Ontario 2018 election

[DL]

New Ipsos poll

PCs - 40%
NDP - 28%
Libs - 27%

https://globalnews.ca/news/4134439/ontario-pc-party-ipsos-poll/

Only Horwath can stop Ford.

[DL]

Latest Forum poll out this morning is a total bloodbath for the Wynne Liberals:

PC - 46%
NDP - 27%
Liberals - 21% (!) and projected to lose official party status with just 7 seats

http://www.qpbriefing.com/2018/04/20/forum-poll-ontario-liberals-fall-third-place-risk-losing-party-status/

[DL]

The deatils from the Forum poll are there...the Liberals are now in third place even in the city of Toronto!

http://poll.forumresearch.com/post/2838/ontario-horserace-april-2018

[DL]

Mainstreet says their fieldwork was done April 16-18...why on earth would a polling company wait almost two weeks to release numbers in the midst of a super time sensitive de facto election campaign? I could understand staggering release dates on place like MB or SK where we are years from the next election but in Ontario in the current highly charged environment a poll goes stale within days of data being collected. 

[DL]

Poll shocker from the usually Liberal friendly Pollara

PCs 40%
NDP 30%
OLP 23%

And th poll notes that most of the remaining Liberals would vote NDP if it was clear that Horwath had the best chance of stopping Ford

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-macleans-pollara-ontario-election-poll-welcome-to-third-place-liberals/

[DL]

So the NDP begin to slowly push their way up against the PCs, good.

Today is the First Debate too?  Is there any site that'll be streaming it?

City TV will be streaming it

[DL]

FWIW on Friday Quito Maggi the CEO of Mainstreet Research tweeted the following:


Quito Maggi
‏ @quito_maggi
May 3

Seeing some interesting #onpoli results the last few days, NDP in second in a number of ridings where they are traditionally not competitive, could point to further movement, stay tuned

[DL]

It should come as no surprise that the (opt-in) online pollsters are showing the most disparate results.

I'm not so sure about that...two weeks ago both Forum and Mainstreet released IVR polls done at exactly the same time...Forum had the NDP at 27% and the Liberals at 21% and Mainstreet had the Liberals at 28% and the NDP at 21%...that is even more of a difference than we see in these two online polls.

[DL]

Everybody weights...we don't know what Mainstreets "raw numbers" are since they don't publish them...all IVR polls tend to massively oversample older people and undersample younger people so you HAVE to weight. I would be shocked if Mainstreet didnt also demographically weight their data

[DL]

You are comparing two previous Mainstreet polls of all of Ontario with the quick post debate poll just of the City of Toronto

[DL]

Things are getting interesting with a brand new poll by Forum all conducted Wednesday night

PCs 40%
NDP 33%
OLP 22%

[DL]

I think the NDP is going to win the election actually. Something like 41% NDP, 38% PC, 19% Liberal.

Using the simulator http://www.tooclosetocall.ca/p/ontario-2018-simulator.html

We get:
PC - 40% - 75
NDP - 33% - 44
OLP - 22% - 5

NDP - 41% - 62
PC - 38% - 61
OLP - 19% - 1 (that 1 is listed as Toronto-St.Paul's)

Fun, but pretty un-realistic; The OLP at even 20% would have about half a dozen seats I think, MPPs who win almost solely on their personal popularity or like Toronto-St.Paul's, a strong hold riding for the Liberals, I think their strongest? as of 2014.

The Liberals will never lose St. Paul's its full of people who see themselves as too smart to vote for Doug Ford and too rich to vote NDP. Its the equivalent of River Heights in Winnipeg which is typically the only Liberal seat there

[DL]

Nanos is out and while they show the NDP in third, they do show them rising and on best premier pay attention there.  PCs still well in front off course, but it seems they are down to low 40s instead of mid 40s.

PC 41.1%
Liberal 28.5%
NDP 24.3%

This was April 29 - May 6th so right around when the NDP started to rise.  If you check their website NDP still below October 2017, but higher than others.  On preferred premier, this is where things look good for the NDP

Ford 32.5%
Horwath 26.6%
Wynne 16.6%

On vote Consider it was for PCs 50% yes, 42% No
NDP 45% yes, 45% No
Liberals 40% yes, 50% No

So all parties have room for growth but NDP the most.  Nonetheless if a party only gets 80% of potential supporters this would likely give the PCs a narrow majority, NDP a minority or strong opposition if Liberals implode, while Liberals just retaining opposition.

