Ontario general election, 1999

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June 3, 1999

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103 seats in the 37th Legislative Assembly of Ontario
52 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Mike Harris	Dalton McGuinty	Howard Hampton
Party	Progressive Conservative	Liberal	New Democratic
Leader since	May 12, 1990	December 1, 1996	June 22, 1996
Leader's seat	Nipissing	Ottawa South	Kenora—Rainy River
Last election	82	30	17
Seats won	59	35	9
Seat change	23	5	8
Popular vote	1,978,059	1,751,472	551,009
Percentage	45.1	39.9%	12.6%
Swing	0.3pp	8.8pp	8.0pp

The Ontario Legislature after the 1999 election.

Premier before election

Mike Harris
Progressive Conservative

Premier-designate

Mike Harris
Progressive Conservative

An Ontario general election was held on June 3, 1999, to elect members of the 37th Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario, Canada.

The governing Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, led by Premier Mike Harris, was re-elected to a second majority government.

It was the first election in which the Legislative Assembly of Ontario had a reduced number of seats. Previously, the province's riding boundaries were different from those used in federal elections. In the 1999 election, for the first time, provincial riding boundaries were redrawn to precisely match federal ridings, resulting in 27 fewer seats — and 27 fewer Members of Provincial Parliament — in the legislature. Notably, in a number of ridings this resulted in incumbent MPPs directly facing each other in the new seats; in a few ridings, incumbent MPPs from the same party even had to compete against each other for their own party's nomination.

According to a poll released on the eve of the election, the Liberal Party entered the campaign with a lead over the Progressive Conservatives. This poll's accuracy was disputed by many, however, and even Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty cast doubt on it: noting that most polling companies claim to be accurate 19 times out of 20, he suggested that this might have been the 20th. Subsequent polls taken in the early period of the campaign showed the Progressive Conservatives with a commanding lead over the Liberals, in a manner more consistent with pre-election numbers.

Harris' government had delivered large tax cuts and significantly reduced the deficit, but they had also severely cut spending in the process. They had the support of the legendary Tory political machine, bolstered by a group of American experts imported from the United States' Republican Party. They targeted Dalton McGuinty as inexperienced ("Dalton McGuinty is not up to the job" was a Tory campaign slogan), and attacked him for lacking a clear vision. This was successful due to McGuinty having a reputation for being uncomfortable and stiff in the media. During the leader's debates, McGuinty had a poor performance, being unable to explain his party's platform clearly and being compared to fictional serial killer Norman Bates by NDP leader Howard Hampton.

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Wikipedia