2014 Ontario general election

The 2014 Ontario general election was held on June 12, 2014, to elect the members of the 41st Parliament of Ontario. The Liberal Party won a majority of seats in the legislature, allowing its leader, Kathleen Wynne, to continue as premier, moving from a minority to majority government. This was the Liberals' fourth consecutive win since 2003 and an improvement from their performance in the 2011 election. The Progressive Conservatives under Tim Hudak were returned to the official opposition; following the election loss, Hudak announced his resignation as Progressive Conservative leader. The New Democratic Party under Andrea Horwath remained in third place, albeit with an improved share of the popular vote.

The election was called on May 2, 2014, by Lieutenant Governor David Onley, upon the recommendation of Wynne following the announcement that the NDP, whose support was critical to the survival of the Liberals' minority government in the Legislative Assembly, would vote against the Liberals' proposed budget.

With the election, Wynne became the first woman and the first openly gay person to lead a party to a majority victory in an Ontario general election.

Results
! rowspan="2" colspan="2" style="text-align:left;"|Party ! rowspan="2" style="text-align:left;"|Party leader ! rowspan="2"| Candidates ! colspan="4"|Seats ! colspan="3"|Popular vote !2011 ! Dissol. !2014 !Change !# !% !Change
 * - bgcolor=CCCCCC


 * style="text-align:left;"|Kathleen Wynne
 * 107
 * 53
 * 48
 * 58
 * 5
 * 1,863,974
 * 38.67%
 * 1.02%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Tim Hudak
 * 107
 * 37
 * 37
 * 28
 * 9
 * 1,505,436
 * 31.23%
 * 4.22%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Andrea Horwath
 * 107
 * 17
 * 21
 * 21
 * 4
 * 1,144,822
 * 23.75%
 * 1.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Mike Schreiner
 * 107
 * 235,911
 * 4.89%
 * 1.97%
 * 235,911
 * 4.89%
 * 1.97%
 * 1.97%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Allen Small
 * 74
 * 37,696
 * 0.78%
 * 0.33%
 * 37,696
 * 0.78%
 * 0.33%
 * 0.33%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Paul McKeever
 * 42
 * 12,381
 * 0.26%
 * 0.05%
 * 12,381
 * 0.26%
 * 0.05%
 * 0.05%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Eric Ames (interim)
 * 6
 * 4,288
 * 0.09%
 * 0.13%
 * 4,288
 * 0.09%
 * 0.13%
 * 0.13%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Greg Vezina
 * 8
 * 4,247
 * 0.09%
 * 4,247
 * 0.09%
 * 4,247
 * 0.09%


 * style="text-align:left;"|
 * 14
 * 3,854
 * 0.08%
 * 3,854
 * 0.08%
 * 3,854
 * 0.08%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Elizabeth Rowley
 * 11
 * 2,290
 * 0.05%
 * 0.02%
 * 2,290
 * 0.05%
 * 0.02%
 * 0.02%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Bahman Yazdanfar
 * 4
 * 1,293
 * 0.03%
 * 0.03%
 * 1,293
 * 0.03%
 * 0.03%
 * 0.03%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Paul Figueiras
 * 5
 * 907
 * 0.02%
 * 0.01%
 * 907
 * 0.02%
 * 0.01%
 * 0.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Kevin Clarke
 * 5
 * 894
 * 0.02%
 * 0.01%
 * 894
 * 0.02%
 * 0.01%
 * 0.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Edward Deibel
 * 3
 * 892
 * 0.02%
 * 892
 * 0.02%
 * 892
 * 0.02%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Danish Ahmed
 * 3
 * 709
 * 0.01%
 * 0.01%
 * 709
 * 0.01%
 * 0.01%
 * 0.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"|vacant
 * 2
 * 551
 * 0.01%
 * 551
 * 0.01%
 * 551
 * 0.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Bob Yaciuk
 * 2
 * 397
 * 0.01%
 * 397
 * 0.01%
 * 397
 * 0.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Dennis Valenta
 * 2
 * 366
 * 0.01%
 * 366
 * 0.01%
 * 366
 * 0.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Michael Laxer
 * 2
 * 361
 * 0.01%
 * 361
 * 0.01%
 * 361
 * 0.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"|Yuri Duboisky
 * 2
 * 335
 * 0.01%
 * 335
 * 0.01%
 * 335
 * 0.01%


 * style="text-align:left;"| John Turmel
 * 3
 * 194
 * 194
 * 194
 * 194
 * 194


 * style="text-align:left;" colspan="7"|Declined Vote
 * align="right"|31,399
 * align="right"|0.64%
 * align="right"|+0.59%


 * style="text-align:left;" colspan="4"|Vacant
 * 1
 * style="text-align:left;" colspan="3"|Total
 * style="text-align:right;"|616
 * style="text-align:right;"|107
 * style="text-align:right;"|107
 * style="text-align:right;"|107
 * style="text-align:right;"|4,820,547
 * }
 * style="text-align:right;"|4,820,547
 * }
 * }
 * }

Synopsis of results

 * = open seat
 * = turnout is above provincial average
 * = incumbent re-elected
 * = incumbency arose from byelection gain

Summary analysis


Pairing off the top three parties, swings were calculated to be:


 * PC to Liberal: 2.6%
 * PC to NDP: 2.6%
 * Liberal to NDP: insignificant

Significant results among independent and minor party candidates
Those candidates not belonging to a major party, receiving more than 1,000 votes in the election, are listed below:

Seats changing hands
There were 17 seats that changed allegiance from the 2011 election.


