Ontario’s snap election campaign is over and voting day has arrived, with the province poised to choose its next leader.
For the past four weeks, Progressive Conservative Party Leader Doug Ford, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, NDP Leader Marit Stiles and the Greens’ Mike Schreiner have criss-crossed the province canvassing for votes.
Ford, who has served as premier for almost seven years, called the snap election at the end of January, saying the threat of tariffs from the United States meant that he needed a new, stronger mandate than the 79 seats he had at dissolution.
The decision triggered the province’s first winter election since 1883 at a cost of roughly $189 million and sent his opponents scrambling.
Crombie’s team put together a health care-focused campaign, promising to connect everyone in the province with a family doctor. Stiles and the NDP picked affordability and pledged to introduce a grocery rebate.
Schreiner kept his activity to a few seats where his Green Party stood a good chance of expanding its caucus.
At the beginning of the campaign, polling conducted for Global News by Ipsos Global Affairs put Ford in a commanding position with a massive 26-point advantage over both the Liberals and the NDP. That poll had the PCs at 50 per cent, the Liberals at 24, the NDP at 20 and the Greens at six per cent.
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What followed was an election campaign that struggled to command attention amidst a busy news agenda and concerns about President Donald Trump and Canada’s relationship with the United States.
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Even the leaders’ debate — a moment that can shift the momentum of campaigns — ended up competing for attention with a plane crash at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
“It is probably the lowest-heartbeat election in a major jurisdiction that I can remember in many years. It’s almost like it’s not going on and people haven’t noticed very much,” Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos polling, said on Friday.
Fears of a record-low turnout election have also been raised with 36 per cent fewer votes cast at advance polls in 2025 than in 2022, which holds the title of worst election turnout in Ontario history at 44 per cent.
The quiet campaign saw hurdles for all the major parties.
Ford made two trips to Washington, D.C. during the campaign in his dual role as PC Party leader and premier, eliciting complaints to Elections Ontario and the integrity commissioner from his opponents for a commercial produced on the partially taxpayer-funded trip.
Meanwhile, the Liberals faced a steady stream of old social media posts unearthed by the PC war room.
In most cases, Crombie stood behind her candidates and said the messages were years old. In Oshawa, however, the party suspended its candidate over comments appearing to glorify the killing of a Sikh leader.
Another Liberal candidate withdrew for unrelated and undisclosed reasons in Windsor.
The NDP had one candidate drop out in a tight Toronto race, saying only the Liberals could beat the Progressive Conservatives in that riding and withdrawing their name. Another was forced to step down after comments emerged of her telling a conference she wanted to “be a Black woman.”
Another poll conducted by Ipsos at the end of the campaign, and released on Wednesday, showed Ford holding onto the lead he had at the start of the campaign.
The poll showed the PCs at 48 per cent and the Liberals at 28 per cent. The NDP were at 16 per cent and the Greens at eight.
In the final days of the race, the party leaders ramped up their activities, with both the NDP and Conservatives concentrating on the Kitchener, Niagara and Windsor areas of western Ontario, in particular.
The Liberals kept a focus on downtown Toronto, Ottawa and parts of Peel and Halton regions. The Greens have made repeated appearances in Kitchener, Guelph and Parry-Sound Muskoka.
Polls open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.