleased with the result’ tonight,” one irked Liberal grumbled.
Over the weekend, the provincial council and caucus voted to unanimously support Crombie as leader. Crombie took the mic at an all-candidates meeting, pitching her plan to stay on. The mood was described as “tame.”
With Crombie looking to whether the upheaval and discontent with her campaign team, one missing face stood out: Darryn McArthur, who has been a senior advisor to the Liberal leader and was in charge of candidate recruitment, was conspicuously absent on Saturday. Word is he’s been iced out of the inner circle — and wasn’t even invited to the all-candidates call.
“The campaign team has been blaming her loss on Darryn and ‘organization,’ which is also Blue Knox and Miles Hopper, even though he wasn’t directly in charge of it,” a source said. “He’s the scapegoat.”
Update: One senior source disputed that McArthur was frozen out of Crombie’s inner circle, saying that he would continue to play a major role on the team.
“They didn’t listen to advice. They soiled themselves,” a senior Liberal said, with at least two name-checking Chad Walsh, Genevieve Tomney and D’arci McFadden.
Alexis Levine, Crombie’s liaison to council, will chair the post-election planning committee, including the campaign review and hiring.
In a 3-point defeat, Mississauga’s former mayor lost in East-Cooksville to Silvia Gualtieri, the mother-in-law of Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. Some blame Crombie's defeat on her last-minute pick. Without time to build a base, she struggled to connect. “Everyone just assumed it’s Bonnie and she’s going to win in Mississauga,” one Liberal said.
Others say it was the handiwork of Brown and Mississaga mayor Carolyn Parrish, working the phones and rallying their supporters to back Gualtieri. Parrish’s first post-election meeting was, in fact, with Crombie’s local rival.
And with that, one Conservative operative let it rip: “They refused to listen to the electorate, refused to answer the ballot question, refused to deal with their bad candidate and they lost.”
— For the NDP: Even with a shrinking vote share, Marit Stiles still landed in second.
The party maintained a grip on several strongholds, including Windsor West, Niagara Falls, Thunder Bay-Superior North, Hamilton Centre, Toronto Centre, University-Rosedale and Oshawa. York South-Weston and Sault Ste. Marie remained out of reach.
Jill Andrew lost to Stephanie Smyth in Toronto-St. Paul’s by 9.14 per cent. The former broadcaster had the strategic support of a well-organized base of Jewish voters.
Even with a 9.85-point drop in overall support, the vote share climbed in 24 of 28 orange-held ridings. Where voters perceived the party as the strongest progressive challenger, they mobilized behind it, explaining the climb despite the overall decline. The ground game, too, was strong. Rather than a broad, indiscriminate push, the party funneled resources to must-win districts to maximize turnout.
Ford “spent millions to flip London and Windsor, and he failed,” said a senior source, pointing to the get-out-the-vote machine and the orange brand’s clout. “I think New Democrats will be very happy with how Marit Stiles handled her first campaign, first debates and first platform,” they added.
“She’s a brilliant communicator and she’s great at connecting with people. I expect she’ll sail through the leadership review at the next convention.”
But there’s work to do. Stiles’ strong personal performance wasn’t enough to carry the party to government. “To make the next big move into government, they’ll need to get serious about strategy — Marit being the incredible campaigner she is, isn’t quite enough on its own for 65 seats,” the source said.
Privately, some say Stiles will need to clean house. While her leadership review is unlikely to face serious obstacles, many blame Stiles’ “very weak” leadership team for a lack of preparedness, forcing many local candidates to run independent-like campaigns with minimal support.
“We did as well as we did because of our people on the ground: our voter contact organizers, our constituency staff, our candidates who put their names forward, our volunteers and donors,” one organizer said. “We did it despite the leadership team, not because of them.”
Another organizer gave the team a pass. “We weren’t 100% prepared, but who is in a snap election?”
{{LINE}}
— An NDP MPP will meet with the Liberal president to strategize on how to avoid a progressive vote split.
— Doug Ford is “disappointed” he couldn’t hit the 90-to-100 seat goal.
— Martin Regg Cohn says each leader is “licking their wounds.”
— Sean Speer has a question: “Doug Ford keeps winning — but for what?” Edward Keenan asked: “But did everyone kind of lose?”
— Adam Radwanski digs into how Ford “has overcome his liabilities to own the moment.”
— Allan Gregg says the NDP and Liberals should rethink following yet another brutal night for progressives.
— Ford’s gamble paid off, Brian Lilley says.
— But Bonnie Crombie’s gamble didn’t, Joe Warmington writes.
— Beth Wilson and Anna Fitzpatrick argue that the government’s policies should acknowledge the fact that most people did not vote blue.
— Ford says he’s slapping a 25 per cent export tax on electricity to Minnesota, Michigan and New York.
— The LCBO has pulled all American booze from the shelves at his direction.
— Brampton’s mayor is countering Trump’s tariffs with a “Made in Canada” procurement policy.
— In Burlington, councillors aren’t too happy that Marianne Meed Ward used her strong mayor powers to develop a Buy Canadian Taskforce.
