If you’re a backer of either the Liberals or the Conservatives, you can read the Ontario results in the federal election in both optimistic and pessimistic ways.
For Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals, the pessimistic view is that a poorer-than-expected showing in Ontario is precisely what kept him from forming a majority government.
The Liberals lost a string of ridings in the Greater Toronto Area that they had held for the past three straight elections, and Liberal incumbents also went down to defeat in places with notable working class populations such as Hamilton, Windsor and Sudbury.
The optimistic view is that taking 69 seats in Ontario is vastly better than what the Liberals were expecting just four months ago when Justin Trudeau was still leading the party — and it helped them win the election.
On Wednesday there are two major political stories to watch: