Ontario Election 2022

[DL]

I'm not suggesting the ONDP will win Don valley West - just that they may do better than would be expected based on a pure extrapolation of a province-wide swing would indicate. Contrary to stereotypes DVW has a lot of low income heavily ethnic areas that are not unlike areas where the NDP is very competitive in places like Scarborough...with no pressure to vote strategically to save Kathleen Wynne and with the NDP making more of an effort - i could see them maintaining a decent vote share there

[DL]

The NDP targetted Eglinton Lawrence in 2015, how did that work out?

You know at the start of the campaign in 2015 polling had the NDP in the high 20s in Eglinton-Lawrence...then when the Trudeau Liberal tide rose it collapsed the NDP vote to 7% on election day.

Don Valley West has VASTLY better demographics for the NDP than does Eglinton-Lawrence. If Steven del Duca finds a way to duplicate what Trudeau did federally in 2015 and the Ontario NDP vote collapses to less than 20% (both very unlikely IMHO), the Liberals will win the Ontario Liberals win DVW easily and the NDP will be lucky to get over 10%. If on the other hand the NDP stays in second place and the Liberals only get a bit of a dead cat bounce compared to 2018 - the NDP vote in DVW will likely be respectable, though likely not enough to win....In an NDP surge context almost every Liberal vote could go NDP - but it would take a "wave election" to win DVW

[DL]

I would say that demographically Don Valley East is much more fertile ground for the NDP than is Don Valley West

[DL]

Mike Gravelle the longtime Liberal MPP for Thunder Bay-Superior North is stepping down for health reasons. That seat will be wide open with him out of the picture. It was never a Liberal seat. It was a Gravelle seat.

[DL]

Mike Gravelle the longtime Liberal MPP for Thunder Bay-Superior North is stepping down for health reasons. That seat will be wide open with him out of the picture. It was never a Liberal seat. It was a Gravelle seat.

Does a Gravelle endorsement/campaigning factor at all?

I suppose if he endorses someone for the Liberal nomination, it might make a difference but beyond that not really. He only won by 200 votes last time and its almost certain that the Liberals would have lost the seat without him. Personalities and candidates make a much bigger difference in these  northern ridings

[DL]

People can debate the pros and cons of Andrea Horwath but the fact that she has lost three elections (though gaining ground each time) is neither here nor there. Gary Doer lost three elections as NDP leader in Manitoba and was dismissed as a loser who was past his prime, then he won a majority in 1995 on his fourth attempt and went on to win three more elections after that!

Similarly Darrell Dexter lost three times as NDP leader in Nova Scotia and then won a majority in his fourth attempt. 

[DL]

Shocking in the sense that even Kathleen Wynne won her seat as Liberal leader in the last election despite the party's dismal finish.  Has there ever been an Ontario Liberal leader (provincially) who has not won their own riding?  That would be pretty remarkable, at least historic. I would call those things shocking, but guess we all interpret things differently.

Has there ever been an Ontario Liberal leader who had no seat going into an election and had to win a seat away from another party?

[DL]

This is why I'm kind of skeptical of the NDP's chances in this election.  GTA is obviously crucial and the GTA is filled with "Ford Liberals." So either they stick with Ford or they return "home" to the Liberals.  What is the NDP's case to the Ford Liberal voter?  I don't think "we're just 10 seats away from forming government" cuts it.

I suppose the thinking would be that there is a disaffected populist vote in suburban Toronto that used to just automatically vote Liberal as a matter of course because they didn't know any better and that now that they have been dislodged from sucking on the Liberal Party teat - they are up for grabs between the rightwing populist Ford PCs and the leftwing populist ONDP.

[DL]

Its still early in the campaign but at this stage my sense is that there really isn't much of a mood for change and that the Ford PCs will win again and possibly even add to their majority. Its going to turn into mainly a battle for second place. The conventional wisdom was that one of the opposition parties would break away and consolidate the "anti-Ford vote". I'm not even sure about that. If the consensus is that the PCs are going to win no matter that creates a very different mindset among "promiscuous progressives" - more like the federal election of 2008 than 2015.

I suspect that the OLP will have somewhat of a deadcat bounce from their annihilation in 2018, but they may gain surprisingly few seats...and if the PCs are doing well in the 'burbs I think it would be an upset if Del Duca even won his own seat. The Liberals may edge out the NDP in the popular vote but the Liberal vote is very very inefficient at low levels (e.g. in the 2011 federal election the Liberals and NDP were essentially tied in the popular vote and the NDP beat the Liberals 22 seats to 11). So I think the NDP will suffer losses but still be the official opposition.