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Thank you for reading POLICORNER. Are you Doug Ford? Bonnie Crombie? Marit Stiles? What are your thoughts about Thursday’s election? Drop a line and I’ll keep you anon, just like those mysterious sources you’re still curious about.
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Programming note: POLICORNER will not publish next week. We’re back in your inbox on March 17.
Doug Ford has clinched a third majority — just not the clean-blue sweep he had in mind. Marit Stiles is in second, while Bonnie Crombie took home recognized status, though not enough to quell internal dissent.
The seat count is largely steady, but Thursday’s three-peat was a wake-up call for each leader — and may prove to be a make-or-break moment for the progressive movement.
Let’s dig in.
— For the Progressive Conservatives: Though voters shrugged at his pitch for a “stronger mandate,” Doug Ford still secured an 80-seat majority. He gained ground in the popular vote, climbing to 42.9 per cent from 40.8 per cent in 2022.
The gambit worked. Ford, on the pretext of a looming trade war with Washington, turned this rare winter election into a referendum on economic leadership. Though his rivals pivoted to his domestic record, voters, spooked by the uncertainty, stuck by him.
Yet, the Tories’ 90-to-100 seat goal came up short, securing three fewer than they won in the last election, pending a recount, with two key defeats: Patrice Barnes in Ajax and Christine Hogarth in Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
Expect the party’s ground game to face post-election soul-searching over why their well-resourced machine fell behind in some ridings, and won in others, albeit by tighter-than-expected margins.
The party stumbled in labour-friendly ridings like Windsor West or Niagara Falls, which were viewed as winnable. Ford’s polling guru conceded he was “surprised” with losses in Thunder Bay-Superior North, Mushkegowuk-James Bay, Humber River-Black Creek, Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, Niagara Centre, St. Catharines and Oshawa.
Meanwhile, at the eleventh-hour, according to two sources, extra resources were diverted to help Sheref Sabawy in Mississauga Erin-Mills, where ground-level vulnerabilities signaled a strategy of defense over expansion. “The question here is about the deployment of resources,” said another. “Would having a few more people in Kapuskasing or Humber River-Black Creek have made more of an impact than sending people to Ajax or Nepean?”
“Many campaigns were very well managed and had enough volunteers. But till the very end, ‘central’ was calling campaigns and moving people around with a moment’s notice,” one insider said, “and some campaigns were calling other managers begging them to send volunteers their way.”
“Some of the inexperienced campaign managers, what felt like it was their first time, especially in close races, didn’t make sense,” they added. “As if there’s a crunch for folks that are willing to put in that kind of work with those hours for pennies on the dollar.”
Privately, some concede the map is changing. The Liberals deepened their grip on areas predisposed to lean red. Eglinton-Lawrence, meanwhile, is staying blue, despite last-minute nomination chaos that turned it into a two-way brawl between Michelle Cooper and Vince Gasparro.
“At the same time, we picked up Hamilton Mountain and Algoma-Manitoulin, while also coming within four votes in Mushkegowuk-James Bay,” a source noted.
“What does it mean for Kory Teneycke and Nick Kouvalis?” another wondered. For his part, Kouvalis, the go-to pollster, says he’s “hang[ing] up the skates” after “a lot of winning and a bit of losing.”
— For the Liberals: Though Bonnie Crombie couldn’t win her own seat, a five-seat pickup put her over the threshold for recognized status.
She’s calling it a win and vowing to stay put as leader, but the knives are already out.
“She will be removed by a review if she doesn’t go herself,” texted one Liberal. “The team ran the worst campaign imaginable and it’s only for a few good local organizers that they've achieved party status. If she doesn’t go soon, it will be a bloody end.”
“The abysmal showing is made worse by the fact that many saw it coming,” a second said. “Bonnie and her team have to go… Liberals are done with this train wreck. Time to clean house and rebuild with competence.”
“The fact that Bonnie couldn’t win a single seat in the city she ran for ten years is the best indicator she doesn’t have what it takes to lead the province,” a third texted, calling her concession speech “graceless.”
“The promise of Bonnie Crombie was that she would deliver Peel,” a fourth added. “She could stay on only if she did a change of her entire leadership team. It’s similar to Dalton [McGuinty] in 1999, with the exception that he actually won his seat.”
Some are standing by Crombie. “If not her, who?” asked one strategist who didn’t support Crombie during the leadership race. “She brought our party back to the core roots: strong public policy.”
“She will [stay as leader] and she should,” a second said. “Frankly, Liberals are tired of leadership races and she was the only leader that could have propelled us to party status.”
“I’m really proud of [the result],” president Kathryn McGarry said. “One of the things I'm very excited about is that we’ve gained status. Without it, the party had been under-resourced. The work leading up to this election was volunteer-based. It's a lot more money for us to be able to properly resource our party and support our caucus.”
But not everyone was buying it. “McGarry was walking around the party telling people — some emotional — how we are ‘very pleased with the result’ tonight,” one irked Liberal grumbled.
Over the weekend, the provincial council and caucus voted to unanimously support Crombie as leader. Crombie took the mic at an all-candidates meeting, pitching her plan to stay on. The mood was described as “tame.”
