At the start of this spring's federal election campaign, provincial Liberals in Ontario were sanguine about the prospect of a Conservative majority government.
If it came to pass, they argued, it would work in their party's favour. Given the looming negotiations toward a new health-care accord, Ontarians would want someone who could stand up to Stephen Harper. And Dalton McGuinty fit that description better than Tim Hudak, the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.
What Mr. McGuinty's Liberals were not counting on was how the Conservatives won that majority. And while they're still determined to put a positive spin on it, the trends evident in Monday's vote add to the challenges they'll face in seeking a third term this fall.
In any election, the Liberals need to cut enough of a swath through the centre that the other parties are marginalized. As Michael Ignatieff just found out, the danger is getting boxed in by strong parties on either side. And Mr. McGuinty's party has to be worried about a carryover of some of the phenomena that left the federal Liberals with just 11 of Ontario's 106 seats.
To the Liberals' right, the Conservatives have more growth potential than many had realized. Mr. Harper didn't just squeak through with a few extra seats in suburbia, which was supposed to be his path to a majority. His party got 44 per cent of votes in the province, and won eight ridings in the supposed fortress of Toronto - including a few where even Conservatives had been skeptical about their chances.
That momentum won't necessarily carry forward provincially. But the Conservatives have figured out, through some very advanced campaign methods, how to crack into parts of the province that were supposed to be off limits to them. And it bears noting that Mr. Hudak's campaign manager, Mark Spiro, played a strong role in the federal race.
At the least, conservative parties evidently aren't considered as scary in Ontario as they were a few years ago. And it's starting to look like a dubious strategy to use Mr. Harper as a foil, or to paint Mr. Hudak as being in his pocket - particularly since the Prime Minister promised during the campaign to keep increasing federal health transfers by 6 per cent annually.
What's really causing some Liberals concern, though, is what's happening on their left. A key to their success federally in the 1990s, and provincially since 2003, is that the NDP has been almost a non-entity, allowing the Liberals to suck up left-of-centre votes. In this federal campaign, that changed.
The NDP got 26 per cent of Ontario votes cast on Monday, nine points higher than in the past provincial campaign. That allowed it to take six seats away from the Liberals, while drawing away enough Liberal votes to help the Conservatives make their gains.
Much of that had to do with national momentum and with the popularity of Jack Layton. But while she won't be mistaken for her federal counterpart, provincial Leader Andrea Horwath cuts a more sympathetic figure than her predecessor Howard Hampton. If the NDP's image in Ontario is finally recovering from the Bob Rae era, as the federal numbers suggest, she could capitalize.
To all this, Mr. McGuinty's strategists respond - quite rightly - that their party is a very different animal from Mr. Ignatieff's. The provincial Liberals are more cohesive and much better organized. They have a clearer identity, a more consistent message, and a caucus aware that it needs to work the ground hard.
Beyond that, the leaders themselves are in much different situations. Mr. McGuinty is not beloved, but he is a known entity who can no longer be as easily defined by his opponents. Mr. Ignatieff was a rookie who got pushed around by veterans, while Mr. McGuinty will be a veteran among rookies.
But there is one other phenomenon that the Liberals can't deny: a volatility that rewarded the kind of populism they don't really trade in.
Last year, it was Rob Ford catching fire in Toronto's municipal election. This spring, it was the NDP's "orange crush."
That volatility, of course, brings with it a great deal of uncertainty. Nobody should be too confident in their ability to game out the provincial campaign. But if there was any complacency in Mr. McGuinty's Liberals, any inclination just to fall back on their "brand," what happened Monday should shake it out of them. The centre, right now, is a dangerous place to be.
Adam Radwanski