The 2018 Ontario Election: Historical Voting Patterns

The 2018 Ontario election is over and in a surprise to no one the Ontario Conservative Party won a majority government.  There was some kernal of doubt during mid-campaign when the NDP overtook the Liberals and seemed to be poised to keep on going to overtake the Conservatives.

Of course that did not happen and it was always very unlikely to happen.  The reason for that is the voters of Ontario have been alternating between Liberal and Conservative governments for almost a century.  It is true that Bob Rae managed to break that pattern once but that was an exception.  

Incidentally, that dynamic also exists at the Federal level which is why the Trudeau Liberals were able to jump ahead of the NDP in 2015 and take government from the Conservative Party of Canada.

One other aspect of this historical voting pattern is voters do not vote governments out of power after just one term.  Again this dynamic works the same way federally

I am going to make a bold prediction just one day after the election.  In 2022 the Conservative Party of Ontario will win another majority government.  As well, the Liberals will reassert themselves and at least double their seat count during that election, and if things go really well, they will supplant the NDP as the Official Opposition.

As well, I am going to predict that the Federal Liberals are going to win the 2019 election.  They will have to work for it but when the ballots are counted they will have another majority government, probably a reduced majority but a majority government none-the-less.

The historical voting pattern I mentioned is strong and nothing I have seen in the past 40 years would indicate that it is weakening.  Indeed, I would say it is getting stronger.  Ontario voters elected a Conservative government despite the facts that their leader is rather sketchy and the party never actually released a detailed election platform.  Canadians ignored the NDP Official Opposition, the erstwhile government-in-waiting and handed government to the Third Party in the Federal Parliament.

There are no sure things in politics but it is highly unlikely that we will see a change in this pattern in the near future.