Not tonight then.

Horwath declines to fall on her sword this evening. No problem, someone will stab her in the back at the first opportunity.

I don't know... she hasn't lost seats overall, the apocalyptic scenario for the NDP was to let a Tory government in. In effect, Horwath has given herself a few more years to get her act in gear, to get over the internal party wrangles from having propped up a minority government, and try and think up some policy positions that significantly differentiate the NDP from the Liberals (this election's platform was a bit thin on those).

If I were her, I wouldn't be too terribly disappointed. At least now she'll have an NDP-flavoured budget presented in a couple of weeks (assuming the Grits just reintroduce the one they tabled earlier this year and don't do a major rewrite) and on other matters she can be more aggressive in opposition. With Hudak resigning, the Tories (despite being the second party at Queens Park) are likely to be in disarray for some time so we'll effectively have an NDP opposition.

What are the chances that John Tory, after losing Toronto to Olivia Chow in October, will be parachuted in to a by-election (Niagara West might have a vacancy before too long) and stand for the party leadership? Having blown his chance at the Premiership and resigned the party lead, I can't see that Hudak will stay on in provincial politics on the back benches. Ottawa or Bay Street?

Biggest hurdle around here to people voting NDP I suspect is the political reality of the riding.

In my riding if enough people vote NDP then the Conservative gets in.

The NDP vote was markedly down this time around (6000 ish compared to 9000ish last time) in favour of the (winning) Liberal candidate after the Conservative was elected by a few hundred votes last time around.

Thats a tough one to address as leader.

Quite. Looking at some of the results breakdowns this morning, it seems tactical voting has played a significant part in returning Wynne to government. It certainly did in two ridings local to me: in both Burlington and Halton (Lib gains from Tory) the PC vote was almost identical from 2011 to yesterday, and the Libs gained a few thousand votes largely at the expense of the NDP. In Halton the total vote is also significantly larger, mainly because of the rapid increase in population in Milton and Georgetown. The tories appear to have picked up very few of those new votes.

You may well be right, but I can't see a leader who triggered the election by voting down a virtually text book NDP budget, lost the political support of swathes of the base and of the major unions in doing so and then turns out to have sacrificed any meaningful influence on the government, lasting very long at all.

And yes to your and iaink's comments on tactical voting to block Hudak being the key. She should have figured that out.

Definitely the case in three local ridings. Peterborough, Durham, and Northumberland. Durham was a Liberal win from the PC incumbent by only 1236 votes, 2.3%.