General elections were held on October 6, 2011, to elect members of the 40th Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The Ontario Liberal Party was elected to a minority government, with the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (PC Party) serving as the Official Opposition and the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP) serving as the third party. In the final result, Premier McGuinty's party fell one seat short of winning a majority government.
Under amendments passed by the Legislature in December 2005, Ontario elections were now held on fixed dates, namely the first Thursday of October every four years. The writ of election was issued by Lieutenant Governor David Onley on September 7, 2011.
The election saw a thenâÂÂrecord low voter turnout of 48.2%, only to be surpassed by the 2022 Ontario general election with 44.06%.
In March 2009, PC Party leader John Tory stepped down as leader, with Tim Hudak elected to be his successor. Also in March 2009, Andrea Horwath replaced Howard Hampton as leader of the NDP at the leadership election. Thus, both the Progressive Conservatives and the NDP went into the election with a new leader. Green Party of Ontario leader Frank de Jong stepped down in November 2009; their leadership convention confirmed Mike Schreiner as their new leader. Dalton McGuinty won 95 percent support for his leadership at an Ontario Liberal annual general meeting after the 2007 election, and ran again in 2011.
|- style="background-color:#CCCCCC" !rowspan="2" colspan="2" style="text-align:left;"|Party !rowspan="2" style="text-align:left;"|Party leader !rowspan="2" |Candidates !colspan="4" |Seats !colspan="3" |Popular vote |- style="background-color:#CCCCCC" !2007 !Dissol. !2011 !Change !# !% !Change
| style="text-align:left;" |Dalton McGuinty |107 |71 |70 |53 |18 | 1,625,102 | 37.65% | 4.7%
| style="text-align:left;" |Tim Hudak |107 |26 |25 |37 |11 | 1,530,076 | 35.45% | 3.8%
| style="text-align:left;" |Andrea Horwath |107 |10 |10 |17 |7 | 981,508 | 22.74% | 5.9%
| style="text-align:left;" |Mike Schreiner |107 |– |– |– |– | 126,021 | 2.92% | 5.1%
| style="text-align:left;" |Sam Apelbaum |51 |– |– |– |– | 19,447 | 0.45% | 0.3%
| style="text-align:left;" |Phil Lees |31 |– |– |– |– | 9,524 | 0.22% | 0.6%
| style="text-align:left;" |Paul McKeever |57 |– |– |– |– | 9,253 | 0.21% | 0.1%
|style="text-align:left;" | |36 |– |– |– |– | 9,021 | 0.21% |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Elizabeth Rowley |9 |– |– |– |– | 1,162 | 0.03% | 0.01%
| style="text-align:left;" |Edward Deibel |3 |– |– |– |– | 676 | 0.02% |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Danish Ahmed |4 |– |– |– |– | 667 | 0.02% | 0.01%
| style="text-align:left;" |Bradley J. Harness |4 |– |– |– |– | 647 | 0.01% | 0.01%
| style="text-align:left;" |Ranvir Dogra |4 |– |– |– |– | 562 | 0.01% |–
| style="text-align:left;" |vacant |3 |– |– |– |– | 559 | 0.01% |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Michael Laxer |5 |– |– |– |– | 519 | 0.01% |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Kevin Clarke |4 |– |– |– |– | 386 |– |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Paul Figueiras |3 |– |– |– |– | 366 |– |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Trueman Tuck |3 |– |– |– |– | 232 |– |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Michael Green |3 |– |– |– |– | 188 |– |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Marilyn McCormick |2 |– |– |– |– | 170 |– |–
| style="text-align:left;" |Bahman Yazdanfar |3 |– |– |– |– | 156 |– |–
| style="text-align:left;" | John Turmel |2 |– |– |– |– | 140 | < .01% |–
| style="text-align:left;" colspan="4"|Vacant |2 | style="text-align:center;" colspan="5" | |- | style="text-align:left;" colspan="3"|Total |655 |107 |107 |107 | | 4,316,382 |100% |-2.43% |- | colspan="11" style="text-align:left;font-size:90%;" | Source:
Those candidates not belonging to a major party, receiving more than 1,000 votes in the election, are listed below:
There were 18 seats that changed allegiance from the 2007 election.
Liberals
Progressive Conservatives
Did not endorse