With Crombie looking to whether the upheaval and discontent with her campaign team, one missing face stood out: Darryn McArthur, who has been a senior advisor to the Liberal leader and was in charge of candidate recruitment, was conspicuously absent on Saturday. Word is he’s been iced out of the inner circle — and wasn’t even invited to the all-candidates call.
“The campaign team has been blaming her loss on Darryn and ‘organization,’ which is also Blue Knox and Miles Hopper, even though he wasn’t directly in charge of it,” a source said. “He’s the scapegoat.”
Update: One senior source disputed that McArthur was frozen out of Crombie’s inner circle, saying that he would continue to play a major role on the team.
“They didn’t listen to advice. They soiled themselves,” a senior Liberal said, with at least two name-checking Chad Walsh, Genevieve Tomney and D’arci McFadden.
Alexis Levine, Crombie’s liaison to council, will chair the post-election planning committee, including the campaign review and hiring.
In a 3-point defeat, Mississauga’s former mayor lost in East-Cooksville to Silvia Gualtieri, the mother-in-law of Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. Some blame Crombie's defeat on her last-minute pick. Without time to build a base, she struggled to connect. “Everyone just assumed it’s Bonnie and she’s going to win in Mississauga,” one Liberal said.
Others say it was the handiwork of Brown and Mississaga mayor Carolyn Parrish, working the phones and rallying their supporters to back Gualtieri. Parrish’s first post-election meeting was, in fact, with Crombie’s local rival.
And with that, one Conservative operative let it rip: “They refused to listen to the electorate, refused to answer the ballot question, refused to deal with their bad candidate and they lost.”
— For the NDP: Even with a shrinking vote share, Marit Stiles still landed in second.
The party maintained a grip on several strongholds, including Windsor West, Niagara Falls, Thunder Bay-Superior North, Hamilton Centre, Toronto Centre, University-Rosedale and Oshawa. York South-Weston and Sault Ste. Marie remained out of reach.
Jill Andrew lost to Stephanie Smyth in Toronto-St. Paul’s by 9.14 per cent. The former broadcaster had the strategic support of a well-organized base of Jewish voters.
Even with a 9.85-point drop in overall support, the vote share climbed in 24 of 28 orange-held ridings. Where voters perceived the party as the strongest progressive challenger, they mobilized behind it, explaining the climb despite the overall decline. The ground game, too, was strong. Rather than a broad, indiscriminate push, the party funneled resources to must-win districts to maximize turnout.
Ford “spent millions to flip London and Windsor, and he failed,” said a senior source, pointing to the get-out-the-vote machine and the orange brand’s clout. “I think New Democrats will be very happy with how Marit Stiles handled her first campaign, first debates and first platform,” they added.
“She’s a brilliant communicator and she’s great at connecting with people. I expect she’ll sail through the leadership review at the next convention.”
But there’s work to do. Stiles’ strong personal performance wasn’t enough to carry the party to government. “To make the next big move into government, they’ll need to get serious about strategy — Marit being the incredible campaigner she is, isn’t quite enough on its own for 65 seats,” the source said.
Privately, some say Stiles will need to clean house. While her leadership review is unlikely to face serious obstacles, many blame Stiles’ “very weak” leadership team for a lack of preparedness, forcing many local candidates to run independent-like campaigns with minimal support.
“We did as well as we did because of our people on the ground: our voter contact organizers, our constituency staff, our candidates who put their names forward, our volunteers and donors,” one organizer said. “We did it despite the leadership team, not because of them.”
Another organizer gave the team a pass. “We weren’t 100% prepared, but who is in a snap election?”
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— An NDP MPP will meet with the Liberal president to strategize on how to avoid a progressive vote split.
— Doug Ford is “disappointed” he couldn’t hit the 90-to-100 seat goal.
— Martin Regg Cohn says each leader is “licking their wounds.”
— Sean Speer has a question: “Doug Ford keeps winning — but for what?” Edward Keenan asked: “But did everyone kind of lose?”
— Adam Radwanski digs into how Ford “has overcome his liabilities to own the moment.”
— Allan Gregg says the NDP and Liberals should rethink following yet another brutal night for progressives.
— Ford’s gamble paid off, Brian Lilley says.
— But Bonnie Crombie’s gamble didn’t, Joe Warmington writes.
— Beth Wilson and Anna Fitzpatrick argue that the government’s policies should acknowledge the fact that most people did not vote blue.
— Ford says he’s slapping a 25 per cent export tax on electricity to Minnesota, Michigan and New York.
— The LCBO has pulled all American booze from the shelves at his direction.
— Brampton’s mayor is countering Trump’s tariffs with a “Made in Canada” procurement policy.
— In Burlington, councillors aren’t too happy that Marianne Meed Ward used her strong mayor powers to develop a Buy Canadian Taskforce.
{{LINE}}
Thank you for reading POLICORNER. Are you Doug Ford? Bonnie Crombie? Marit Stiles? What are your thoughts about Thursday’s election? Drop a line and I’ll keep you anon, just like those mysterious sources you’re still curious about.
Have a brand or message? Looking to grab the attention of the province’s top and most powerful political players during the election? Ad rates are available upon request.