Marit Stiles and the Ontario New Democratic Party did not come close to loosening Doug Ford’s grip on a majority government Thursday night, but they did fend off a challenge from Bonnie Crombie’s Liberals to maintain their status as the official Opposition.
“Now the results are not everything that we hoped,” Stiles said in her post-election speech to supporters at The Great Hall on Queen Street West. “But the people of Ontario made their choice. They’ve re-elected the government, hoping it will help protect them from Donald Trump and his tariffs.”
Stiles said she was prepared to offer Ford “any possible help” to combat the “threat” of Trump’s presidency.
“The threat is real, and I deeply believe that we can overcome it with a strong team Ontario and a strong team Canada approach.”
But, she also said she would continue to hold Ford’s Progressive Conservatives accountable.
“That is a job we’re going to do with our usual fight and our determination, but also with love and hope.”
While the NDP’s vote and seat share both shrunk, they still have a significant advantage over the Liberals, who added enough seats to regain official party status, but otherwise endured another disappointing night. Crombie herself lost her own riding of Mississauga East—Cooksville.
The NDP’s famously efficient vote delivered again for the party, which trailed the Liberals in the popular vote by more than 10 percentage points while holding nearly twice as many seats.
But Thursday’s outcome still saw the party, which held 28 seats at dissolution, lose a handful of ridings, including Toronto-St. Paul’s, where incumbent Jill Andrew was unseated by Liberal Stephanie Smyth.
The NDP have now seen declining results in consecutive elections since becoming the official opposition. In 2018, they earned more than one-third of the popular vote and won 40 seats. They dropped to 24 per cent of the vote and 31 seats in 2022. On Thursday, the party won about 26 seats with less than 20 per cent of the popular vote.
Stiles, who was acclaimed as party leader two years ago, could face more challenges to her leadership after Thursday’s result. The 55-year-old former school trustee and education critic has been unable to capitalize on a weakened Liberal party and now commands an NDP caucus that is smaller than it has been in a decade.
But, on Thursday night Stiles said she was looking forward to a rematch with Ford in a few years. “I’m there for it, my friends.”
The NDP’s campaign promises, which included a monthly grocery rebate, stronger rent controls, removing tolls from Highway 407 and uploading 50 per cent of municipal transit costs, didn’t resonate with voters.
Or maybe they simply didn’t register. Despite being opposition leader for the last two years, Stiles continues to suffer from a lack of name recognition. In a survey of more than a thousand Ontarians conducted less than two weeks ago, nearly one-third of respondents said they didn’t know who Stiles was.
Whatever the NDP promised it may not have been enough to counter the strong sentiment among the electorate that Doug Ford was in the best position to defend the province against Trump and the looming threat of widespread tariffs.
In the final Abacus Data poll of the campaign, released Wednesday, two-thirds of respondents believed Ford’s Progressive Conservatives were the best party “to deal with the impact of Donald Trump.” The NDP garnered just 11 per cent support on the question.
Stiles, who easily won her own Davenport riding, was often the face of political opposition to the Ford government during the Greenbelt scandal in 2023, but her attacks on Ford during the campaign — that he lacked integrity and would not help working class people — didn’t stick.
Jared Walker, former NDP speech writer and current vice-chair of the Broadbent Institute, said before the polls closed that a successful night for the NDP would be if they could “flip blue ridings to orange.”
The party was specifically looking to make gains in the ridings of Thunder Bay—Atikokan, Essex, Sault Ste. Marie and York South—Weston in Toronto. They lost all four.
A couple minutes into Stiles’ speech a single protester holding a sign that read “Marit’s legacy is genocide” started yelling and tried to climb onto the stage, but was quickly tackled by security guards and removed from the venue.
Stiles has been criticized for removing MPP Sarah Jama, an outspoken pro-Palestinian activist, from the NDP caucus for “acting unilaterally too many times” and “undermining our work.”
Jama, who had been sitting as an Independent, lost her Hamilton Centre seat Thursday, finishing a distant fourth.
