The Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty won the election with a majority government, winning 71 out of a possible 107 seats with 42.2% of the popular vote.

[2] In the same election, there was a provincial referendum on whether to change from first-past-the-post to mixed member proportional representation, as recommended by the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.

[3] Although all four parties released a variety of detailed platform proposals, the campaign was dominated almost entirely by John Tory's promise to extend public funding to Ontario's faith-based schools.

This discrepancy has been cited as discriminatory by both the Supreme Court of Canada and the United Nations Human Rights Committee, although to date the province has taken no action to change its existing school funding policies, on the grounds that Catholic school funding in the province is mandated by the Constitution of Canada.

Even some of Tory's own caucus, most notably Bill Murdoch and Garfield Dunlop, openly criticized the proposal during the election campaign.

In the final week of the campaign, NDP leader Howard Hampton criticized the media for focusing almost entirely on religious schools and virtually ignoring other issues.

Each party lost at least one incumbent MPP — Liberals Mario Racco and Caroline Di Cocco, PCs Joe Tascona, Tim Peterson and John Tory and NDP Paul Ferreira were all defeated.

David Ramsay, similarly, trailed New Democrat John Vanthof in Timiskaming—Cochrane for much of the night, pulling ahead to a winning margin of 634 votes only in the final few polls to report.

Notably, the rise in popular support for the New Democrats in Northern Ontario carried over into the 2008 federal election, in which the NDP won nearly every seat in the region for the first time in its history.

The most conservative-friendly area of the province, the PC vote largely held up, with the only Liberal gain being Aileen Carroll winning Barrie, the seat she used to represent federally.

A politically mixed region, Midwestern Ontario had every incumbent party re-elected, as well as some anomalous results; in an election where the PCs were largely held to rural areas, and the Liberals consolidated an urban/suburban base, Elizabeth Witmer held onto the riding of Kitchener—Waterloo for the PCs, while the Liberals won in rural ridings in which they were the incumbent party, such as Huron—Bruce and Perth—Wellington.

The Liberals continued to dominate York Region, with each incumbent being re-elected by a comfortable margin except in Thornhill where Mario Racco lost to PC candidate Peter Shurman.

The newly created riding of Ajax—Pickering, projected to be a close race, elected Liberal Joe Dickson by over 6,000 votes despite having no party nominate incumbents.

Despite high expectations for Sid Ryan's fourth run as an NDP candidate in Oshawa, PC incumbent Jerry Ouellette was again re-elected by a wider majority than in 2003.

Overall, however, the only area seat that changed hands was Sarnia—Lambton, with Culture Minister Caroline Di Cocco, the most high-profile Liberal casualty of the night, losing to PC challenger Bob Bailey.

In Toronto's other notable race, Liberal incumbent Kathleen Wynne defeated PC leader John Tory in Don Valley West.