Updated: Wed Oct. 15 2008 7:23:50 PM

ctvtoronto.ca

The Conservatives have made significant strides in picking up seats in Ontario over the last three elections, but they haven't sealed the deal yet, says a prominent political scientist.

"One of the things they were hoping to do was a 'Mike Harris' and take all the 905 (ridings)," David Docherty, dean of arts at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, told ctvtoronto.ca on Wednesday.

Former Ontario Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris swept to power in 1995 on his "Common Sense Revolution," which promised reduced taxes and smaller government.

But the federal Conservatives didn't do as well as expected in the suburbs ringing Toronto, where they picked up 11 seats, leaving the Liberals with 11.

Provincially, the Tories won 51 seats, the party's best showing since the Brian Mulroney years, as part of a 143-seat national victory. That figure is 12 seats short of a bare majority. Since the 2004 campaign, the Tories have gained 28 seats in Ontario.

However, the popular vote tells an interesting story.

In 2000, the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative vote in Ontario totalled 38 per cent. On Tuesday, the Tories took 39.2 per cent of the vote.

The Liberals won 51.5 per cent of the ballots cast in Ontario in 2000 -- and 100 seats. The party's popular vote share on Tuesday was 33.8 per cent and 38 seats.

Docherty said that can almost entirely be traced to the rise of the Greens and NDP in Ontario over that period. The Greens captured less than one per cent of ballots in 2000; the environmental party earned eight per cent support on Tuesday.

In 2000, the NDP were in the doldrums with 8.3 per cent. On Tuesday, the Jack Layton-led social democratic party captured 18.2 per cent of Ontarians' votes and 17 seats.

In many of Tuesday's close losses by Liberals, "it's not that people were leaving to the Conservatives. It's that people were either unhappy with (Liberal Leader) Stephane Dion or they were voting with the Greens or perhaps the NDP," Docherty said.

He thought Dion -- or possibly his successor -- has to go hard after the NDP and Greens and push that vote back down.

The Liberals also need to be friendlier to entrepreneurs and mid-sized businesses, he said.

Conservatives' next steps

Docherty said now that the Conservatives have a large Ontario caucus, those MPs will be under pressure to deliver for the province.

"If they don't, this could be a short-term, one-term wonder and people could go back to the Liberals," he said.

The Tories also need to find a way to solve the Toronto puzzle, where they again failed to capture a seat, although Liberal margins of victory were significantly reduced. However, the Tories haven't seemed to make Toronto a priority.

"It now looks like Harper can win his majority ... without getting a seat in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver," Docherty said, describing that as a "weird dynamic" that had parallels in Pierre Trudeau's 1980 calculation that he could form a majority government with almost no western seats.

The strategy of the Harper Conservatives has been to win by segmenting the vote, not by broadening the base, he said.

Mike Harris had a strategy that said: "'I don't need Toronto, and if I make it clear I don't want Toronto, that will help me outside of Toronto,'" Docherty said -- something that proved effective in forming his first government.

"Where it came back to haunt him was when he had to make further cuts, and he cut into hospitals and education" -- something that politically rippled through places like Brampton and Vaughn, he said.

The Harper philosophy has been to cut taxes, not launch new programs. The Tories were adamant during the campaign that they would never deliver a deficit budget.

But by eliminating government surpluses through tax cuts, the Conservatives haven't left themselves much wiggle room in future budgets -- and that could help determine how well they do in Ontario during the next federal campaign, Docherty said.