Ontario Election 2022

[King of Kensington]

According to "projections", Del Duca was supposed to one of the Liberals to survive when they lost official party status.

[King of Kensington]

If it *can* be held provincially, it'd be in the event that the OLP is still in recovery mode from '18, and the NDP can nominate somebody w/more "moderate appeal" than Rima.

However, the Lib candidate, Mary-Margaret McMahon, is probably as good as it gets *there*, and somebody w/a municipal record to match NES in eating the NDP's lunch...

Rima is interesting.  She's a "woke" social justice-y academic, but her husband is a banker and a long-time fundraiser for the federal Liberals.

[King of Kensington]

For example, 338Canada says Eglinton-Lawrence will be the 5th most Liberal-friendly seat in the 416,

Eglinton-Lawrence is just about the lowest hanging fruit for the OLP.

Eglinton-Lawrence and York Centre have voted the same way provincially since the mirroring of federal/provincial in 1999 and federally since Eglinton-Lawrence was established in 1979 (and both Wilson Heights and Lawrence ridings stayed Liberal in 1990 when the NDP won).  But you could see the pulling apart in the last provincial election, where the Libs nearly hung in Eg-Law but York Centre went full on Ford Nation.  The difference of course is that while both contain Jewish/Italian/Filipino/multicultural North York, Eg-Law also has the countervailing North Toronto part.  Mike Colle lost significant ground to Ford Nation in his old base in the western part of the riding, but won the North Toronto polls by a very wide margin which almost saved him.

While both York Centre and Eglinton-Lawrence are around 20% Jewish, York Centre is more commonly thought of as the "Jewish riding" and elected more Jewish politicians for some reason.

[King of Kensington]

So again: as I said, *if* '18 were not only reflective of, but foretelling of, a Lab vs Lib Dem dynamic (and "foretelling of" is what knocks some of those '18 "good numbers" out of the picture).  But *also*, as I indicated, it'd require the ONDP to actually have a stronger Labour-esque machine in place; and there's no evidence so far that the NDP's poised to Orange Crush the non-Lakeshore Mississauga seats, which is *really* what's required if the OLP is truly in eclipse and the PCs have any chance of defeat. 

Yeah, if we're thinking BC-ization of Ontario politics, the NDP were able to take the Point Grey-esque St. Paul's, but they still can't break into the "regular" middle income suburbs like Coquitlam.

[King of Kensington]

Vaughan is also the "bank" of Ford Nation.

[King of Kensington]

Michael Ford is running for the PCs in York South-Weston.  Doug Ford made it a three-way race last time.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8732227/toronto-michael-ford-election-york-south-weston/

[King of Kensington]

Some palpable anger in the Black community over Yarde's ouster:

https://twitter.com/LauraMaeLindo/status/1512803181885014017

https://twitter.com/blackvotecanada/status/1512256582410805249

[King of Kensington]

In the 2011 federal election, the NDP and Liberals were basically tied in the popular vote in Ontario (25-26% each) but the NDP ended up with twice as many seats.

[King of Kensington]

It was remarkable to see Jill Andrew pull off a win in St. Paul's.  And there actually is a pretty solid NDP base in the western half of the riding.  But it's almost impossible to see her holding on unless the OLP really tanks and really under-performs among urban progressives.

[King of Kensington]

The difference between Don Valley West and Eglinton-Lawrence isn't exactly Westmount vs. Mount Royal (both of which the orange wave "missed" in 2011 - but by rather different degrees).

It's hard to imagine an NDP wave taking in DVW under any circumstances.*  Maybe if they win 100 seats or something.

*Westmount is in a riding more comparable to St. Paul's - and the ONDP already won that in 2018.  DVW has a lot less NDP-compatible territory than either.

[King of Kensington]

I wouldn't say "vastly"; in fact, I'd call it a bit of a draw.  However, DVW *does* have a super-node of NDPish demographics: Thorncliffe--but that isn't enough to elect a social democratic party riding-wide; in UK terms, it's more like a token council-housing vote-sink Labour ward within an otherwise solidly Tory/Lib Dem council.

