Ontario Liberal leadership race

[Hatman 🍁]

Begging Schreiner to lead the party reeks of desperation.

[Hatman 🍁]

Notwithstanding any current polling (which as adma pointed out, has a lot to do with the "Liberal brand" still being strong in the province), the Liberals are in disarray right now. They had a good chance last time to convert their polling into a second place finish, but they blew it. Things will really need to shake up in the province for them to overcome that again. 

[Hatman 🍁]

Wonder if Naqvi would run in Ottawa Centre, or would be parachuted to a safer seat such as Ottawa South (if he wins).

[Hatman 🍁]

Interestingly, I know Naqvi sent one of his minions to the redistribution hearings here because his home had been moved to a different riding (of course this was not the excuse he used, it was some BS about being connected by the Rideau River to the rest of the riding of something). It was a successful pitch though, and his neighbourhood was re-united with the riding. It would've been all for not if he runs in Ottawa South.

[Hatman 🍁]

Ottawa South was one of two seats where the OLP won with more than a 10-point margin in the 2018 wipeout.  

It's remarkably similar demographically to Ottawa West-Nepean, but Duverger's Law has worked in the NDP's favor there in the last two elections.

It's similar socio-economically, sure, but it's much more Francophone and much more Arab, which is why the Liberals do better here. I think it also has a larger professional class, but don't quote me on that.

[Hatman 🍁]

Ottawa South also has twice as many Francophones.

[Hatman 🍁]

Similar socioeconomically and both semi-suburban in character (similar to North York in Toronto?), but yes Ottawa South is more diverse with Blacks and Arabs being the largest minorities.


University degree

Ottawa West-Nepean  46.8%
Ottawa South  45.1%

Average income

Ottawa West-Nepean  $55,900
Ottawa South  $55,600

Visible Minority

Ottawa South  44.2%
Ottawa West-Nepean  35.2%

Lol, a quick look at Census profiles of North York ridings has average incomes 80-100k+ range, not in the 50s.  Willowdale 103k, Don Valley North 98k, Eglinton-Lawrence 95k.  Not the same.

You are confusing average income with average household income.

Both Don Valley North and Willowdale have basically the same average incomes:
Don Valley North is $51K
Willowdale: $51K

Eglinton-Lawrence is quite wealthy though at $89K, but North York also has the very poor Black River-Humber Creek riding ($37K).

[Hatman 🍁]

I can't stand "vote for me and I'll be the same as the current guy" politicians. Crombie's critique of Wynne gov't is literally the same as what Ford used to say in 2018 - it speaks to a lack of a backbone to criticize your own party more than your opponent as you're hinting at wanting to lead said party - and the theory of "Liberals need to be centre-right to win the 905" line is a little outdated, because I'm sure Crombie knows that Justin Trudeau had a clean sweep three clean sweeps of Mississauga while running as the most left-wing Liberal leader since his father. If Crombie wants to give voters two centre-right options, they will go for the authentic centre-right option.

Well to be fair she's not entirely the same as Ford. Ford's not a NIMBY.

Of all of the Ontario provincial elections in the last two or three decades, I can't remember a single time when Ontario Liberals won an election on a left-of-centre platform, with 2014 being an exception, but that was due to Tim Hudak being a little too frank about his plan to dismiss large numbers of public sector workers.


In general, I would say OLP does better when they run on a centre to centre-right platform, as in, promising not to raise taxes (McGuinty 2003), or even promising tax cuts (McGuinty 2011).

That's fair, but I think times have changed. Politics is more polarized than it used to be, and while this is somewhat anecdotal, the Trudeau era seems to have dramatically changed what the Liberal Party looks like. Many of the insiders today are progressive millennials who were inspired by Trudeau (and their hatred of Harper) to get into politics, which basically describes Erskine-Smith. Much of the Liberal base is also the same. When you look at LPC and OLP conventions for example that reliably vote for left-wing policy proposals, it's not clear to me that today's Liberals would actually accept a "centre-right" platform.

The other thing is that in McGuinty's runs, being more centrist worked in part because Liberals could still win rural areas. Ridings like Perth-Wellington, Lambton-Middlesex, Prince Edward-Hastings etc voted Liberal in his two majorities. Today, it's almost inconceivable that Liberals would win such ridings, short of a landslide. When those ridings left the Liberals in 2011, McGuinty lost his majority - Wynne won it back, not by winning back those ridings, but by maxing out the GTA (and yes, Hudak helped in that regard).

Point is, the path to a Liberal win in Ontario today looks a little different than it may have in the past, because it's a much more urban and cosmopolitan party than it used to be 20 years ago. I'm not sure a Ford-lite platform would really work for them.

2003 and 2007 pretty much were landslides. Both 70/100 seats approximately.

The article above mentioned Ted Hsu also announced he's running. For what it's worth (nothing) I endorse him.

https://www.tedhsu.ca/

The Liberals aren't winning back those ancestral Liberal ridings back any time soon due to realignment. The path to victory is indeed the Wynne path - sweeping the GTA.

Crombie's strategy is a bold one, considering there are more swing voters on the centre-left than the centre-right. But maybe if she focuses on the 905 suburbs, and the NDP focuses on keeping their seats, the two parties can force a Tory minority government? That's the ideal situation, but would involve Ontarians voting tactically.

[Hatman 🍁]

Yup. Crombie is worse than Ford on housing. Good luck getting very many voters under 40 if she wins.

[Hatman 🍁]

https://twitter.com/kylejhutton/status/1731774996173770885

Some interesting coalitions.

Crombie wins Mississauga, but not Brampton. Pretty dominant in Central Ontario/GTHA, in the kinds of ridings the Liberals need to win to form government.
NES doesn't do as well in Downtown Toronto (the map is wrong though, he did win Toronto-Danforth in addition to BES) as you'd expect. He also does pretty well in the North and the SW. Weird.
Naqvi wins Ottawa, but doesn't do as well in Ottawa Centre as some other Ottawa ridings. Also loses Kanata. Wins some random ridings across the province. Might be some Pakistani concentrations?
Hsu does pretty well to win more than just his home riding of Kingston, but didn't expand outside of rural Eastern Ontario