 * PC to Liberal


 * Barrie
 * Burlington
 * Cambridge
 * Durham
 * Halton
 * Newmarket—Aurora
 * Northumberland—Quinte West


 * PC to NDP


 * Kitchener—Waterloo
 * Oshawa


 * NDP to Liberal


 * Beaches—East York
 * Davenport
 * Trinity—Spadina


 * Liberal to NDP


 * London West
 * Niagara Falls
 * Sudbury
 * Windsor—Tecumseh
 * Windsor West

Marginal seats
The following seats had a margin of victory of less than 5 percentage points in the election:

Opinion polls
Voting intention polls released throughout the election campaign were distinctly inconsistent and contradictory,   as shown in the graph and table below. During much of the campaign, different pollsters persistently disagreed, frequently by important margins, on whether the Liberals or Progressive Conservatives held the lead, though by the final days most polls showed the Liberals marginally to comfortably ahead. Still, polls completed on the last day of the campaign by Ipsos Reid and EKOS showed vastly divergent support for the NDP, at 30% and 19%, respectively. Also of note, although four different pollsters released results among "likely voters" alongside their results among all eligible voters in an effort to better predict the outcome of the election based on expected voter turnout, in all cases the former proved to be overall poorer predictors than the latter.

General opinion polls


Innovative Research states, for Province Wide Online Survey, "Margin of error not applicable, online samples not random."

Data shown above for campaign-period polls are top-line results, typically among all eligible voters. However, certain pollsters additionally report results among "likely voters" in an effort to better predict the actual outcome of the election. When available, these alternative results are shown in the following table:

Economy
Unemployment in Ontario was a major political issue. In particular, the manufacturing sector had shrunk by about 30% or more than 300,000 jobs since 2002.

The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario proposed a plan called "Million Jobs Plan", outlining their strategy for job creation and economic growth. By reducing tax, government services, energy costs and regulations the PCs projected to create a cumulative 507,488 jobs over eight years. The plan also called for the reduction of 100,000 civil service jobs. Economists and critics noted fundamental mathematical errors with the PCs' projections. They held, even if the PCs' own data were correctly tabulated, only 50,000 extra jobs would be created (in addition to the 500,000 that would be created anyway without any policy change).

The Ontario Liberal Party proposed the 10 year "Jobs and Investment Plan", which proposed infrastructure investments as their main strategy to create jobs.

The Ontario New Democratic Party platform called for targeted tax credits and incentives to encourage job creation.

The Green Party of Ontario policy proposal stated that it would "focus on your job by lowering payroll taxes for small businesses" as well as investing in transit infrastructure and subsidising energy-saving home improvements.

The Ontario Libertarian Party called for mass privatization, lower taxes and general deregulation, eliminating many business requirements such as permitting, insurance and certification that they considered to be interfering with job creation. Their platform called for government spending to be limited to "only core functions of government; defending life, liberty, and property" and as such would have eliminated industry subsidies or incentives of any kind, particularly in the energy sector.

The Communist Party of Ontario called for raising the minimum wage to $19/hr as well as introducing a guaranteed annual income, nationalization of the domestic steel industry, and investments in public housing, infrastructure and social programs, while shifting taxes from lower to higher income-earners and businesses.

Transit
Due to rapid urban and suburban expansion in southern Ontario, traffic congestion had been increasing greatly. A 2013 study by the CD Howe Institute determined that it was costing $7.5-11 billion annually for the economy of Toronto alone.

The Liberals promised $29 billion in infrastructure spending, $15 billion of which would go towards building new transit (mostly LRT) lines in the GTHA, based on the outline of Metrolinx's The Big Move plan, as well as an LRT in Ottawa. A high-speed rail line crossing the province from the southeast into Quebec was also planned. The PCs promised to finish building the Eglinton Crosstown, but cancel all the other planned lines, and instead focus on quickly expanding GO service. The NDP plan was similar to the Liberal plan, but included an extra $1 billion to get certain projects built faster.

Media endorsements
The following media outlets made endorsements during the campaign:

Liberal
 * Toronto Star
 * Now
 * Torontoist

Progressive Conservative
 * Burlington Post, The Flamborough Review, Oakville Beaver (Same editorial printed in several papers)
 * The Globe and Mail (endorsing a minority government)
 * National Post
 * Ottawa Citizen
 * Toronto Sun, Ottawa Sun (Identical editorial printed in multiple cities)
 * Windsor Star

New Democratic Party
 * Sudbury Star (endorsing a minority government)

Explicitly not endorsing any party
 * Hamilton Spectator
 * The Kitchener-Waterloo Record

Public figure endorsements
The media has reported the following endorsements by public figures during the campaign:


 * Deputy Mayor of Toronto, and acting mayor, Norm Kelly endorsed Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne.
 * Mayor of Mississauga, Hazel McCallion endorsed Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne.
 * Mayor of Kitchener, Carl Zehr endorsed Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne.