Doug Ford, the 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, saying his party, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, had won a majority, its third since 2018.
“Donald Trump thinks he can break us,” Mr. Ford told supporters gathered in Toronto to celebrate after the results were announced. “Make no mistake: Canada won’t start a fight with the U.S., but you better believe we’re ready to win one,” he added.
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.
Further sapping some of the drama, the three candidates tended to agree on the main issues, said John Beebe, founder of the same university’s Democratic Engagement Exchange, an organization focused on voter participation. This accord on policy included the need to increase the number of family doctors, build up transit networks and lower costs for developers to build houses.
“There’s broad consensus about what the issues are and I think it makes it really hard for the average voter to say, ‘OK, who has the better plan?’,” Mr. Beebe said.
Even though Mr. Ford’s party already commanded a majority of seats in the provincial legislature, Mr. Ford called an early election — more than a year before its scheduled date in June 2026 — because he said the party needed “a strong mandate” from voters to fight Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
Mr. Ford’s opponents questioned the timing of Thursday’s election, noting that if tariffs were imposed, they would support additional spending to help Ontarians cope with any economic pain caused by the levies, rendering an early election unnecessary.
They also pointed out that the federal government would be the main negotiating party with Mr. Trump’s administration, not Ontario, though Mr. Ford could take some retaliatory measures on his own.
The tariffs could cost Ontario as many as 500,000 jobs, Mr. Ford said, particularly in the province’s auto industry, where production is so intertwined with the United States that car parts can cross the border multiple times a day during assembly.
Mr. Trump said he plans to apply 25 percent tariffs on Canadian exports unless Canada strengthens its border security. Mr. Trump and Canada agreed to a 30-day reprieve, which is set to expire on Tuesday, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to adopt various steps to fortify the border.
“At this crucial time, we must work together to defend Canadian interests, protect workers and businesses, and grow our economy,” Mr. Trudeau said in a statement congratulating Mr. Ford.
Mr. Ford was first elected in 2018, winning a majority government after 15 years of Liberal Party rule. He had run on a platform that focused on lowering taxes and developing industries, like mining in the northern part of the province.
The son of a businessman who was also a provincial politician, he rose through party politics by marketing himself as an anti-establishment candidate, and during his first premiership campaign he drew comparisons to Mr. Trump.
Before becoming Ontario’s leader, Mr. Ford served as a city councilor in Toronto, where his brother, Rob Ford, was the mayor who attracted international notoriety after he confessed to using crack cocaine. He died in 2016.
Some critics have questioned Mr. Ford’s close relationship with developers.
A plan to open up a protected area of farmland, forest and wetlands around Toronto, known as the greenbelt, to development is under investigation by provincial police.
But with his victory Thursday, it seemed clear that his core message had resonated with the province’s voters.
“This election is about who we are and what we stand for,” Mr. Ford said in a campaign ad, denouncing Mr. Trump’s threats to annex Canada. “So let me be clear: Canada will never be the 51st state. Canada is not for sale.”
