1963 Ontario general election

1963 Ontario general election

← 1959 September 25, 1963 1967 →
108 seats in the 27th Legislative Assembly of Ontario 55 seats were needed for a majority
First party Second party Third party   LIB Leader John Robarts John Wintermeyer Donald C. MacDonald Party Progressive Conservative Liberal New Democratic Leader since October 25, 1961 April 20, 1958 November 21, 1953 Leader's seat London North Waterloo North (lost re-election) York South Last election 71 22 5 Seats won 77 24 7 Seat change 6 2 2 Percentage 48.9% 35.3% 15.5% Swing 2.6pp 1.3pp 1.2pp
Premier before election John Robarts Progressive Conservative Premier after election John Robarts Progressive Conservative

The 1963 Ontario general election was held on September 25, 1963, to elect the 108 members of the 27th Legislative Assembly of Ontario (Members of Provincial Parliament, or "MPPs") of the Province of Ontario.^[1]

The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, led by John Robarts, who had replaced Leslie Frost as PC leader and premier in 1961, won a seventh consecutive term in office, and maintained its majority in the legislature, increasing its caucus from the 71 members elected in the previous election to 77 members in an enlarged legislature.

The Ontario Liberal Party, led by John Wintermeyer, increased its caucus from 22 to 24 members, although Wintermeyer lost his seat of Waterloo North. He resigned as party leader but the Liberals continued in their role of official opposition. Robert Gibson of Kenora was re-elected as a Liberal-Labour MPP sitting with the Liberal caucus.

The social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was formally dissolved and succeeded by the Ontario New Democratic Party in 1961. The newly conglomerated party was still led by Donald C. MacDonald, and won two additional seats, for a total of seven.

Expansion of Legislative Assembly[]

The size of the Legislative Assembly was increased from 98 to 108 members,^[2] through the reorganization of Toronto's suburban ridings:

Results[]

Elections to the 27th Parliament of Ontario (1963)

Political party		Party leader	MPPs					Votes
			Candidates	1959	Dissol.	1963	±	#	%	± (pp)
	Progressive Conservative	John Robarts	108	71		77	6	1,052,740	48.61%	2.46
	Liberal	John Wintermeyer	107	21		23	2	754,032	34.82%	1.44
	New Democratic[a 1]	Donald C. MacDonald	97	5		7	2	340,208	15.71%	0.96
	Liberal–Labour		1	1		1		6,774	0.31%	0.04
	Independent-PC		1	–	–	–		5,190	0.24%	0.13
	Independent		7	–	–	–		2,759	0.13%	0.09
	Social Credit		9	–	–	–		2,313	0.11%	0.02
	Communist[a 2]		6	–	–	–		1,654	0.08%	0.15
	Socialist-Labour		1	–	–	–		103	–	New
	Labour-CCF			–	–	–		Did not campaign
	White Canada			–	–	–		Did not campaign
	Vacant
Total			337	98	98	108		2,165,773	100.00%
Blank and invalid ballots								18,028
Registered voters / turnout								3,435,745	59.72%	3.84

Reorganization of ridings[]

The reorganized ridings returned the following MPPs:

Seats that changed hands[]

There were 12 seats that changed allegiance in the election.

See also[]

• Politics of Ontario
• List of Ontario political parties
• Premier of Ontario
• Leader of the Opposition (Ontario)

References[]

Further reading[]

• Saywell, John T., ed. (1964). Canadian Annual Review for 1963. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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