The night got off to a rough start for Crombie and the Liberals with one TV station calling the election for the PCs within minutes of polls officially closing
Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie lost in her riding of Mississauga East-Cooksville Thursday night, but vowed to stay on as party leader.
“You know I’m not going to slow down,” she told the crowd at her election-night party. “I want to tell you that I will stay on.”
With 56 of 64 polls reporting, Crombie had 43 per cent of the vote, losing to Tory candidate Silvia Gualtieri, who had 46.5 per cent of the vote.
The results were no less discouraging for Liberals across the province.
With 92 per cent of polls reporting, the Liberals had nearly 30% of the provincial popular vote – about 13 percentage points behind Doug Ford’s Liberals. But it was not an efficient vote, and they were only elected or leading in 14 ridings.
The NDP, with only 18.6 per cent of the vote, had 25 seats.
In her speech, Crombie noted the Liberals beat the NDP by double digits, and have reclaimed official party status.
Gualtieri is the mother-in-law of Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, himself the leader of the PCs between 2015 and 2018.
Crombie accompanied her elderly mother to the voting booth earlier Thursday and used the occasion to underscore a major theme of her campaign: the state of healthcare in Ontario.
Crombie had come under sustained fire from the PCs in recent weeks as the Conservatives highlighted several embarrassing social media posts made by Liberals candidates in ridings across the province.
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