[fuller]

Not to forget there's every indication that McGuinty has a soft spot for Hamilton. Having attended McMaster, he is well familiar with the city like few other pols who aren't local.

It would be hard to miss the fact that Hamilton is at the crux of the finally emerging Golden Horseshoe. The Premier has acknowledged Hamilton's status as an underperforming city within the region.

Consider that his major policies serve to reinforce the form of the Golden Horseshoe by corralling new development into major nodes connected by higher order transit, and forcing sprawl development into a band between the nascent Greenbelt and the Lake. ( I think the Greenbelt may turn out to have been the biggest victor in this election. Who knows what would have happened to it under the Tories.)

Also, as an NDP preserve, Hamilton must surely be on their radar as a place where they could gain some ground in the future, more easily so than the Conservatives. The past four years of the Ted and Sophia show shows strong evidence of this sensibility. Why would this change now just because they lost one seat?

Finally, has anyone considered that we may be on the brink of a period of regionalism that may see amalgamation on a scale that would make the previous reorganisations look like preamble? How big a stretch would it be to see the formation of a Golden Horseshoe Region, or two or three smaller regions that it their totality form the GH. It was only Hazel McCallion that kept Mississauga out of the GTA amamgamation, and her tenure is just about up. How could her exit not lead to some form of reorganisation?