Following Tip O’Neill’s dictum – “all politics is local” – I will write about the results in the two Ontario constituencies I know best: Don Valley West (DVW) and Don Valley East (DVE). This local perspective is the precursor to a post taking a broader perspective when there are official counts for every seat in the Legislature.

I’ll start with a disclaimer. I was strongly supportive of the incumbents – Stephanie Bowman in DVW and Adil Shamji in DVE – and wrote posts urging NDP and Greens supporters to vote strategically in their favour. In this post, I will change my perspective and write as objectively as I can about the election results.

First, the Numbers

Both Stephanie Bowman and Adil Shamji were re-elected with substantially greater margins than in 2022. Poll aggregator Eric Grenier considered DVW to be a tossup for the entire election campaign, and DVE either a tossup or at most leaning to the Liberals. Bowman and Shamji therefore outperformed Grenier’s predictions.

Stephanie Bowman’s vote increased from 16,200 to 18,400: 2200 votes or 14 percent. The PC Party vote fell from 14,200 to 10,900 (3300 votes or 23 percent), the NDP vote fell from 3400 to 1300 (2100 votes or 62 percent), and Greens vote fell from 2000 to 1000 (1000 votes or 50 percent).

Adil Shamji’s vote increased from 12,300 to 14,800 (3500 votes or 28 percent). The PC Party vote was unchanged at 9000. The NDP vote fell from 4400 to 2100 (2300 votes or 52 percent), and Greens vote fell from 1100 to 800 (300 votes or 27 percent).

The Liberals

Eric Grenier and Philippe Fournier in their podcast The Numbers observed that this was essentially a status quo election, in which most incumbents were re-elected. The snap election call favoured incumbents, because the other parties were not able to nominate candidates long in advance of the election and provide the opportunity for them to build name recognition.

That said, both Bowman and Shamji had admirable records in their first term as MPPs. They had major assignments as critics: Bowman jobs and the economy, Shamji health and housing. Both are knowledgeable, articulate, and in the public eye.

In both DVE and DVW, there was an important local issue, namely the Ford Government’s relocation of the Ontario Science Centre from its original Don Mills site to Ontario Place, and the destruction of Raymond Moriyama’s iconic building, first with passive-aggressive refusal to repair, and then with the wrecking ball. Shamji and Bowman have opposed this from the start and have been deeply involved in the citizens’ movement to save the Science Centre.

The PC Party

In 2022, the PC Party candidate in DVW was former Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders, who had strong name recognition by virtue of being in the public eye for years; in 2025, their candidate was small businessman Sam Moini, who had run unsuccessfully in DVE in 2022. Shamji’s opponent in 2025 was long-time fashion executive Roger Gingerich, a background that doesn’t resonate in a constituency with modest income and many new Canadians.

In 2025, the PC Party ran a focused campaign, in which candidates were dissuaded from participating in all-candidates’ debates, doing local media, and having independent websites, all intended to provide unity of message, with party leader Doug Ford the sole spokesperson. I would think that serving as a placeholder would not appeal to high-quality candidates, unless they were certain of being elected. Thus, the low-profile PC Party candidates made it easier for the two Liberal incumbents to be re-elected. This may also explain why the PC Party didn’t win more seats in 2025 than in 2022. By muzzling their candidates and fielding candidates who were willing to be muzzled, they chose not to use local candidate strength as a political tool.

One question I have is the impact of the Science Centre on the PC Party vote. Together with the decline in name recognition of the candidate, it may have accounted for the sharp decline in the PC Party vote in DVW. In DVE, the PC Party candidates were equally low-profile in both elections. I would have thought that the Science Centre would have reduced the PC Party vote in 2025, but it didn’t change. Perhaps people in DVE who voted for the PC Party didn’t care about the Science Centre, and people who care about the Science Centre would never vote for the PC Party.

The NDP and the Greens

In 2022, the NDP candidate in DVW was Ontario’s former children’s advocate Irwin Elman, a high-profile candidate; in 2025, the NDP candidate was Linnea Lofstrom-Abary, a twenty-something union activist. Grenier and Fournier commented that the NDP vote was so efficient because the party concentrated all its resources on the seats in which it had incumbents or which it thought it had a good chance of winning. Kudos to Ms. Lofstrom-Abary for running for the first time, but the party likely gave her few resources.

While the NDP and Greens have never been in contention in both ridings, their vote dropped substantially in both ridings in 2025. Perhaps their supporters were voting strategically for the Liberals. Here I can offer a small bit of personal evidence. My website had a spike in visits on election day, and the post that had the most visits was the one on voting strategically in Don Valley West.

Going Forward

Both Stephanie Bowman and Adil Shamji can take the results of the election as a vote of confidence and encouragement to keep doing what they are doing. Their assignments as critics, of course, come from the party leader, but with the Liberal caucus still very small, I can’t imagine the leader wouldn’t want Bowman to focus on the economy and Shamji to focus on health care. There will be one change in Dr. Shamji’s situation. In the previous legislature, he was the only MD. In this election, Dr. Robin Lennox was elected for the NDP in Hamilton Centre, replacing the defenestrated Sarah Jama. Whether Drs. Shamji and Lennox cooperate or compete with one another in their efforts to hold the Ford Government accountable for its health care policies will speak to the broader issue of the relationship between the two major opposition parties.

Finally, I suggest that both Stephanie Bowman and Adil Shamji analyze the 2025 and 2022 election results on a poll-by-poll basis to see if a deeper dive into the data reveals other lessons that would help them represent the constituency now and run for re-election in the future.