Ontario Election 2022

[King of Kensington]

Durham, Halton, Peel and York are Toronto's "collar counties."

[King of Kensington]

"Collar regions" or just the regions is just an attempt to come with an alternative name.

Durham and Halton seem the most "North American"-like in terms of suburbs, while Peel and southern York Region feel the most distinctly GTA/Canadian.

[King of Kensington]

The OLP seems to be picking up "Doug Ford Liberals" and strategic voters.

[King of Kensington]

While the post-industrial centres of southwest Ontario are a much better fit for the NDP than the Liberals for class reasons.

Not just the blue collar cities.  The ONDP was making inroads among the white collar/middle class vote in SW Ontario before the 2018 Liberal collapse - think of by-election wins in Waterloo and London West.

[King of Kensington]

Randy Hillier calling it quits

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/controversial-ontario-mpp-randy-hillier-announces-he-will-not-run-for-re-election-1.5805114

[King of Kensington]

Hard to say what will happen in this election - none of the leaders are particularly liked or are inspiring Ontarians.  Most likely NDP ends up in third though.

[King of Kensington]

NDP really screwed up in Ajax, arguably the most winnable non-Brampton/Oshawa 905 suburb.

[King of Kensington]

Looks like NDP ahead of Liberals probably entails a PC majority and disastrous Liberal campaign, NDP could end up ahead of Libs in seat count but with fewer seats.  

Trying to imagine minority situation with NDP ahead of Liberals.  That would mean NDP more or less holds it own while Liberals take away suburban PC seats.  But I can't really foresee a situation where an increase in Liberal vote share only hurts the Tories.

[King of Kensington]

The PCs are making a serious play for Timmins-James Bay.  Running the mayor of Timmins there.

[King of Kensington]

While Horwath is fairly "WWC"-amenable, she's not immune to the broader trend of the non-metropolitan working class shift to the right.  And the PCs are reorienting their politics toward blue collar populism. 

[King of Kensington]

Plus, there's the matter of broader hinterland rightward trending, as evidenced by Charlie Angus's weak federal share last time and the surprisingly strong PPC share in TJB--and furthermore, provincially speaking, thanks to the "splicing-out" of the far-north ridings this is no longer TJB, but just plain Timmins, so there's no longer a reserve vote to counteract rightward tendencies...

Forgot about that.  That makes Timmins much more winnable for the PCs.

[King of Kensington]

If the NDP is going to make gains, they'll have to take votes from PCs.  It seems like "rust belt" Ontario is going the other way.  And in the GTA they'll need to appeal to "Ford Liberals" - who seem more likely to go Liberal if they abandon Ford.  A difficult situation.   

[King of Kensington]

I have no idea if it's "easy" but I do think the PCs are seriously targeting Timmins.  Also Ford has no problem at all with "white ethnics."

[King of Kensington]

Politicians have agency and it is their job to try to understand society and to try to use that knowledge to build support for their parties and for their policies.* If they aren't capable of at least trying to do that, if they would rather raise their hands up in surrender and bewail how hard it is to push against 'trends' beyond their control, then they were lousy politicians anyway and not worth crying over.

_{*Whatever else you can say of the Ford Brothers, they have been very good at doing that - are multi-ethnic industrial suburbs and sink estates natural territory for conservative politics? Certainly not, and yet just look.}

Yup, the Fords have developed a populist conservatism that works in Ontario. 

[King of Kensington]

Re: "white ethnics" Italian Canadians are one of the most pro-Ford demographics around.  Del Duca winning Woodbridge isn't even a guarantee - though it helps that the current MPP hasn't exactly distinguished himself and he gets a leadership boost he didn't have before.  And hard to see King-Vaughan with its high income Italian demographic fall given Stephen Lecce's profile and that it went Conservative in the last federal election (with a bit of an assist from Russian Jews).  It's not your "Brahmin-liberal" demographic.

(Of course York Region is radically different from Northern Ontario).

[King of Kensington]

"Anti-Toronto elitism" already existed in Ontario's hinterland.  Mike Harris rammed through amalgamation and could care less what inner Toronto "progressives" thought about it - not his base.  So Ford didn't really need to "create" anything outside the GTA.

[King of Kensington]

But it's part of a more universal pattern--and if the Tories are looking to build, or at least to "scare the opposition", it's in places like that.  Just like the more critical Labour scalps claimed by the Boris Tories were in places like Dennis Skinner's Bolsover, not within central London, even if a lot of central London went with the 80s Thatcherite flow much as the Harris Tories remained electable within inner Toronto in the 90s in a way the Ford Tories couldn't be.

25 years ago, the idea of the PCs having a better shot at Timmins than St. Paul's was untenable.  But that's where we're at.

