Ontario Election 2022

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Paul Miller will run as an independent in Hamilton East - Stoney Creek, wonder if this will split the vote at all.

Would be very surprising if he polled well enough for it to matter afaict.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The idea that Jagmeet Singh was destined to become premier had he stayed in Ontario politics doesn't stand up to a basic examination of his record in federal politics.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

FWIW Mainstreet today has a bit of a reversion to the mean with the NDP bouncing back from 20.8% yesterday to 23.4 today and that puts them more firmly in second place in seats. So when Marit Stiles gets acclaimed at the successor to Horwath sometime in the coming year she will be leader of the opposition and likely to be far more effective than Horwath was. The NDP should hope that Del Duca wins his seat that way the Liberals are stuck with him for another election!

Why the confidence that Marit Stiles will be the next leader? Davenport seems to me to be a seat full of exactly the sort of easily-led, sorry, promiscuous progressives who will flock to an OLP they've been told is the real opposition again.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The federal NDP came within 65 votes of winning Davenport when the federal Liberals took 37% across the province and the NDP took just 17%. I don’t think Stiles had much to worry about when the provincewide gap is 3 or 4 points and not 20! But that’s beside the point, the NDP will hopefully choose the most capable person as their next leader based on their skills as a communicator and as a leader I don’t see how the riding the next leader represents is of much relevance. Was the federal ndp wrong to have picked Jack Layton as leader Because his riding was Toronto Danforth?

I'm not commenting on what the NDP should do, just on what they will do, and I doubt they're going to coronate someone who's just lost their seat, if it comes to that. You're right to bring up the federal results, but conversely, if Davenport voters were the type to get sentimental about the NDP as an entity, they wouldn't have traded a relatively visible NDP incumbent for an anonymous Liberal in 2015 and then kept re-electing her in the face of spirited NDP campaigns. If there is going to be substantial movement of 2018 NDP voters to the OLP because they think that's the best way to get the PCs out of office, it seems plausible that it will be most pronounced in the same places that exact sort of movement usually is - that is, downtown Toronto. I'm certainly not writing Stiles off, I'm just less convinced than you are that Davenport is a safe NDP seat under present conditions.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

PCs winning Timmins by running the mayor of Timmins, Libs winning Barrie-Springwater by running the mayor of Barrie. The premier is the dead mayor of Toronto's brother, the leading (PC) candidate in York South is his nephew. Ontarians simp for their mayors apparently!

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Or, the "Jagmeet NDP" phenomenon was, like Orange Crush Quebec, a bit of a built-upon-quicksand illusion--as the federal party's going downhill in its Brampton seats in '21 demonstrated.

Part of it is surely just going up against the combination of Doug Ford and lingering OLP viability with immigrant voters? Brampton is one thing, and I'm sure we've all noted YSW, but the NDP results in Scarborough outside SW or Mississauga weren't anything to write home about either. Humber River is probably the only stand-out result in those sorts of seats.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

FWIW Mainstreet today has a bit of a reversion to the mean with the NDP bouncing back from 20.8% yesterday to 23.4 today and that puts them more firmly in second place in seats. So when Marit Stiles gets acclaimed at the successor to Horwath sometime in the coming year she will be leader of the opposition and likely to be far more effective than Horwath was. The NDP should hope that Del Duca wins his seat that way the Liberals are stuck with him for another election!

Why the confidence that Marit Stiles will be the next leader? Davenport seems to me to be a seat full of exactly the sort of easily-led, sorry, promiscuous progressives who will flock to an OLP they've been told is the real opposition again.

Glad I was wrong about this, btw!

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Between Bisson running again despite not being able to campaign seriously due to 'nearly dying of a coronary' and Skinner running again here in '19 despite not being able to campaign seriously due to 'nearly dying of an infection after a difficult hip operation and being almost ninety', had it occurred to social democratic parties to, perhaps, not to run longterm incumbents no longer physically capable of actually campaigning?

I do wonder if this might be partly an insecurity thing - MPs and members being afraid that their voters are only ticking the box out of muscle memory and that if the familiar name retires muh trends will kick in, that sort of thing.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I know that their braintrust may not have the knack of it *now*; but in case there's a "Lib Dem" future for the OLP, I'd wonder how much of *any* potential there might be for rebooting a maverick-populist spirit in that camp, a la the UK Liberal-axis "Celtic fringe" and shock-backwater-byelection-gain knack.  The last gasp of *that*, I suppose, was in Rick Johnson's byelection upset of John Tory in HKLB in 2009.  (Maybe for *that* to happen these days, there'd have to be a strategic Lib/Green alliance a la Parry Sound-Muskoka)

The Manitoba Lib model, sort of?