Ontario 2018 election

[King of Kensington]

Politically influential, well out of proportion to their population? Check. Outer burb area? Also check. Very similar to these areas of Toronto. Toronto, of course is 5 million people, which is more than our entire province.

It would be the same as if these regions in Toronto were 300k people and not 150.

Your argument seems to be "Vancouver does too have rich people and rich neighborhoods!"

You seem to misunderstand what I mean in terms of "politically influential."  I don't mean that a lot of "movers and shakers" don't live on the North Shore.  They obviously do.  But in terms of the vote - no, North Shore ridings don't represent a serious impdiment to the NDP winning province-wide.

I already mentioned York Region which has about 1 million people.  It's not "elite" in a St. Paul's kind of way.  It's filled with "new money" real estate developers, immigrant entrepreneurs, consultants, orthodontists, middle management types and so on, not "high society", lawyers, professors, "opinion leaders" in the media and the like. 

The difference again - is not the lack of rich people.  It's more the second-tier outer suburbs that make the difference.

[King of Kensington]

Actually, I think the prime seat Wynne has in mind is her own--it's just her luck that she represents the ultimate "strategic left = Liberal" riding...

Yeah, I was thinking that too.  It sounded more like a pitch to the voters of Don Valley West than to the voters of Ontario in general.

[King of Kensington]

I think Etobicoke Lakeshore and Willowdale may show more promise to the NDP right now than Huron-Bruce and Bay of Quinte.

[King of Kensington]

It's pretty clear that the biggest swing to the NDP seems to be coming from major cities and from highly educated and "culturally liberal" voters - the weak spot in the NDP vote last time.  

[King of Kensington]

The "conventional wisdom" says Christine Elliott would have been the better PC leader who would have won it in a walk.  But who knows if that's true?  While she's more popular among the editorial board at the Globe and Mail, maybe an NDP surge on the left with a more generic PC leader would have allowed the NDP to fare stronger among the working class and "populist" vote.  Not just Etobicoke/Scarborough, but places like Brantford, Chatham, Sarnia and Sault Ste. Marie very well may find Ford more appealing.

[King of Kensington]

The next NDP caucus will be a lot less rural and a lot less Italian than Rae's caucus was.

[King of Kensington]

I disagree, it's pretty clear that Elliott would have been a stronger leader than Ford. Ford's personal ratings are almost as bad as Wynne's, so he's clearly been a drag on the PCs. The PCs were over 40% in the polls before the Brown allegations, and since Ford became leader they've gone from nearly 45% to just over 35%. As has been pointed out previously, Doug doesn't even have Rob Ford's charisma. And Elliott would have maintained the People's Guarantee(except for the carbon tax) and wouldn't have had the whole lack of a costed platform fiasco.

Furthermore, this assumes that the NDP would have been able to consolidate the left as effectively. Elliott is less of a motivator for strategic voting than Ford is-and the NDP may have struggled to consolidate the left. And Elliott also would have gotten more of the 'change' vote-Horwath's whole attack on choosing between 'bad and worse' may have been less effective when it's not Doug Ford vs Kathleen Wynne.

The PCs should have this election in the bag. When Wynne and the Liberals are so unpopular, they're the logical alternative. Horwath has run a strong campaign but the NDP has been aided a lot by the other two unpopular parties, which also makes their negatives much less significant. Ford's bad campaign is why the NDP is competitive with them for that change vote, and if the PCs lose they'll have only themselves to blame.

Yes, that is the conventional wisdom.  Maybe it would have proven true.  But maybe not.

[King of Kensington]

In defense of my 'snarky youtube video' reply, if you check your initial post, you'll see that you just mentioned 'suburbs' and not 'outer suburbs.'

A fair point.  I guess the trick is that with Toronto proper being so much bigger than Van proper, it seems a little unfair to compare the closest-in Van suburbs to "905."  But even if I did, Van suburbs seem to be more working class on the whole than 905.

