Liberals hold strong in Toronto area as Tories fail to make ground

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party was leading in early vote counts for key seats in the Greater Toronto Area, home to a battleground of suburban swing ridings where the Conservatives needed to make gains to score an upset.

Although Mr. Trudeau was declared the winner of Monday’s election, with TV networks projecting another minority government, many individual ridings in the GTA were still too close to call at deadline.

Early returns showed Liberals holding most of their GTA seats and even leading narrowly in Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill, where a tight race north of Toronto pitted Conservative incumbent Leona Alleslev – herself a former Liberal – in a tough battle against Liberal challenger Leah Taylor Roy.

Mr. O’Toole, who was expected to win his own seat in Durham, fared better across the rest of province, in rural and small town Ontario.

One notable loss for the Liberals was the defeat of cabinet minister Maryam Monsef in Peterborough-Kawartha, who attracted controversy for calling the Taliban “brothers” while appealing for refugees to be allowed to leave Afghanistan. Conservative Michelle Ferreri was expected to win the seat.

But political observers had said Mr. O’Toole’s most likely path to power lay through flipping some of the swing ridings in the suburban “905” belt that surrounds Toronto, which is named for its telephone area code.

While the Liberals won the vast majority of ridings in the 905 in 2019, in some their margins of victory were razor thin. Several were seen by both leading parties as winnable seats, depending on how many voters decided to cast votes with potential spoilers to the left, for the NDP, or to the right, for the populist People’s Party of Canada.

Party leaders naturally made this multicultural middle-class region a priority in the campaign. Mr. O’Toole made several strategic visits to York Region. And Mr. Trudeau, who faced anti-vaccine protesters at various Ontario events, including earlier this month in Newmarket-Aurora, north of Toronto, was there again on the campaign’s final weekend, touring a farmer’s market. It appeared to pay off: Liberal incumbent Tony Van Bynen was leading in early results in a tight race.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail before the polls closed, Mr. O’Toole’s campaign chairman, Walied Soliman, said the Conservative Leader had achieved his objective in the campaign, whether he wins power, by starting a “dialogue with Canadians.”

Mr. Soliman also said the party’s platform – seen by many as a more centrist document that included a climate-change plan and focused on housing affordability – was not tailored to appeal to key 905 ridings.

“Erin’s platform was not developed through focus groups. Erin’s platform was developed by his deep-seated personal values,” Mr. Soliman said. “And those deep-seated personal values align with middle Canada.”

Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party dominated within Toronto itself, a key party stronghold that the Grits swept in the 2019 election. Early vote counts showed the Liberals were leading in Toronto ridings as the NDP’s hopes for a beachhead here dwindled.

Incumbent Liberal candidate Nathan Erskine-Smith was declared re-elected in Beaches-East York.

Early vote counts showed a close Liberal-NDP race in Davenport, where incumbent Liberal candidate Julie Dzerowicz ran against the NDP’s Alejandra Bravo.

Ms. Dzerowicz won by less than 1,500 votes over the NDP in 2019.

The race in Spadina-Fort York was too close to call at deadline. The Liberal Party said last weekend that it would remove candidate Kevin Vuong after a dropped sexual-assault charge against him was revealed. The party said Mr. Vuong would not be a member of caucus should he be elected; his name remained on the ballot because the deadline to remove candidates had passed. Mr. Vuong has said the allegations are false.

Breaking the Liberals’ grip on Toronto was also a key priority for the NDP, which was shut out of the city in 2019. Jagmeet Singh began his party’s campaign in former NDP leader Jack Layton’s old riding of Toronto-Danforth, where candidate Clare Hacksel, executive director of an abortion clinic, faced off against incumbent Liberal Julie Dabrusin, who was leading in a race that remained too close to call at deadline.