I have a theory about Nanos and why their numbers are (for now) a bit different and also how different the "best premier" question is. When nanos asks "Who would make the best premier?" it comes after a preamble where they prompt saying Doug Ford is the PC leader, Horwath is the NDP leader etc... when they initially ask the vote question it is a totally unprompted open ended question of "which parties would be your top two voting preferences?" (a weird way to word the question but what the hell).

I think that because so many more people vaguely identify as Liberals and because of all the confusion in Ontario between federal and provincial politics, an open ended question before writ drop with no prompting likely inflates the Liberals and suppresses the NDP.

I would hypothesize that if nanos asked the vote question reading out "The PC led by Doug Ford, the NDP led by Andrea Horwath etc..." you would get vote numbers much more in line with the best premier numbers

[DL]

New Mainstreet poll confirms the NDP surge and Liberal collapse

PCs 42% (down 3)
NDP 28% (up 7)
Libs 22% (down 6)
Greens 6% (up 1)
Other 2%

[DL]

When you say the NDP and Liberals are tied in "downtown Toronto" is that Toronto 416 or just the 8 ridings that are from the old old City of Toronto?

[DL]

So the numbers in the poll that was Tweeted are the unweighted numbers?

No, those are weighted. They're over the course of over a week, so the Liberals were in second place at the beginning of the polling period, while the NDP was in second at the end of the polling period. I think the unweighted numbers for the entire period show the Liberals in second (but not in the last two days of polling).

Does Ekos ask the vote question with just the party names or with the party names with leaders? In my experience the moment you include the names Wynne and Horwath you tend to add a couple of points to the NDP and subtract a couple more points from the Liberals.

[DL]

Thread drift: Why do people have such a ridiculously extensive definition of "downtown" Toronto anyway?  There's really only three ridings that are downtown (and even those aren't entirely downtown if we use the already generous official definition of Bathurst to Don River, below CPR tracks and Rosedale Valley).

Not sure why High Park, the Beaches and Yonge and Eglinton are "downtown" except being part of the city of Toronto pre-1998.  Is Kitsilano in "downtown" Vancouver?  Is NDG in "downtown" Montreal?  

It would make more sense to refer to "inner Toronto" to mean old Toronto, York and East York and outer Toronto to mean Scarborough/North York and Etobicoke

[DL]

In my experience low income, heavily ethnic ridings are VERY difficult to poll using IVR. Response rates tend to be abysmal

[DL]

I don’t see what else either Wynne or a Horwath could say at this stage. To totally rule out working with any other party in a minority situation would be crazy so the best thing to do is to be non committal. In any case with the Liberals an increasingly distant third (of not in the popular vote then definitely in the seat count) it’s clear that there is no way whatsoever that Wynne remains premier. What could happen is that the Liberals help Horwath form a minority government, but since a Horwath is popular, what’s not to like about that.

[DL]

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

[DL]

The first half of this campaign is essentially a “primary” to see who is the progressive alternative to Ford. Horwath has won that. Now on to the final phase

[DL]

https://globalnews.ca/news/4208537/ontario-election-ndp-liberals-anti-ford/

Best Premier:
Horwath - 47%
Ford - 36%
Wynne - 18%

Best premier is often a leading indicator for how people will eventually vote....just sayin'

[DL]

https://globalnews.ca/news/4208537/ontario-election-ndp-liberals-anti-ford/

Best Premier:
Horwath - 47%
Ford - 36%
Wynne - 18%

Best premier is often a leading indicator for how people will eventually vote....just sayin'

Not really, in BC the last polls found Clark with a 'better leader advantage' of ~4 points, even as she was down by a small popularity gap to Howard. If anything, modern world elections have shown how voters will happily hold their nose and vote for a leader they disapprove of. (SPD coalition vote, Macron and the left, Therisa May, Abe, and of course Trump)

I'm not saying the Ontario NDP will win, just that with 47% of people saying Horwath would make the best premier, its clear that 35% is not their ceiling...and with only 36% saying Ford would make the best premier, it means that 40% is not the PC floor either

[DL]

I'm not so sure about the Liberals holding Eglinton-Lawrence...its not as wealthy as you think and is increasingly populated by rightwing orthodox Jews...it was Joe Oliver territory federally for a long time

[DL]

So far we seem to be settling into a PCs low 40s, NDP low 30s and Liberals low 20s scenario (and that is about where Mainstreet has it too) ...for the election to get close at all the PCs have to drop a couple of points to 38% or so and the NDP has to devour more of the Liberal carcass and get them into the teens