Ontario 2018 election

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Woohoo, New Ipsos poll shows a further acceleration of the NDP hovering up the progressive vote and emerging as the main opposition to Ford

PCs 40% (unchanged)
NDP 35% (up 6)
Liberals 22% (down 4)
Greens 3% (down. 2)

Needless to say this points to a total Liberal annihilation

But also to the Tories staying put.  That is, there's not yet any real evidence of "soft" Ford populists joining the Andrea bandwagon instead...

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  Wonder what the chances are now of both parties getting over 40%?

Given that the Liberals'll probably get a dead cat bounce from all its incumbents running and that the Greens are also a factor, I'll say the chances are pretty slim.

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This feels like in 2011 trying to figure out what seats the NDP were going to win in Quebec (tuns out, most of them).

Or Alberta in 2015.

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And honestly, if we're looking at an NDP majority, even Etobicoke North isn't out of the question...

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This feels like in 2011 trying to figure out what seats the NDP were going to win in Quebec (tuns out, most of them).

Or Alberta in 2015.

It was pretty obvious how the NDP would get a majority in Alberta 2015.

Not necessarily.  Remember how early projection models showed them behind in seats while ahead in the polls, because they were working from 2012 numbers which were heavily plumped in Edmonton/Lethbridge and barren everywhere else...

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This feels like in 2011 trying to figure out what seats the NDP were going to win in Quebec (tuns out, most of them).

Or Alberta in 2015.

It was pretty obvious how the NDP would get a majority in Alberta 2015.

Not necessarily.  Remember how early projection models showed them behind in seats while ahead in the polls, because they were working from 2012 numbers which were heavily plumped in Edmonton/Lethbridge and barren everywhere else...

True, but final polls also showed AB NDP with a 15-20 point lead and when you are more than 5 points ahead you always win the most seats. 

Note that I referred specifically and quite deliberately to *early* projection models.  And while the final polls showed a solid lead, it was still a bit of a conundrum as to *which* non-Edmonton/Lethbridge seats were destined to fall, because the 2012 NDP numbers were too anemically marginal for electoral projectionists to work from...

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PC are ahead 43-21-21(PC/Lib/NDP) in Etobicoke North

and 16% Green, which seems suspect.

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Strange that the NDP has a larger lead among 'centrist' voters than 'left wing' voters.

I don't think a lot of voters realize how radical the NDP is. Doug Ford is a man of reason, and the liberal biased media is not going to change my mind nor the minds of others. I'm in a traditionally liberal district, but I can tell the PCs will pick it up easily. London-Fanshawe is the only area in my backyard I see going NDP, which Teresa Armstrong picked up by 27 points in the last election.

You see Andrew Lawton winning in London West?  Really?


Really?

Given how he's a yellow "L-ON", I think we're looking at pot/kettle/black re DabbingSanta's judgment of "radical".

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Brantford-Brant did go Tory federally so as long as they don't fall further they should get over 40 percent there so only if Liberals completely crater or PC's slide further will it go NDP and this is certainlyplausible.

Though I'd qualify that case federally; what happened was that a weak Liberal/strong NDP circumstance split the vote, and the Con incumbent benefited on one-viable-option grounds.  To some degree that was also the case in Niagara Falls--which is *already* a Con federally-NDP provincially situation.

It was also common in the 1999 provincial election in seats where the NDP got the strategic anti-Harris endorsement but the Liberal got the momentum--and I feel it was a little more complicated than "vote splitting";  in a way, the incumbent Tory candidates got an added boost from voters who couldn't put up with the bickering on the left...

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Am I right in thinking pretty much all the cities in Ontario Taht aren't Toronto or Ottawa (or Guelph) are basically post-industrial and fairly poor? Windsor, Oshawa, London, Niagara, Hamilton, Barrie etc. This could be totally wrong, I'm just trying to test my assumptions.

Not exactly, and especially not compared to the US.

Some of those cities you listed are far from 'post industrial'. Niagara Falls has always been reliant on tourism (perhaps you're thinking of Niagara Falls, New York?) and Barrie is basically one giant Toronto exurb.

Though Niagara Falls' form of tourist reliance (as opposed to, say, Niagara-On-The-Lake) feeds a "fairly poor" impression--it's basically a service industry, after all.  (Think of what makes Las Vegas Democratic.)  And if not as blatantly rust-belt as its American sibling, the non-tourist "silent majority" balance of NFOnt's economy is consistent with that of St Kitts, Welland, etc.  It's a big reason why it's presently NDP provincially, after all--and more "organically" so than Waterloo or London West.

Remember that other major cornerstone of the NF economy: power generation, and what it begat.

Oh, and is it just me, or are a lot of us prone these days to saying "post-industrial" when we mean "industrial", or "poor" when we mean "blue collar"?  After all, a lot of these burgs were prone to supporting the NDP long before their industry became "post"; and the Dippers continue to court those who are presently employed in industry, as opposed to casualties of a post-industrial economy...

