Doug Ford, the Conservative premier of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, was re-elected on Thursday following a campaign that focused less on standard domestic issues and more on the question of who would be best equipped to take on U.S. President Trump in a possible trade war.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation projected his victory 10 minutes after the polls closed.
Mr. Ford, 60, had made it a point of his campaign to project strength, threatening to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canadian exports and promising to go as far as cutting off the energy that the United States buys from Ontario.
Since calling for the snap election a month ago, Mr. Ford has taken a handful of days away from the campaign trail to travel to Washington to make a case for why tariffs would be ill advised.
Ontario, with 16 million people, or about 40 percent of Canada’s population, is home to some of the country’s major industries, including automotive, manufacturing and technology. Tariffs would deal the province a deeply painful blow, including significant job losses.
Before Thursday’s vote, polls had consistently shown Mr. Ford’s political opponents — Bonnie Crombie of the Liberal Party, and Marit Stiles of the New Democratic Party, whose policies put her to the left of the Liberals — trailing him by double digits.
“What’s happening south of the border is occupying more of people’s attention maybe than what’s happening in Ontario,” contributing to a “slightly uninteresting election,” said Daniel Rubenson, a political science professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.
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