The 1923 Ontario general election was the 16th general election held in the Province of Ontario, Canada. It was held on June 25, 1923, to elect the 111 Members of the 16th Legislative Assembly of Ontario ("MLAs").[1]
The Ontario Conservative Party, led by George Howard Ferguson, was elected to power with a majority in the Legislature (although taking less than half the votes cast).
This election ended the rule of the United Farmers of Ontario-Labour coalition government of Ernest C. Drury.
The election saw a voter turnout of just 54.7%, the lowest voter turnout in Ontario history until the 2007 election.[2]
The low election turn-out was in part caused by the worst wind, rain and lightning storm in years inundating the western part of the province.[3] The electrical storm and hurricane began shortly after the polls closed, resulting in massive disruption of telegraph and telephone communications, which hampered the reporting of results.[4]
The 1923 election was plagued by low turn-out, and all the parties took fewer voters than they had in 1919.
The UFO actually took a larger proportion of the vote than it had in 1919 but took just a fraction of the seats it had taken in 1919 due to much of the anti-UFO vote concentrating behind Conservative Party candidates. The UFO had held power by virtue of a coalition with Labour and three other MLAs. Together they had received 34 percent of the votes cast in 1919. The Conservatives after the 1923 election took majority government based on taking 34 percent of the vote by that one party alone.
The Ontario Liberal Party, led by Wellington Hay, lost close to half its caucus in the Conservative landslide. Labour (the Independent Labour Party) too lost most of its MLAs in this turn-around election.
The Conservative party was the most popular, taking 34 percent of the vote. Its candidate was the leading one in a large proportion of the districts, giving it a large majority of seats in the legislature (more than its due proportionally) under the First past the post system in use at the time.
In the election, the UFO again did not run candidates where a Labour candidate was running - and also not in 20 other districts as well. The UFO received the third-most number of votes overall but only ran in about two-thirds of the districts so its vote count likely does not measure its actual support. Together Labour and the UFO ran in 93 seats so the two did not cover all the districts in the province.
The UFO did not receive as many votes as it had in 1919 but still got fairly good numbers considering it did not run candidates in a third of the districts. As the 1923 election was plagued by low turn-out, the UFO received a higher percentage of votes cast than it had received in 1919.
Prior to the election, the UFO government had introduced bills to re-distribute the ridings,[5] and to introduce proportional representation[6] and the single transferable vote,[7] but withdrew them after vehement opposition from the Conservative MLAs,[8] and it was found that even some government members were ambivalent.[9]
Under First past the post, the UFO received about a third of the seats that it was due proportionally overall. Looking at the 71 districts where the UFO ran candidates, it received about half the votes there so was due 35 of those seats but received only eight. In many districts, Conservative candidates took rural seats away from incumbent UFO MLAs by taking just a few hundred more votes than them in each district. In Prince Edward, Conservative candidate Horace Stanley Colliver took just 17 more votes than his closest contender to win the seat.[10][11]
Ferguson was the only party leader to hold his seat in the election. Drury, Hay and Rollo all lost their seats to their Conservative opponents.
Italicized names indicate members returned by acclamation. Two-tone colour boxes indicate ridings that turned over from the 1919 election, eg,
Sixteen MLAs chose not to stand for re-election:[12]
There were 64 seats that changed allegiance in the election.