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Is Niagara Falls that much in decline? When we went last year, it was not exactly a ghost town. It's true, the giant closed down, dilapidated Planet Hollywood loomed over the tourist area, and the Skylon Tower kinda looked old and sad, but it has some nice areas too.

What was kind of surprising was how run down St. Catharines is. The lakefront is rather nice, but the downtown was very depressing.

NF's "nicest" areas are to the NW, Stamford et al (as well as the formerly separate municipality of Chippewa to the south)--and of course, for psephological geeks like us, relative "niceness" can often be drawn through knowledge of relative historical-and-present strengths of each party within the neighbourhoods/polling stations through which we pass ;-)

One dilemma re Niagara Falls is that its particular form of populist tourist economy makes it "gentrification-proof": the kinds of inner-city neighbourhoods which'd be hipster-gentrified elsewhere still present an old-fashioned tatty "tourist home" tableau.

And to anyone overly accustomed to the relentlessness of US-style urban blight, even relatively tired Niagara Region urbanity can very often seem like a breath of fresh air...

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Let's also remember that btw/ 2011 and 2014, the Libs lost 3 seats to the NDP by way of byelection.

If you're wondering why the Libs didn't gain *more* seats given the widened differential, it's because the PCs were more "efficient" in most of the seats they held.  One can even counter-argue that given the 2.2% share margin in 2011, the Libs should have had something tighter than a 53-to-37 seat margin that year...

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As for Niagara Falls, the riding did go Conservative federally so I think the NDP is more local candidate just as the fact it went Tory federally.  In terms of how the riding breaks down.

As I've suggested, one reason Rob Nicholson hung on federally was a particularly weak Liberal candidate and strong NDP candidate--NF and Brantford-Brant are identical in that regard; but I'd advise against reading *too* much into the actual inherent Conservative strength there.  Let's remember, too, that it was a Judy LaMarsh federal Liberal stronghold in the 1960s when most of the rest of the Ontario heartland remained Tory; and that prior to the 1990 Rae landslide, Niagara Falls/Niagara South had been solid provincial Liberal bastions for ages.

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As I suggested, even aside from the service industry NF is pretty blue collar--more so than St Catharines.  Wayne Gates' base is no accident.

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One 2011 factor to consider: the NDP candidate was former Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop.

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Actually, there are *two* NOTLs, so to speak: the more genteel demos of NOTL proper and Queenston (which'd normally lean Liberal these days), and the rural interior (Virgil et al) which is heavily Bible Belt and heavily Conservative, not unlike Wainfleet, West Lincoln, et al.

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If we go back to the Old pre-95 districts, London North was a very solid PC seat, even staying PC in 90 (mostly north of Oxford west of Highbury)

It only seemed so because Dianne Cunningham won for the Tories in a 1988 byelection, and her  byelected-incumbent strength carried over into the 1990 general (after she ran for the PC leadership and lost to Mike Harris).  Pre-Cunningham, it was solid Liberal under Ron Van Horne.  Without Cunningham, London North could well have gone NDP, too...

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Also Ford underperforms among the wealthy compared to a more generic PC leader.

Yeah but so did Hudak so that's factored in somewhat.

Re Hudak, more so in 2011 than 2014--his civil-servant-bashing '14 campaign actually helped him in wealthier polls (check comparative polling maps in those years for proof)

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If you looked at Waterloo from 1990-2011 you would've thought it was a solid PC seat, yet in 2014 the PCs came third. Popular incumbents can mess with things. And similarly enough in London North Centre the PCs came third as well in 2014.

Waterloo was more of an Elizabeth Witmer seat than a Tory seat--had it not been for her, the seat would have gone Liberal in '03.  (And conversely, the federal Libs overperformed in 2011--in part due to Andrew Telegdi's takeback bid, in part for campus-town reasons.)

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Leger poll:

PCs 37%
NDP 37%
Liberals 21%

They hadn’t polled since April, but that’s PC -6, NDP +11, Lib -5.

Seems like a lot of pollsters are showing ties. I wonder if we’ll get any polls where the NDP are clearly ahead.

All the same, keep in mind that in these polls that the PCs are tumbling from fairly high places (low-to-mid 40s)--and remember that the common assumption was that their vote was "solid", and that neither the Brown scandal nor Ford's legacy could place dents in that base.  Though even then, I was warning that such numbers felt overinflated and the Tory share was due to settle down and "normalize"--now, it'd seem that anything left that'd show them over 40% would be an outlier.  And it might not be the end of this...

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Grits and Star are gonna bomb Doug tomorrow with a story about purchasing a nomination for a woman who Frank strongly hints is his mistress.

Hmm. I'm always skeptical of nomination scandals moving votes, but the mistress thing could be big.

