PC leader Doug Ford bucks history to set Conservative seat count record in Ontario election

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Not even two-time majority winner Mike Harris won more seats than Ford, who bettered his record the second time around

With 83 seats, Ford’s seat count surpasses any Progressive Conservative leader of the modern era. Article content

When Howard Ferguson of the former Ontario Conservative Party ran for re-election as premier in 1929, he was about to set a high water mark in Tory seat counts with 90.

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Before him, the most seats ever won by a premier of any party in Ontario was in 1908, when Sir James Pliny Whitney, also a Conservative lawyer from Eastern Ontario, and best remembered as the namesake of a civil service office block near Queen’s Park, took 86 seats in the province’s 12th election.

Doug Ford did not match Ferguson or even Whitney’s seat total, but he came mighty close.

David Peterson, a former Liberal premier, still holds the overall record seat total with 95 in 1987.

Former Ontario premier David Peterson

But Ford surpassed any Progressive Conservative leader of the modern era.

Mike Harris took 82 seats in the 1995 landslide election that turfed NDP Premier Bob Rae, now Ambassador to the United Nations. Like Ford, Harris won a second majority, in 1999, but with far fewer seats.

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Unlike Harris, though, Ford bettered his own record the second time around.

Former Ontario premier Mike Harris

Bill Davis, who also won two majorities over 14 years as premier, never won more than 78 seats.

Former Ontario premier Bill Davis, who died in 2021 at the age of 92.

Results Friday morning had Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party leading or elected in 83 seats, having reduced the Opposition NDP to 31. The Liberal Party had a mere eight seats, still not enough for official party status.

To find a Tory leader with a seat count that high, you have to go back to when Leslie Frost also took 83 seats for his fifth premiership in 1955.

Turnout was at a record low for Ontario, at around 43 per cent, and Ford’s party took a greater share of those votes than even the boldest pollsters predicted, at about 41 per cent.

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Ford also bucked the historical trend that for premiers who win repeat victories, their seat counts tend to fall over time. That was the case for Liberal Dalton McGuinty, who first won with 72 seats in 2003 and last won with 53 in 2011. It was the case for Harris, who took a second majority with just 59 seats. Davis saw his seat count drop through two elections before rising to his second majority with 70, but that was still less than his first with 78. John Robarts won two majorities in 1963 and 1967 with 77 and then 69 seats.

Ford was first elected in 2018 with 76 seats.

Much of that increase came at the expense of the NDP in suburban ridings northwest of Toronto, in Thunder Bay, and in southwestern Ontario.

Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca lost his own riding north of Toronto. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath won hers in Hamilton. Both pledged to resign.