Ontario Liberals are down but far from out when it comes to ruling the province

The last two elections have not been kind to the Ontario Liberals, constituting the party’s worst electoral performances since 1943. Instead, the 2022 election — when the party won eight seats with 23.6 per cent of the vote — is more helpful. The Conservatives won more seats and also held onto the voters they’d extracted from the Liberals in 2018. With a Conservative return to power, the Liberals have simply shifted to another stage of the type of cyclical dynamic that characterizes Ontario party politics. This Ontario electoral dynamic challenges much of the conventional wisdom surrounding majoritarian electoral systems.