In the aftermath of the election, there will be leadership questions for the opposition parties, I don't think anyone thinks Horwath will stick around as ONDP leader and her heir apparent would be Davenport MPP Marit Stiles (who IMHO would be much, much better). For the OLP it will be more complicated. They are certain to increase their vote and seat count compared to 2018 so in a way Del Duca will be in the same position as Horwath after her first election in 2011 when she took the NDP from 10 seats to 17. I suppose a lot of depends on whether he wins his seat. If he manages to win in Vaughan-Woodbridge and the OLP gains a dozen seats, I suspect he would try to stay on. If he loses his seat and the OLP is still in 3rd place - all bets are off and his fate is more unpredictable.   

[DL]

Mainstreet poll out today has the NDP ahead in St. Catharines. Very interesting if true. Also an earlier poll has the NDP only back 1 in Ottawa West-Nepean.  OWN seems like it's getting more and more progressive these days.

Oh is Mainstreet starting to do some individual riding polls? Where do you find those?

[DL]

They're putting them on QP briefing. Here's the St Catharines poll: https://www.qpbriefing.com/2022/05/11/riding-poll-ndp-headed-to-re-election-in-st-catharines/

I’m pleasantly surprised since usually those riding polls by Mainstreet are highly suspect and have tended to low ball NDP support at the riding level…likely because of the near impossibility of drawing a sample that includes anyone under the age of 50!

[DL]

Looking like with the PCs ahead in Northern Ontario, and places Timmins, Mushkegowuk-James Bay, Algoma-Manitoulin, Kiwentinoon are learning PC, we are headed to super majority status.  Looks like it could be only Gélinas and Vanthof who will be back from the Northern ONDP caucus. I think these areas have voted for Andrea for the past 3-4 elections, it's almost like the "change" vote here is Doug.  

It can be very. Is leading to try to apply uniform swings to these northern ridings. Politics is much more personality based and there is a lot more loyalty to incumbents. Also a riding like Kiwetinoon is mostly Indigenous and the NDP incumbent there is very high profile

[DL]

Looking like with the PCs ahead in Northern Ontario, and places Timmins, Mushkegowuk-James Bay, Algoma-Manitoulin, Kiwentinoon are learning PC, we are headed to super majority status.  Looks like it could be only Gélinas and Vanthof who will be back from the Northern ONDP caucus. I think these areas have voted for Andrea for the past 3-4 elections, it's almost like the "change" vote here is Doug.  

It can be very. Is leading to try to apply uniform swings to these northern ridings. Politics is much more personality based and there is a lot more loyalty to incumbents. Also a riding like Kiwetinoon is mostly Indigenous and the NDP incumbent there is very high profile

And of course, the Indigenous vote is notoriously hard to poll--the Kiiwetinoong numbers could well be overly plumped in the largely WWC resource towns...

 O one has done a riding poll in Kiwetinoon there are just projections based on applying a regional swing and that can be a very crude instrument

[DL]

Should be noted that we've had a couple of provincial by-elections recently in ridings with high Indigenous populations, and we've seen a large drop in the NDP vote there, so Kiiwetinoong  may be closer than anticipated.

None in Ontario and none with a very high profile incumbent running for re-election...But as i said these northern seats are so personality based. The Ontario Liberals currently hold Thunder Bay-Superior North  (100% because of the personal popularity of Mike Gravelle). Now that he is not running again, I would not bet money on the Liberals retaining that seat even if they province wide popular vote goes up 10 points compared to 2018.

[DL]

No Liberal candidates in Timmins and Parry Sound-Muskoka. I think this helps the Tories in the former (especially since they are running a former mayor) and the Greens in the latter. 

Why would the absence of a Liberal in Timmins help the Tories when according to every poll the second choice of Liberal voters is NDP over PC by about a 5 to 1 margin.

The latest Earnscliffe poll says among current OLP voters 62% have the NDP as second choice and just 5% have the PCs as second choice. https://earnscliffe.ca/insight/on-election-polling-tracking-ontario-voters-shifting-support-3/

I know that many generations ago there was this pattern of Liberal and PC votes being interchangeable in order to "save free enterprise" - but these days everything is polarized around whether people support Ford or not I have to think that it can only hurt the PCs to face only one opposition candidate.

[DL]

No Liberal candidates in Timmins and Parry Sound-Muskoka. I think this helps the Tories in the former (especially since they are running a former mayor) and the Greens in the latter.  

Why would the absence of a Liberal in Timmins help the Tories when according to every poll the second choice of Liberal voters is NDP over PC by about a 5 to 1 margin.

The latest Earnscliffe poll says among current OLP voters 62% have the NDP as second choice and just 5% have the PCs as second choice. https://earnscliffe.ca/insight/on-election-polling-tracking-ontario-voters-shifting-support-3/

I know that many generations ago there was this pattern of Liberal and PC votes being interchangeable in order to "save free enterprise" - but these days everything is polarized around whether people support Ford or not I have to think that it can only hurt the PCs to face only one opposition candidate.

