The premier promised to pave highways. He proferred patronage payoffs. He pounced on public sector unions.

Yet despite Dalton McGuinty’s best-laid plans and pretexts, voters have denied him a coveted majority government for the second time in a year: The NDP snatched the longtime Tory seat of Kitchener-Waterloo away from the two big parties — beating the Progressive Conservatives on their own turf, while beating back the overreaching Liberals.

Now, Ontario politics is about to get more interesting — for us, and all three party leaders: The Tories’ old Big Blue Machine has been humiliated by the NDP’s (Ontario) Orange Crush and its increasingly popular leader, Andrea Horwath. The Liberals are also seeing red after being humbled by the orange steamroller, reduced to a disastrous third-place finish in K-W as the NDP peeled away progressive voters.

After nine years as premier — the last 11 months leading a minority Liberal government — McGuinty must be reflecting, privately, on his future, no matter his public pronouncements. At 57, facing another showdown next year over his spring budget, does McGuinty still have the fire in his belly — and the likeability in his public persona — to win big again?

Ontarians have twice voted against a Liberal majority, first in last October’s general election and again in Thursday’s decisive byelections. The two ridings at stake were microcosms of Ontario’s urban-suburban battlegrounds that should have been bedrock Liberal. These are seats the party must win and hold.

Vaughan was already Liberal, so keeping it changes nothing. K-W, however, was a must-win for McGuinty to close the one-seat gap in the Legislature that opened up in the last election.

Byelections are never easy for sitting governments. But when Tory MPP Elizabeth Witmer took a plum job from McGuinty last spring, it opened up what Liberal strategists considered a winnable riding in K-W — under the right conditions.

Now, those winning conditions are looking ever more elusive for the Liberals province-wide. Weighed down by the baggage of nearly a decade in power, McGuinty tried to frame the ballot question as the need for a strong majority government to get a grip on teachers and other public servants. But the opposition turned the premier’s ballot question right back at him, pounding the Liberals with charges of incompetence over ORNGE and cancelled gas plants, insisting McGuinty didn’t merit another majority. And the teachers didn’t go along quietly.

There is no obvious Liberal successor waiting in the wings to improve on McGuinty’s faltering appeal. Yet the longer he waits, the more he boxes himself in for the next campaign, given that his minority government could fall at any time.

If the Liberals are feeling blue today, the old Big Blue Machine that Tory Leader Tim Hudak now helms is down in the dumps — outhustled by the third-ranked NDP and its leader, Andrea Horwath, who boasts the highest approval ratings of all three leaders.

It would have been easier for Hudak to explain away a Liberal victory in K-W by saying the ruling party used the levers of power to bribe and bamboozle voters. But what excuses can Hudak conjure up when he is beaten on his own Tory turf by the NDP?

The inconvenient fact is that he continues to trail his rivals — not just Horwath, but also McGuinty — in approval ratings. He blew a big lead in the last election. He remains on probation with voters, and his own Tory family.

In the days ahead, Hudak and his fellow Tories will face a reckoning. Does the official Opposition have the stomach to topple a leader who was reconfirmed at a party convention only a few months ago, and who is unlikely to go quietly? In a minority legislature, which could be plunged into an election at any time, do the Tories expose themselves to the risk of a leadership race, especially when there is no obvious — winnable — pretender to the throne?

On the bright side, it could have been worse for Hudak. His Tories could have finished third in their old K-W stronghold, and he can thank McGuinty for sparing him that fate.

As for Horwath, the results are a testament to her personal political appeal, with some help from the federal party’s high standings. The party has always finished a distant third in K-W, so it pulled off a political feat to snatch the seat from two bigger, well-financed parties.

But byelections are the bread and butter of the NDP, which is adept at concentrating its usually meagre resources in one place. In K-W, the party profited from the support of disgruntled teachers who appear to have abandoned the Liberals in droves over anti-strike legislation brought in by McGuinty last month.

But it would be a mistake to extrapolate too recklessly. Disgruntled voters, who might ordinarily dread the prospect of an NDP government, could more comfortably lend their votes to the party in a byelection, safe in the knowledge that New Democrats won’t sweep the province and take power.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

In fact, K-W’s results cannot be used to predict what lies ahead for any party: byelection turnouts are so low that the margin of victory is dramatically influenced by which campaign has the best machine to get out the vote.

The only certainties are that Hudak is on the spot, while Horwath continues to push the NDP into contention, siphoning away progressive votes from the Liberals. As for McGuinty, the results suggest he overeached in K-W, and is running out of room to manoeuvre.

mcohn@thestar.ca, twitter.com/reggcohn.

Read more about: