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Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader John Tory ended his campaign tailspin with a crash landing in the Toronto riding of Don Valley West, where he failed to unseat Liberal incumbent Kathleen Wynne.

With a few polls still to be counted, Mr. Tory conceded victory to the Liberal Education Minister.

"I have spoken to Kathleen Wynne and I've congratulated her on her win this evening," he told supporters just after 11 p.m. EDT.

It was the first time in 17 years a leader of one of Ontario's three primary parties has failed to win a seat.

The stunning defeat in the Toronto riding compounded the Conservative's province-wide loss to Dalton McGuinty's Liberals, who won an easy majority.

"A short while ago I telephoned Mr. McGuinty to congratulate him on winning the election. He's been given the considerable privilege of serving in government again, and I say to him and his colleagues tonight that I hope they will place first and foremost on their agenda doing whatever they can to raise the standards of integrity and accountability so that we can in turn, together, all of us, restore faith in government and all the good that it can do," Mr. Tory said.

Most pundits agree Mr. Tory will now face heavy internal pressure to resign as party leader. He insisted late Wednesday night he has many years left and much work to do as leader.

"I will continue to have my job to do as leader of my party, holding (the Liberals) to account," he told supporters in his concession speech.

"The party itself is going to have to make a determination: Is (Mr. Tory) someone who can make a comeback that we need to forgive for this campaign, or do we need to consider changing him?," said Kathy Brock, a political scientist at Queen's University.

"Politics is an ordeal by fire. You have to walk through that fire before you're accepted, and John Tory is in the middle of his fire right now," she said.

It's widely agreed Mr. Tory's campaign was cut off at the legs by the sharp side of his own wedge issue: the extension of $400-million in public funding to faith-based schools.

The promise, made just days before the election began, took less than half a page in the Conservative's 53-page platform, but it dominated the campaign from the outset and crippled Mr. Tory's ability to raise other issues or to attack the Liberal record.

Mr. Tory's step-down in the dying days of the campaign, in which he promised a free vote on the contentious issue, failed to stop the party's freefall in the polls.

The campaign was "a notch above disastrous," said Adam Daifallah, past president of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association and co-author of Rescuing Canada's Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution.

"People's levels of tolerance for minorities is hardening and I think that's the reason this faith-based funding thing blew up in his face. He just went right up against that wall."

Ms. Brock said there are other reasons Mr. Tory's controversial campaign pledge was a non-starter. School funding has historically been a sensitive issue in Ontario, she said. As well, Ontarians have been told repeatedly over the years that their schools are under funded, which made the extension of funding outside the public system a hard sell, she said.

Many see the public system as one of the main integrative forces in Ontario's increasingly multicultural society, Ms. Brock noted.

"The Conservatives, from past experience, knew this was a sensitive issue," she said.

"It was an issue where John Tory was doing what he believed was a principled thing, in the way that (former premier) Bill Davis had done a principled thing with the extension of funding to the Roman Catholic school system up to then Grade 13 ... Unfortunately, you sometimes fall on principled stances."

Ms. Wynne made much of the controversial promise as she door knocked in the riding. Late Wednesday, she reaffirmed her party's position in the education funding debate.

"Our mandate is clear. we're going to continue investing in our public system as it exists," Ms. Wynne said.

Paul Nesbitt-Larking, chair of political science at Huron University College in London, Ont., said the Liberals also deserve credit for running a "very impressive campaign."

The Liberals established an "entrenched stronghold" with a pre-election campaign over the summer that featured targeted spending announcements on education, health and transportation, Mr. Nesbitt-Larking said.

Mr. McGuinty also inoculated himself from attacks on his leadership by frankly admitting he had broken his promise on the much-loathed health care tax, he said.

Ms. Brock said Mr. Tory's release of his policy platform before the campaign had really started was a critical error. Instead, he should have floated the faith-based funding issue as a trial balloon, gauged reaction, and then firmed up his platform, she said.

"It was John Tory's to lose," she said. "As it turns out, he was never able to put the heat back on the Liberal government" on issues such as their environmental record, health care and the health tax, she said.

Mr. Daifallah said the Conservative loss is a "verdict on this tired, tried routine of the Conservative party electing a leader who is not a conservative in the small 'c' sense and they run on their personality.

"It does not work," he said. "John Tory, Ernie Eves, Kim Campbell, Joe Clark, the list goes on. Every time this type of leader is elected, it backfires," Mr. Daifallah said.

- With a file by CP