Because it's Northern Ontario. The NDP vote in the riding is usually pretty constant, while the Liberals and Tories trade votes back and forth. Just look at how the riding has voted in recent elections. And that's not unique to Timmins, it's a phenomena across Northern Ontario.

Its hard to say...the Liberal vote in Timmins in 2018 was only 9% and who knows who those people would have voted for with no Liberal on the ballot. But I tend to think that if the Liberals had a candidate and ran a serious campaign in Timmins it would cut into the NDP vote more than the PC vote because the Liberals are running to the left this election with an explicitly anti-Ford message. Del Duca and Horwath have practically said they would form an accord to dump the PCs if the PCs lost their majority. Also the Liberal vote that falls away in Timmins when they drop from 33% to 10% may be quite different from that hard core 10% who voted OLP even when Wynne was leading then to cataclysmic defeat in 2018...

[DL]

But they nonetheless have a path to Liberal proxy, i.e. win or lose, this is a provincial version of a "Mike Morrice" wet dream situation.  Like, this was *already* their top 2nd-seat-in-the-Legislature target--and you can be sure now that there's some kind of Red/Green campaign-coalition deal in the works.

Indeed, PSM has already been a node for a Red/Green crossover dynamic: Richard Thomas, who came within 6 votes of defeating "Landslide Ernie" Eves in 1981 and then ran for the provincial Liberal leadership in '82, went on to join the Green Party and become by far their most successful candidate in Ontario into the beginning of this century...

All Greens need to win PSM is for some scandal to cause the PCs to have to disown their candidate two weeks before the election!

[DL]

Its interesting to note just how inefficient the Liberal vote is in Ontario when its at relatively low levels. The latest topline numbers from the Mainstreet daily tracking has the PCs at 36%, the Liberals dropping to 26.8% and the NDP rising to 24.4% - with the OLP leading the ONDP by 2.4% - they project that with this provincewide split, the NDP would take 26 seats and the OLP would take 13 (with 11 tossups) and the PCs would romp to a majority with 73 seats.

https://twitter.com/elxnometre/status/1525498671772717057?s=21&t=dm5MaUrQyXhXfaEMb72RSw

Let's not forget that in the 2011 federal election in Ontario the NDP took 25.8% and the Liberals took 25.3% - but the NDP took 22 seats and the Liberals just 11.

[DL]

The story in Ontario is that while the CCF/NDP has occasionally become official opposition, they have never done for two elections in a row. The CCF became official opposition in 1943, then 3rd in 1945, then OO in 1948, then back to third in 1951, the OO again in 1975 and then back to 3rd (by 1 seat) in 1977. Of course one exception to this was 1987 when the NDP became official opposition to the Liberals and then WON in 1990!

Ontarians and the media and punditocracy tend to react the the NDP coming in second as if it was some fluke or flash in the pan...in 2018 the NDP took 40 seats and the Liberals took 7 and the refrain is always (oh people were just mad at Kathleen Wynne but deep down they were still Liberals). I have a hunch that the PCs will win a majority and the Liberals will have a bit of a "dead cat bounce" from 2018 - but in seats we may have the NDP around 30 seats and the Libs back in the teens - and then it will not longer be a fluke that the Liberals are the third party in Ontario. My pie in the sky prediction after that is Horwath retires, Marit Stiles is acclaimed as the new ONDP leader and she becomes premier after the 2026 election!

[DL]

The Mainstreet seat projection model is based on regional swings and not on just the province wide swing fwiw

[DL]

Well Howard Hampton stuck around after finishing third in 1999 so why shouldn’t Del Duca lead the OLP to three third place results too?

[DL]

Surely if the OLP refused to support an NDP minority government and instead propped up Ford it would have a catastrophic effect on Liberal support and they would get “Clegged” in the subsequent election

[DL]

Remember that if Ford were to lose his majority before we could even get to this vote by vote horse trading the PCs would have to pass a Throne Speech and for that to happen he would need Liberal votes. Considering how the OLP has spent the whole campaign attacking Ford if they were to commit the original sin of supporting Ford throne speech their own members and activists would go berserk

[DL]

FWIW Advanced Symbolics is doing their popular vote and seat projections with daily updates again

Right now they have the PCs just barely clinging to a majority with 63 seats with the NDP at 33 and the Libs at 27 and the Greens 1...but that seems to assume a huge number of PC/OLP tossups in the GTA and I'm not sure if that is actually happening...

https://advancedsymbolics.com/ontario-election/

[DL]

As of this morning both Mike Schreiner and Andrea Horwath have tested positive for Covid. Seems that the Leader’s debate on Monday night may have been a superspreader event.