This might be like the firing 100,000 last time if a big enough bombshell.  Wondering is there anyway to get rid of Ford as leader this late in the game.  I know they cannot have a leadership convention, but they could appoint a interim leader to lead them.  Yes quite risky but if a big enough might be the only option left.  Interesting the Liberals not NDP are releasing this as every damaging thing on Ford has just helped them not the Liberals.

To paraphrase RogueBeaver, changing leaders midstream is almost always a terrible idea.

Yes, but if bad enough keeping Ford might be even worse.

Sure but what's "bad enough"? Coup d'etat's are chaotic and make the party look unprofessional. Politician's get into scandals all the time. Ford having a mistress and falling behind in the polls is plenty of reason to toss him after the election but it's not nearly enough mid campaign.

Maybe he could be ousted if he sexually assaulted someone or punched a baby or something, but normal crappy leader stuff doesn't merit it.

Let's keep in mind that other than the Frank nudge-winking, the "mistress" angle isn't really coming to the fore--out of understandable media discretion, of course.  So far.

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A couple of other things...

(1) The NDP's going into this election with more seats than they did in 1990.
(2) Horwath's projecting more of a "leader-in-waiting" confidence than Rae really did in 1990--he was as bamboozled by what was happening as the rest of us...

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Big news: Hazel McCallion endorses Doug Ford.  Not sure that will make a big difference provincewide but could definitely help in Mississauga where she was very popular.  Definitely a good catch and helps deflect from the bad news.

She owes her life to the Fords, remember

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/16/rob_ford_saves_hazel_mccallion_and_helps_her_land_a_big_fish.html

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Very cool! You'd have a good on the ground feel. Looks like in 2014, Ingersoll went really strong for the NDP, Woodstock looks mixed and Tillsonburg is leaning PC. Whats the likely hood of the NDP increasing in Woodstock?, looks like North of Dundas Street was mostly PC/OLP, some NDP strength. And in Tillsonburg?, most PC support was west of Hwy 15.
As mentioned, this could be an urban/small town and Rural divide. With Woodstock/Ingersoll/Tilsonburg making up about 70000 of the population. The NDP would need some rural polls, more then the 3 or so they won in 2014.

For a model for what might happen, look to how Wayne Gates did in Niagara Falls in 2014.

I can see Woodstock, Ingersoll, and much of Tillsonburg swept, as well as smaller centres like Beachville and Thamesford, maybe even an impression in Norwich and Tavistock and other small communities.

As for Tillsonburg's west-of-15 Tory support, much of that is due to the Hickory Hills retirement community.

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I heard through the NDP grapevine that they are shockingly finding themselves in contention in Elgin-Middlesex-London

Look at it this way: as high as Conservatives are in much of rural Ontario, let's remember that the NDP hasn't fared that badly in such seats in recent times.  And I think a lot of this modern tendency really started when Jack Layton took over the federal party--one could see in the 2004 federal election that they had a surprising "presence" (signage et al) in hitherto fallow ground like Northumberland and Quinte, which showed in 15%+ ballot-box results.  Like there was a nerve to be tapped there, and a nerve worth tapping.  As for E-M-L, under Layton the NDP grew to be good for a quarter of the vote--even if the Tories still dominated, with such figures one'd be a fool to discount NDP "potential" despite all conventional wisdom et al.  So, maybe that's what's happening now--the "potential" bearing fruit...

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I don’t see how the Liberals would salvage even 5 seats if their popular vote actually crashed to 14%. I think they would get ZERO seats if that happened

A little like the Alberta New Democrats in 1993?

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  But the leap from there to the conclusion that NDP would have enough votes to win, against an incumbent who won the old Prince Edward Hastings riding with 60% last time, would imho require the PC numbers to start falling significantly.

Actually, Todd Smith won PE-H with 41.63% last time.  (32.73 Lib, 19.13 NDP, 5.31 Green)

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I feel like individual candidates don't swing the vote too much outside their riding unless they do something really awful like the "lake of fire" guy in Alberta. Most people in Canada vote based on the party they want to win, not on local candidates.

Lawton is pretty horrible.

Definitely agreed. He might be the only one that really has an impact outside his riding, and even then it won't be like the "lake of fire" guy who made a lot of fiscal conservative and social moderal/liberal voters freaked out about Wildrose.

"Posthumously", Tanya Granic Allen counts.  And in a way, her clumsily handled dismissal as a candidate (coupled with the fact that DoFo pretty much owes his leadership to her support) probably marked the moment when the PCs' "smooth campaign operation" started short-circuiting.

And of course, now we're dealing with bozo nominations, as opposed to bozo candidates; with KingaSurmaGate revealing DoFo himself as arguably the biggest bozo of them all.  (Though given his municipal record, it's arguable that that's much of a "revelation".)