Winning a fourth mandate and returning to power was certainly a victory for the federal Liberals, but it was marred by a disappointing showing in Ontario which played a significant role in costing them a majority.
“Obviously, if you compare to where the Liberals were three months ago, it was an unbelievably amazing result in Ontario. But I think it would be fair to say that to get to a majority government, they needed to hold their own in Ontario,” said Dan Arnold, chief strategy officer for the research firm Pollara and former research strategist for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
“I think you could at least say that their inability to, or the fact that they lost seats in Ontario, is probably the reason it’s a minority as opposed to majority government.”
The Liberal Party did end up winning 69 seats, the most in the province, with 49.6 per cent of the popular vote.
But the Conservatives weren’t far behind, winning 53 seats and 44 per cent popular vote. It was a net gain for the Conservatives of 16 seats, and loss of nine for the Liberals. The NDP’s five seats in the province were wiped out.
The results seemed to defy some projections. Ãric Grenier, a polls and elections analyst who writes The Writ newsletter and runs CBC’s Poll Tracker, had projected the Liberals to win
