Ford’s early election call won his Progressive Conservatives another four years of governing in Ontario
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.The Progressive Conservatives have won Ontario’s 2025 election and the right to govern the province for another four years, early vote counts from Elections Ontario indicate.
Ontario's major broadcasters called the majority victory just 10 minutes after the polls closed at 9 p.m. in Thursday’s general election. It comes as a result of the campaign Ford initiated on Jan. 29, a year-and-a-half before the next provincial vote was scheduled. Despite already controlling a strong majority of the 124 seats in the provincial legislature, Ford said that threats posed by U.S. President Donald Trump meant his PCs needed a new “strong, four-year mandate” to govern Ontario through potentially uncertain times.The PCs framed their campaign around a single message targeted at many Ontarians' chief concern. They argued that Ford is the best leader to “Protect Ontario” against Trump’s threats.
However, according to numerous PC and PC-linked sources, a combination of other factors drove Ford’s early election call. Having a vote held before any potentially damaging revelations came from the RCMP’s Greenbelt investigation or there was a potentially disruptive change in government at the federal level were both influencing factors, along with the PCs’ strong public polling position, sources said.
Ford’s party’s strong position in the polls roughly held up throughout the four-week writ period. Brief flashbacks to the Greenbelt scandal in the news cycle, a couple of Ford slip-ups, and other minor self-inflicted scratches by the PCs seemed to make little of a difference on election day.
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