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Yeah...in a way I suppose Van doesn't really have a "905" at all.

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Surrey hasn't really reached "San Jose" type status yet though (i.e. the more suburban city being the largest one in the Bay Area).  It may be big but it seems like a full fledged suburb to me.

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Wouldn't disagree - and Langley is the only one of those in Metro Vancouver.  Though Abbotsford must be pretty close in terms of Van integration maybe in line with Oshawa/Toronto?

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Yes, and that may partially explain why the NDP is more competitive in Metro Vancouver than the GTA (though obviously its dominance of the center-left in BC politics helps a lot too!)

[King of Kensington]

Conservatives (and B.C Liberals) keep hoping that the unionized resource workers (extraction and processing) in and around central and northern Vancouver Island will turn from the NDP, but it hasn't happened so far in any great number.

Part of the problem may be that the BC Liberals are the business party in BC so it's harder for them to claim that they, and not the NDP, are the party of the "little guy."  

But then again, this sort of populist appeal seems to have worked in the Interior, which is a mix of small-"c" conservative "never NDP" areas like the Okanagan but also resource areas like the Kootenays that have shifted rightward.  With the NDP holding seats in ridings like Point Grey and Fairview, it's easier to argue that the NDP is the party of the "metropolitan left" and no longer the party of the workers.

[King of Kensington]

While Gordon Campbell was pretty much a Mulroney-style "suit", Christy Clark was a weird mixture of  "populist" and "establishment" without any fixed ideology.  The current leader of the BC Liberals, Andrew Wilkinson, seems to be a Thurston Howell III type mainly concerned about the "plight" of $3 million+ mansion dwellers in Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale, Point Grey and West Vancouver. 

[King of Kensington]

Re: Christine Elliott, I think a lot of people saw a "Mulroney '84" type result with her leading the party.

[King of Kensington]

This could be a problem for Miller:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ndp-miller-allegations-1.4615621

[King of Kensington]

Here's a list for me of 62 NDP seats.  It requires everything to "go right" to get there including dominance of Toronto, Brampton and Ottawa, and defeating Ford in pretty much every single rust belt-ish seat.  

So it means dominating working class and urban constituencies, leaving Ford more or less as a commuter belt and rural phenomenon.

1. Ottawa Centre
2. Ottawa South
3. Ottawa-Vanier
4. Ottawa West-Nepean
5. Kingston and the Islands
6. Peterborough-Kawartha
7. Durham
8. Oshawa
9. Beaches-East York
10. Davenport
11. Don Valley East
12. Etobicoke-Lakeshore
13. Humber River-Black Creek
14. Parkdale-High Park
15. Scarborough Centre
16. Scarborough-Guildwood
17. Scarborough North
18. Scarborough-Rouge Park
19. Scarborough Southwest
20. Spadina-Fort York
21. St. Paul's
22. Toronto Centre
23. Toronto-Danforth
24. University-Rosedale
25. Willowdale
26. York South-Weston
27. Brampton Centre
28. Brampton East
29. Brampton North
30. Brampton South
31. Brampton West
32. Mississauga-Malton
33. Hamilton Centre
34. Hamilton East-Stoney Creek
35. Hamilton Mountain
36. Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas
37. Niagara Centre
38. Niagara Falls
39. St. Catharines
40. Brantford
41. Cambridge
42. Chatham-Kent-Essex
43. Essex
42. Kitchener Centre
43. Kitchener-Conestoga
44. Kitchener South-Hespeler
45. London-Fanshawe
46. London North Centre
47. London West
48. Perth-Wellington
49. Sarnia-Lambton
50. Waterloo
51. Windsor-Tecumseh
52. Windsor West
53. Algoma-Manitoulin
54. Kenora
55. Nickel Belt
56. Sault Ste. Marie
57. Sudbury
58. Thunder Bay-Atikokan
59. Thunder Bay-Superior North
60. Timmins
61. Kiiweetinoong
62. Mushkegowuk-James Bay

If they really drive down the Liberal vote and go into majority territory. maybe Ajax, Pickering, Whitby, maybe another Toronto seat, two more in Mississauga, Flamborough-Glanbrook (hometown effect) etc. could fall.  And they may need some of these anyway given that I don't think there's a lot of PC seats the NDP will take.

