It was risky for Ontario Premier Doug Ford to call an early election — but it paid off

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Date: 2025-03-01 19:30

Author: Sam Routley, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Western University

Original article: https://theconversation.com/it-was-risky-for-ontario-premier-doug-ford-to-call-an-early-election-but-it-paid-off-251142

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s election gamble has paid off. As a consequence of last night’s election results, the Progressive Conservatives are now set to form their third consecutive majority government.

By and large, last night’s election results were dull and uninspiring, looking very similar to the outcome of the province’s election in 2022. The Progressive Conservatives return (going from 79 to 80) with only one additional member of caucus, receiving a noticeable but modest two per cent bump in support.

And, while the Liberals saw even more of a recovery from 2018, the generally widespread distribution of that vote means that they were only able to gain five seats. Although tarnished, the New Democrats return as the official opposition party.

Unprepared rivals

These lacklustre results flow directly from lacklustre campaigns. The fact is that, regardless of Premier Ford’s legitimate calls for a renewed mandate amidst an aggressive American administration, the party had been looking for an excuse to call a premature election for quite some time. In doing so, they were able to — quite intentionally — catch their rivals unprepared, complete with incomplete candidate slates, unknown leaders and undercooked policy platforms.

It meant that, while Ford was able to run a safe and constrained front-runner’s campaign, his main opponents struggled to find the momentum necessary to move the dial and exploit enough backlash. This is alongside real policy vulnerabilities in health care and education, with enough voters expressing discontent with what they felt to be an unnecessary and self-serving election call.

Chaotic news cycle

There are good reasons to believe that voters were mostly apathetic towards the parties and their candidates. Alongside the reasons already stated, the dense, chaotic and ever-shifting news cycle of the last few months may have entailed that this election was able to slip by quietly.

But this does not seem to be the full story, as this year’s turnout — while still low — is slightly higher than that of 2022. Instead, voters also seemed to have wanted to maintain the status quo.

On the local level, siting members of the provincial legislature from all three parties generally performed quite well. Of the 111 ridings with party-nominated incumbents, for example, only four lost. So while many voters may have been unhappy with the election call, the unpredictable environment may have also had the reverse effect of leading them to support, if not fully endorse, the leaders they already have.

Regardless of the more limited dynamics of this election, however, we cannot overlook the fact that this has been a very real accomplishment for Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives. In a period of high executive turnover and anti-incumbent backlash, Doug Ford has, as the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, brought about a track record of secure, consecutive majorities — a feat that was last attained by Leslie Frost and John Robarts.

In many ways, it brings to mind the years of the traditional “big blue machine,” when the party controlled the government of Ontario for 40 consecutive years.

Durable persona

Here, Ford’s success is much deeper than a matter of suave electoral maneuvering, and it is more long-standing than the recent confrontation with the Trump administration. Instead, these results attest to the fact that, while the Premier is not without his detractors, he has nevertheless managed to secure a stable, solid and sufficient base of support through the combination of both a carefully balanced policy agenda and a durable leadership persona.

As with his successful conservative predecessors, Ford practices a form of the pragmatic and moderate governance that characterizes Ontario. A large part of what makes this successful is the fact that while it makes policy decisions flexible, it does not make them arbitrary.

Ford continues to emphasize a government oriented around continual economic growth and innovation as a means to accomplish raising living standards, fund the province’s social programs and — more recently — rival the United States. Combined with Ford’s aptitude in retail politics this has created a clear and accessible political project supported by big developers, small business owners and private-sector workers’ unions.

In a political environment shaped by personality, Ford continues to suck up the majority of the political oxygen in Ontario. Even while a good portion of Ontarians may dislike Ford — he is far from the most popular of Canada’s premiers — they have not experienced an overriding need to get rid of the incumbent, nor pursue another course of change.

While politics is impossible to predict, it suggests that this state of continuity will persist in Ontario, even amid a chaotic global environment.