http://speakyourmind.thestar.com/election-results/
I note that anything Red or Red/Orange Except for northern Ontario is a city or large town.

The Conservatives have blown 10+ point leads three times in a row and simply saying "cut all taxes and reverse all current government spending" is not helpful

Quick FAQ: those boundaries are the federal ones. The province didn't make them. Quite a while back, to settle a long ongoing argument about boundaries and gerrymandering, they opted to simply use the federal ones.
Ontario has fixed election dates both for the cities. Cities have elections 1 year prior to the provincial election. If people get annoyed with a right/left wing council they tend to vote opposite in the provincial election. It's almost unheard of for the same party to dominate Toronto + Ontario + Canada.. In fact it's only happened once over 50 years ago.

In spite of multiple accusations, the Liberal party (red) is right of center and more right wing than their federal counterparts. The Conservative party (blue) is right wing. The NDP party (yellow) varies between center and left wing depending on the leadership.

ya man, the PCs consistently snatch default from the jaws of victory

i live in McGuinty's riding, but didn't vote for him. he still won (obviously). I knew that no one else was going to win in my riding, but I said to myself that I would vote for whichever non-Dalton candidate engaged me the best. Not a single other candidate actively tried to engage me either through direct mail, coming to my door, or having a campaign spokesperson stop me while I'm out and about in the area. I was very disappointed. I can understand why their efforts weren't placed in this riding (it's a McGuinty family stronghold), but it's still disappointing.

I was chatting with h4 yesterday about this (and I'm sure he'll be on this thread as soon as he's online :p) and he made really strong points about how the PCs went all tea party and that doesn't resonate in Ontario, as your FAQ discusses.

If Hudak wanted to win, the PCs should have made a much more practical, centerist platform to campaign on near the end :|

also, based on looking at how Toronto voted, I would say Rob Ford is probably a major factor in this election. Was he out on the campaign trail punching babies and giving the finger to old women? I mean that's the next step based on what I see of him in the news as a toronto outsider :p

Well Ford played a roll but it's not the only think. Hudak said he wouldn't re-upload the programs that Harris downloaded on the cities back in the 1990s and that pretty much sunk him in most of the GTA where very popular local mayors (like Hazel and the mayors of London and Markham) started coming out against them.
He also didn't address urban issues one bit and based on collective experience it pretty much means that all municipal funding would probably be severely cut while conveniently all the money transfers from the cities to the rural areas would remain untouched or would increase (see current school board financing, the proposed 407 extension, and what happened in Huntsville for examples). The Liberals didn't really promise anything more than to continue to do what they were doing (resume re-uploaded of hospitals and welfare). There was also a large concern that the Tories would probably scrap the existing Move Ontario 2020 plans which would seriously hurt a lot of these places.
Also the private 407 toll road pretty much means that those 905 ridings will continue to vote against them for quite some time.
That and the local councils are getting a lot braver to place the blame where it belongs.

The rural areas just see their tax rates and some how think that they are the ones subsidizing everyone else when in fact the reverse is true. They very heavily depend on tourism and the markets of the nearby large cities to stay in existence and should be mindful of this. Sadly Toronto bashing gains you popularity there even though it's cheap politics.
In northern Ontario I can't say I blame them for the way they vote but unfortunately most of their problems are federally driven afaik.

Oh for Pete's sake, Canadian politics?

Have you no other refuge, are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

*hands archaic some cheese*

It will be funny if the libs manage to pull off getting a PC or NDP as speaker.

if they cut all taxes, does that mean it'll be cheaper to buy tobacco in Canada? where's Ontario? probably right next to the lake, Dibs.

This really wasn't a major-issue election. It only happened because by law, it needed to. Though I'm not a fan of many of the Lib's policies, neither the NDP or Conservative leaders showed that they were capable of being viable alternatives. The PC's would have been a re-run of the Harris years (tons of budget cuts and service 'downloading') and the NDP.. lets face it, as nice as their utopian society ideals sound, they don't understand that what they want to do costs a lot of money, and you can't implement a platform like what they want without raising taxes a lot.

As much as I hate to admit it, McGuinty was the only leader with enough experience for the job. I weighed the party platforms pretty critically, and unfortunately the liberals were the lesser evil.

Mcguinty has been somewhat of a mixed bag for me.
The green-belt act (and places to grow) along with the transit funding schemes were decent and addressed much badly needed issues. The city of toronto act was also the right thing to do although sadly the failures resulting from the act have more to do with the current and former municipal governments.

Contrary to what certain media tells you, the HST is actually a huge cost saving measure for most businesses BUT there are some issues with it namely energy and insurance (because the HST became a retroactive sales tax).

There was also plenty I didn't like including smart meters, and the requirement of individual metering on large buildings.

Then lets look at the altnernatives:
the conservatives basically were as you said above and didn't even mention urban issues at all during their campaign. Their infrastructure plan was essentially to build more highways to nowhere.
the ndp annoyed me for multiple reasons: 1) wanting to offer "More representation" to rural areas. 2) The funding/fare freeze arrangement for transit (which would effectively bankrupt it). 3) their business tax thing while I sort of agree with it, this is the wrong time to be doing that.