Ontario Election 2022

[Pericles]

So am I right to think the left-wing vote is very volatile? So it would all come down to the campaign, how the leaders do and particularly how they stand up against each other in events like debates.

[Pericles]

Interesting that in Kathleen Wynne's old riding of Don Valley West - the PCs are running the black former police chief of Toronto, the NDP is running the Jewish former Child Advocate of Ontario and the Ontario Liberals are running a generic corporate executive who no one has ever heard of. 

Kind of surprised that she didn't resign as an MP during her term. What has she been doing for the last four years?

[Pericles]

I've been wondering: what happens in the event that two parties tie for second place? For example, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Liberals and NDP both tied at 20 seats in this election. Who becomes official opposition? Do we have any precedent for this in Canada?

Actually there is a precedent for this. I think it happened in Saskatchewan in the 70s when the Liberals and PCs were tied. If I'm not mistaken the party that is the incumbent official opposition retains the title! But i could be wrong

There's a precedent in Alberta from 2014, when Danielle Smith led most of the Wildrose caucus across the floor to the PCs. 5 Wildrose MLAs refused to cross the floor, and the Liberals (who also had a caucus of 5) challenged them for the Official Opposition title. The Speaker ruled that the Wildrose would stay as Official Opposition as they were the incumbents.

Its a bit of a different situation when you have a tie as a result of floor crossing mid-session as opposed to a tie in seats from an election

It also happened in Nova Scotia in 1999, when the Liberals went from a minority government to tied with the NDP at 11 MLAs each; the NDP, which was the Official Opposition going in, held that title as a) they had it already and b) they got more votes than the Liberals (albeit 0.1% more). They also looked like electing 12 members to the Liberals' 11 on election night itself, before recounts put them at 11 apiece.

It seems from the seat projections that if the Liberals and NDP tie for seats, the Liberals would have more votes though.

[Pericles]

Is it accurate to say that the NDP are probably going to get more seats than the Liberals?

[Pericles]

NDP are on 28 seats at the moment, and second in the popular vote. Maybe it isn't even much of a loss from 2018? Kind of surprising that they don't get the usual underperformance from their poll numbers.

[Pericles]

My take as an outsider is that the NDP can be relieved that they are clearly the second place party. Horwath and Del Duca are surely gone soon, but the NDP should have a bigger and better talent pool than the Liberals.

[Pericles]

The NDP achieved the rare result in FPTP of an opposition party whose percent of seats exceeded its percent of votes. The NDP won exactly 25% of the seats (31/124) with 23.7% of the vote.  

At the moment, the Liberals are on 23.8%. They probably deserve to do so badly seat wise with a decent vote share, I wonder if it will matter at all for the NDP though.