1971 Ontario general election
Canadian provincial election
The 1971 Ontario general election was held on October 21, 1971, to elect the 117 members of the 29th Legislative Assembly of Ontario (Members of Provincial Parliament, or "MPPs") of the Province of Ontario.
The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, led by Bill Davis, who had replaced John Robarts as PC leader and premier earlier in the year, won a ninth consecutive term in office, and maintained its majority in the legislature, increasing its caucus in the legislature by eight seats from its result in the previous election.
The Ontario Liberal Party, led by Robert Nixon, lost seven seats, but continued in the role of official opposition.
The social democratic Ontario New Democratic Party, led by Stephen Lewis, lost one seat.
This election marked the first time that the provincial election was held on a Thursday. Subsequently, every provincial election has also been held on a Thursday, with the exception of the 2007 Ontario general election, which was held on a Wednesday.
The electoral franchise was significantly expanded upon the reduction of the voting age from 21 to 18.
Results
Summary
Vote and seat summaries
Synopsis of results
= open seat
= turnout is above provincial average
= winning candidate was in previous Legislature
= not incumbent; was previously elected to the Legislature
= incumbent had switched allegiance
= incumbency arose from byelection gain
= previously incumbent in another riding
= other incumbents renominated
Analysis
Seats changing hands
Of the 117 seats, 22 were open because of MPPs who chose not to stand for reelection, and voters in only 19 seats changed allegiance from the previous election in 2018.
Tom Reid (Rainy River) had previously campaigned on the Liberal-Labour ticket, but sat with the Liberal caucus. In 1971, he opted to stand as a Liberal instead.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1971 Ontario general election” as canadian provincial election. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as canadian provincial election. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7094972. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2007 and 2018.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “1971 Ontario general election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.