[King of Kensington]

25 years ago, the idea of the PCs having a better shot at Timmins than St. Paul's was untenable.  But that's where we're at.

*35* years ago, though, under *entirely* different circumstances, provincial PC leader Larry Grossman lost in St Andrew-St Patrick (a riding whose most "Tory" parts lie in present-day St Paul's), while his former PC leadership rival Alan Pope won in Cochrane South (the predecessor to Timmins).  But Pope (whose local appeal was more personal than partisan) fell out w/the party, didn't run again in 1990, and Bisson was elected on Bob Rae's coattails while the PCs finished under 5%, in 4th behind the Confederation of Regions.  (Indeed, the subsequent local grip of "Bisson populism" through his party's most fallow years is not unlike that of Alan Pope in the '87 PC annus horribilis.)

Good point.  
 
My political memory goes back to the 1990s/Harris years and the matching of the federal and provincial ridings in Ontario, so I guess Cochrane South slipped my mind.  The PCs of the Bill Davis era actually did quite well in Northern Ontario.  Ironically it was Mike Harris of North Bay who really bombed in the north.  

Ontario's political history of previous generations is really quite fascinating.  The NDP is a miniature "labor party" and does well where you'd expect it: industrial centers, inner cities, working class suburbs.  And of the "non-socialist" parties, the Liberals were the more rural party until the 1980s (particularly in SW Ontario), while the PCs were a very successful big tent party.  

But in 1987, the Peterson Liberals really, really succeed as the "party of everybody" - urban, suburban, rural, all the regions represented.  Both the old rural conservative and diverse urban party are there.  You see 60%+ results in ridings as different as Scarborough North and Huron. 

[King of Kensington]

The urban/rural split dynamic in (southern) Ontario is very strong today, which makes it easy to forget how new this dynamic is. One of the upsets of the 2011 provincial election was the narrow defeat of the Liberal environment minister in his riding of...Perth--Wellington! Eleven years on, the idea of a Liberal even winning in Perth--Wellington in the first place is laughable.

Yeah, SW Ontario "ancestral Liberalism" died off in the 21st century.

[King of Kensington]

Ontario's political history of previous generations is really quite fascinating.  The NDP is a miniature "labor party" and does well where you'd expect it: industrial centers, inner cities, working class suburbs.

1990 being the obvious exception where they all sorts of crazy rural wins.  And the "905" area code didn't exist yet and was of less importance then.  Obviously that map is not replicable today for the NDP.

[King of Kensington]

I know Northern Ontarians who think North Bay is the first city in the south, rather than being part of the north.

Interesting the PCs had three leaders from this "transitional" area: Frank Miller (Muskoka), Mike Harris (North Bay), Ernie Eves (Parry Sound, though he had moved onto Dufferin County and environs by the time he was leader/premier).

[King of Kensington]

Also curious to know if Kevin Yarde is seeking re-election in Brampton North?  I don't think that has been announced yet.

He's facing a nomination challenge from someone called Sandeep Singh.

I'm quite familiar with the inner workings of the NDP and I can assure that incumbents do not face nominations unless it has the blessing of party HQ. 

[King of Kensington]

Nate Erskine-Smith votes on the right? He's pretty much as left as you can go as a Liberal before hitting NDP territory

A lot of NDP partisans really dislike NES because he's eaten their lunch in Beaches-East York.  He gets a higher share of the vote than Maria Minna did in the Chretien days.  His personal popularity and the "Brahmin Liberal-ization" of the Beaches has put the federal NDP out of contention there.  And I'm not sure if the seat can be held provincially either.

[King of Kensington]

No idea, he doesn't seem like anybody who rocked the boat or anything.  Brampton also has a sizeable Black population, and the Ontario NDP did quite well in the Black Canadians last time.

[King of Kensington]

I think it's the faux liberalism approach for me. I think it's weird for you to mention that NDP partisans would be upset because 'he's eaten their lunch', Who would expect any different?  Wealthy white people vote for someone just like them to represent them. That's like saying Liberal partisans in Lanark-Frontenac dislike Randy Hillier for eating their lunch?  The demographics are quite clearly there for him to win. White rich Liberals who want to keep their wealth, don't want to help out those in lower income tax brackets if it means they have to pay.  Campaign on being compassionate, open, wanting to help others, but don't do anything to create pathways to equity (financial or otherwise). The way I see it, that is the unspoken NES and Brad Bradford brand. Understand that it's relevant and beneficial to remain liberal for optics, but to maintain wealth, govern different.

Don't really get the Randy Hillier comparison.  NES appeals to a lot of people who might be open to voting NDP, I don't think Hillier had an appeal to Liberal voters whatsoever.