Ontario 2018 election

[King of Kensington]

Good point.  And Brampton was actually a pretty strong area for the Reform Party in the 1990s.  If the sample of the Brampton ridings looks like Brampton ca. 1993 that could explain why Ford's PCs are over-performing.

[King of Kensington]

What are the genuine three-way races in this election?  Not "three way" in the sense that one party is strong enough to play spoiler but that any of the three parties can win.

Don Valley East seems to be the obvious one (the similar provincial riding of Don Mills went NDP with 35% of the vote in 1990).

Maybe Ottawa West-Nepean and Ottawa South?

[King of Kensington]

Hmm. This election does have a BC 2017 feel to it.  The polls were tied and we were all told the electoral map favoured the Liberals.

So the Liberals will end up like the BC Greens and hold the balance of power with their few seats?

Speaking of BC, it's hard to imagine either Doug Ford or Kathleen Wynne leading the BC Liberals!

[King of Kensington]

Is anyone here from Northern Ontario? I predicted that Doug Ford would play well in the working class communities across Northern Ontario, much like Trump did in the Rust Belt in 2016. 

He is very competitive with working class voters but so is Andrea Horwath.

[King of Kensington]

As I said above, BC has a more NDP-favorable map than Ontario.  The Lower Mainland suburbs have far fewer York Region or Kanata-type dead zones (and Ontario doesn't really have a "Vancouver Island" equivalent).

[King of Kensington]

If Brampton turns out to be another "Scarborough" then the NDP ain't going to win the election.

[King of Kensington]

Is anyone here from Northern Ontario? I predicted that Doug Ford would play well in the working class communities across Northern Ontario, much like Trump did in the Rust Belt in 2016. 

Re: the working class vote, there's not as much a partisan divide based on class compared to 1990.  In 1990 you had a pattern where the working class voted NDP and the well to do voted mostly Liberal.  This time you have the PCs and NDP competing for the working class vote, and the Liberals may end up being a boutique party for those repulsed by Ford but unable to vote for the "workers' party" either.

[King of Kensington]

Was the Mike Harris of 1990 basically the same Harris of 1995?  Or did he recast himself from a more "mainstream" PC to the Common Sense Revolutionary he became known for?

[King of Kensington]

but just like the left in other parts of the world, the NDP's base is becoming more and more higher educated while the working class is becoming more and more attracted to right wing populism.

Yes, the progressive middle classes have really shifted toward the NDP in this election.

[King of Kensington]

They're also polling Humber River-Black Creek (née York West), which will be a giant crap shoot too.

The Campaign Research poll of TO ridings actually put the PCs in the lead there!  Small sample size though.

[King of Kensington]

Hamilton-Niagara and Windsor-Essex are sort of like the Labour strongholds of Northern England for the NDP in some respects (as much as they can be in a country with much more volatile voting patterns!) Even if Ford is able to increase the vote, it won't amount to much (just as Theresa May's appeal to Leave voters and increased support among C2s and DEs didn't result in bedrock Labour seats going Tory).

[King of Kensington]

Leaving aside Etobicoke North where Doug is actually on the ballot, I think of Scarborough-Agincourt as the "first to fall" among seats in Toronto to the PCs, as it is both "Ford Nation" enough and Conservative enough (and the NDP has no chance).

[King of Kensington]

Much earlier in this thread I suggested it was quite possible for the PCs to win there and in York South-Weston due to how well Ford did in those ridings in the mayoral election. Of course the state of the race is much different now, but I think it's possible for the PCs to win both still.

Should note they had the NDP dominating in York South-Weston. YSW and HRBC aren't that different.  That's why I put little stock in these (they also put Mitzie Hunter at 0% and the Greens at 16% in Etobicoke North!)

[King of Kensington]

My feeling is that while the PC vote will increase significantly in York South and Humber, the PC universe is too small to put them over the top.  In contrast, getting around 40% in most Scarborough ridings (enough to win) doesn't seem insurmountable for the PCs with Ford leading them.

[King of Kensington]

If the PCs won 110 seats, Parkdale-High Park wouldn't be one of them.

[King of Kensington]

In Spadina-Fort York, Han Dong and the PC candidate Iris Yu have more lawn signs up in the heavily Chinese area between Dundas and Queen, Spadina and Manning.

I still think the NDP prevails.

[King of Kensington]

If Ontario politics became more like BC politics, I could see Ajax-Pickering, some of Mississauga and of course Brampton being NDP.  But being even competitive with the PCs in 905 seems to be an insurmountable challenge for the NDP at the moment.

[King of Kensington]

Historically the PCs always had a large working class vote: the Big Blue Machine was very much founded on 'class collaboration', in much the same manner as the federal Liberals of the same era. The NDP's core was working class however defined (and definition is always a big issue regarding this issue) but they never dominated. The Liberals were also always the preferred party of Catholics of whatever class (overt sectarianism being the other key element to the Big Blue Machine), which presented further problems for the NDP in certain proletarian districts. Even in 1990 the absolute dominance of the NDP in most working class ridings owed much to the favourable split between the Liberal and PC votes. Avoid the big talk and look at the facts, as unfashionable as that is in these times...

Yes, the NDP has never been the party of the working class in Ontario/Canada, just of certain pockets with a history of class politics and industrial trade unionism.

[King of Kensington]

It's a Ford Nation riding where the Conservatives have traditionally been very, very weak.

[King of Kensington]

Another thing:  The NDP is sure to win at least one seat in Ottawa.

[King of Kensington]

There is no NDP path to victory if the PCs hold them back in outer Toronto and Brampton.

[King of Kensington]

That's entirely within the realm of possibility.  Ottawa doesn't seem very "Fordian" at all. 

It seems that Ottawa South and Ottawa West-Nepean are genuine three-way races.

[King of Kensington]

I wonder if this stuff with Trump and tariffs will help the Liberals a bit in the "John Tory Liberal" constituency (but probably nowhere else).

[King of Kensington]

Both Stephen Harper and the founders of the NDP believed in one thing: a "proper" polarization with the NDP on the left, the Conservatives on the right and the Liberal center squeezed out.  Harper was of the belief that a proper left/right polarization would benefit the "free enterprise coalition", NDPers believe there's a "progressive majority."

Harper did a lot to win so-called blue Liberals and was successful in 2011 but he was too much of an ideologue to hold it together (he actually sounds more of a rabid ideologue now than he did in power - which is unusual for retired heads of government).  Ford will likely prove even more erratic and incapable of maintaining a united center-right.

[King of Kensington]

Of course in 2011 people scoffed at the idea of Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader.

And I scoff at the idea of STEVEN DEL DUCA leading the OLP.  Maybe I'll eat my words in 4 years.