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Ford’s third-term Progressive Conservatives increased their popular vote tally, but lost seats, including one in his Etobicoke base.

The New Democrats under Marit Stiles remain the Official Opposition despite a plunge in overall ballot support across Ontario.

Bonnie Crombie returned her Liberals to official party status while failing to win a seat in a Mississauga riding despite being the city’s mayor for a decade. But she couldn’t translate an increase in the popular vote into a significant boost in seats.

Mike Schreiner’s Greens easily held their two ridings, yet fell short in a hard fight for Parry Sound-Muskoka and saw their share of the popular vote drop.

“It was smart of us to go now,” said a senior Progressive Conservative official, speaking confidentially in order to discuss Ford’s thinking behind holding an election 15 months early.

“With the RCMP, Trump, a recession or whatever else is coming, you don’t know what things look like next year — another majority might have been out of reach,” said the Tory.

That’s a reference to the Mounties’ ongoing criminal investigation into the $8.28-billion Greenbelt land swap scandal and the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods that sparked a trade war, which could result in an economic slowdown.

Semra Sevi, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said the election results suggest “a few important lessons” for all the parties.

“For the opposition, particularly the NDP, it’s clear that while they attempted to frame Doug Ford as unfit to govern, they failed to convince voters of his shortcomings. Their messaging struggled to gain traction,” said Sevi.

As for the Liberals, “they cannot fully celebrate as they did not gain enough seats to make a substantial impact,” she added.

“I wish I had a seat,” acknowledged Crombie, who had urged anti-Ford voters to support Liberals because of her party’s substantial lead in the polls over the NDP.

Crombie said Wednesday in her first news conference since the election that she will seek a seat “at the right time,” and will not ask any of her MPPs in safe Liberal ridings to step aside. 

She also boldly claimed that the Liberals are “the peoples’ opposition” — a clear dig at Stiles and the New Democrats.

“We are the ones who gained support across Ontario with 30 per cent of the vote. We brought in five new members,” Crombie told reporters, referring to her new MPPs and the NDP’s lower popular vote share of 18.5 per cent, according to preliminary results from Elections Ontario. 

Ford’s roll of the election dice in hopes of a “stronger majority” to fight the Trump tariffs cost him the ridings of Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ajax and the Ottawa suburb of Nepean. 

While his PCs gained Algoma-Manitoulin and Hamilton Mountain, which the New Democrats won in 2022, Tory hopes of winning more NDP ridings in Niagara, London and Windsor were dashed.

But the popular vote for the Tories rose to 42.9 per cent from 40.9 per cent in 2022, prompting Ford to boast he has “a stronger mandate than we’ve ever had before” despite winning 80 seats, three fewer than in the last election.

Even so, Tory sources say the premier spent much of last weekend “sulking” about not taking the 90 to 100 seats he had privately hoped for during the campaign.

But the timing of the election — exploiting his role as Council of the Federation chair to justify two campaign trips to lobby against Trump tariffs in Washington — showed “political genius,” said John Milloy, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University.

“He was able to find that precise moment where things were falling apart over the tariffs, where there was a huge power vacuum in Ottawa,” said Milloy, a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister.

Despite being the Official Opposition to Ford for a third straight term, the New Democrats also face some tough work ahead following a steady decline in support. 

“Are they really a government-in-waiting? Because they never seem to be able to break through,” said Milloy.

Indeed, the New Democrats’ seat count, popular vote and ballot tally have shrunk each election since the 40 ridings they won in 2018 with 33.6 per cent, when more than 1.9 million Ontarians cast ballots for them.

That was when the NDP jumped to second place in the legislature under then-leader Andrea Horwath as Ford took power amid a Liberal collapse following almost 15 years in office.

In 2022, support declined to 31 NDP seats and 23.7 per cent cent with 1,116,383 votes when the Tories took traditional New Democrat ridings in Toronto, Brampton, Windsor and Timmins.

Last week, the party’s seat count dipped to 27 and the popular vote sank to 18.5 per cent — down more than one-fifth from the last election — with 931,796 ballots cast for their candidates.

That loss of 184,587 votes from 2022 will cost the NDP about $469,000 in annual $2.54 per vote subsidies.

The Tories’ 2,158,452 votes mean $5.4 million in annual public payments for them.

Because the Liberals received 1,504,688 votes, a significant jump from 1,124,065 in 2022, they will get $3.8 million annually.

The Greens, who received 242,822 votes — down from 280,006 in 2022 — will receive just $616,000.

Stiles, acclaimed as leader two years ago, said she remains optimistic for her party and hopes to reverse the decline.

“There’s a lot of factors probably involved in that,” the NDP chief said in an interview.

“I look at it like, ‘OK, what have we learned here? How can we build back stronger?’” she added. “Ontarians are just getting to know me.”

Under NDP rules, party members will be asked at a convention expected later this year if a leadership review is required.

The party had a close call in Mushkegowuk—James Bay, where incumbent Guy Bourgouin staved off Tory challenger Dave Plourde by eight votes.

For the Liberals, their rise in support was bittersweet since Crombie failed to win a seat. She faces a leadership review later this year or early in 2026 but has already been unanimously endorsed by her caucus and the party executive.

With a popular vote of 29.9 per cent, up from 23.9 per cent three years ago, the Grits garnered almost 381,000 more ballots for a total of 1,504,688 — but won just five more ridings for a total of 14.

That’s two more than the 12 needed for official party status in the house, which means increased funding for staff and a bigger role in the daily question period and on legislative committees. MPPs return to Queen’s Park on April 14.  

The upswing also allowed the Liberals to place second in 80 of the 124 ridings, including Mississauga East—Cooksville, where Crombie finished 1,210 votes behind Tory Silvia Gualtieri.

Crombie evaded questions on what went wrong there, saying, “There’s a lot of time to do that analysis.”

Speaking confidentially to discuss internal deliberations, two Liberal sources told the Star her decision to wait until just days before the election call to choose a riding robbed her of valuable time on the doorsteps wooing voters. 

For the Greens, their popular vote dropped to 4.8 per cent from six per cent in 2022, with about 37,000 fewer ballots cast for their candidates. 

On the plus side, Schreiner in Guelph and Kitchener Centre incumbent Aislinn Clancy held their ridings by wide margins, even as their bid for a third seat fell short once again in Parry Sound-Muskoka.

The party had high hopes there in 2022 when veteran PC MPP Norm Miller retired and the Liberals dropped their candidate over a controversy, leaving an opening for perennial Green candidate Matt Richter, a teacher.

He came within 2,115 votes of beating the Tory winner, former Bracebridge mayor Graydon Smith, who went on to become Ford’s minister of natural resources.

This time, Richter increased his share of the popular vote slightly to 41.7 per cent but again finished second to Smith, who was 2,401 votes ahead.

The Greens have stalled, said Milloy, adding, “They didn’t make any significant strides — they’re still going to be that fringe party with two seats.”