[King of Kensington]

God I hope the PCs aren't leading comfortably in Guildwood and Rouge Park and that they haven't increased their support in Humber.

[King of Kensington]

Star snapshots DVW.

I think KW prevails because she'll be able to appeal to enough of the Blair Morrisons and Log McQuaigs.

[King of Kensington]

Quito Maggi is promising a surprise result in Agincourt, is suggesting the Liberals still have strength in Humber River-Black Creek and that things have shifted in St. Paul's as well.

[King of Kensington]

Indeed, Agincourt is probably the first seat in Toronto to fall to the PCs (perhaps excluding Etobicoke North).

[King of Kensington]

Burlington is interesting.  I guess not being very Fordian, having a bit of an urban core and closeness to Hamilton = some NDP potential?

[King of Kensington]

OK I see Guildwood and Agincourt now.  So Mitzie Hunter still has some support.  This is a tough call for the "strategic voter."

[King of Kensington]

It would be interesting to know if ther are any seats the OLP are most desperately trying to save (beside KW's focus on being re-elected as the MPP for DVW in which I think she will be successful).
Realistically the numbers they can possibly hang onto is in the single digits.  

The Ottawa-Vanier/St. Paul's/Don Valley/Thunder Bay party.

[King of Kensington]

That is my point. Nonexistent NDP campaign+popular Liberal incumbent+plenty of Ford Nation vote implies you vote for the Liberal if you are ABF. Or you can vote NDP and get PC elected.

I think there's going to almost be a strategic voting mess in some outer Toronto ridings, with the Conservatives slipping through with 35-40% of the vote.  How do you convince thousands of voters to vote one way when it is not at all clear who the main anti-Conservative candidate?  Unless the Toronto Star names specifically who these Liberal MPPs best poised to defeat the Conservative are (and even then). 

What do you do in a 35-30-30 situation?

[King of Kensington]

Looking forward to that Globe endorsement:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-globe-editorial-doug-fords-empty-plan-for-ontario/?utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links

I'm guessing it'll be: Conservative minority, dump Ford and rebuild the Liberals as a more centrist and fiscally conservative alternative to the NDP.

[King of Kensington]

In any race where the Liberals are possibly in contention, it's going to be close, as no Liberal is headed for a landslide victory (in other words, there are no absolutely, truly safe seats for the Liberals right now).  Another party can't be so far ahead, because personal popularity and strategic voting and so on aren't going to make up for all of that.  The Liberals will prevail because at least one party is very weak and/or another under-performs for some reason.  

In addition, some other criteria:

1.  A lot of "too educated to vote Ford, too rich to vote NDP" types (this may prove the most reliable Liberal constituency)

2.  A riding where the Liberal is clearly best positioned to defeat the Conservative or where the Conservatives have no chance

3.  Extraordinary personal popularity or at least enough to tip the vote in a close race.  Personal popularity matters more in rural and northern ridings

4.  Not too vulnerable to the NDP pulling votes from the Liberals en masse

[King of Kensington]

Oakville and Burlington are often lumped together, but Burlington really isn't Oakville-wealthy (and yes I know Oakville has more modest parts too, but on the whole it's very affluent for a city of 180,000 and that affluence "sets the tone" for the place).  

Another way to see it: Burlington is the "mirror image" of Whitby in the western GTA (and Oakville is Oakville - it has no eastern GTA "equivalent").

[King of Kensington]

And a very practical difference is that the Liberal incumbent in Oakville, Kevin Flynn is fairly popular. But I don't think even that will be enough to prevent PC taking over Oakville.

He probably has the least "Fordian" riding in the 905 and he'll probably do respectfully "considering the circumstances" but that won't be enough.