I'm not even sure if DVW being the Premier's own seat made much of a difference in 2018, given that Eglinton-Lawrence was also a Liberal/Tory race and the NDP got 18% of the vote in both.  DVW is the wealthiest riding in Ontario by most measures (highest average income, highest share of households in the top decile etc.)  While it does have Thorncliffe it's on the edge of the riding, it's offset by upper middle class to super-wealthy territory that dominates the riding.  An argument that the "NDP can win because of Thorncliffe Park" isn't really going to convince the Brahmin liberals of North Toronto and Leaside.

[King of Kensington]

I suppose one could argue that ridings like King-Vaughan and Carleton are "wealthier" than DVW or St. Paul's because they have higher median HH incomes.  But that's more due to a higher floor or a smaller share in the bottom 50% of the income distribution, few apartments or renters, no social housing etc. 

[King of Kensington]

Average HH income

Don Valley West  $216,158
Oakville  $177,283
University-Rosedale  $170,832
Eglinton-Lawrence  $162,674
St. Paul's  $155,470
Oakville North-Burlington  $146,529
King-Vaughan  $145,923
Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill  $137,070
Carleton  $134,517
Mississauga-Lakeshore  $130,832

[King of Kensington]

A more encouraging poll for the Liberals (36-32-23):

https://abacusdata.ca/ontario-election-2022-release/

[King of Kensington]

York Region is the most Conservative region of the GTA now and Ford is popular among Italians, so it wouldn't be a shocker.  Plus the wealthier, more exurban and also very Italian King-Vaughan is very safe given that it flipped Conservative in the federal election.  So a Del Duca loss wouldn't be a shocker though he does have the advantage of better Liberal polling numbers and being a potential Premier that weren't there before plus the PC MPP incumbent's star faded long ago.

Remember too that Vaughan has been the bankroller of the Fords going even back to municipal days.

[King of Kensington]

In every federal and provincial election since the reconfiguration of the map, the "downtown three" (Spadina-Fort York, Toronto Centre, University-Rosedale) have all voted the same way.  Will the streak continue?

[King of Kensington]

1948 was that very rare bird: a party winning the election but the leader losing personally. Other examples off the top of the head are Mackenzie King in 1945 (federal), Sir John A. Macdonald in 1878 (also federal), Don Getty in 1989 (Alberta) & Clyde Wells in 1989 (Newfoundland). No doubt there are plenty more.

Macdonald's loss in 1878 was perhaps the most curious: the Tories didn't just win that election, they went from opposition to government in one of their (then) biggest victories, up from one of their (then) biggest defeats in 1874, in which Macdonald had held his riding.

And Christy Clark in 2013.

[King of Kensington]

In every federal and provincial election since the reconfiguration of the map, the "downtown three" (Spadina-Fort York, Toronto Centre, University-Rosedale) have all voted the same way.  Will the streak continue?

In University-Rosedale, former environment commissioner and high-profile environmental lawyer Dianne Saxe is running for the Greens and is very visible.  I'm guessing she takes relatively equally from NDP and Liberal voters.

[King of Kensington]

4 elections in less than a decade is hardly a big "streak", I agree, particularly given there were three city-wide red sweeps federally and an inner Toronto orange sweep in 2018.

But the rather "iffy" nature of this election in terms of "progressive" opposition does raise the question of whether we'll be seeing a rather unusual map this time.  

[King of Kensington]

A more impressive streak that is likely to be break this time: Toronto's two "Jewish" ridings: Eglinton-Lawrence and York Centre.  They've voted the same way federally since Eglinton-Lawrence was created in 1979 and provincially in 1999 (and the somewhat similar old ridings of Lawrence and Wilson Heights stayed Liberal in both '90 and '95).  The main difference between the two of course is the "Brahmin" North Toronto component of Eglinton-Lawrence.  The breaking of the pattern was evident provincially in 2018 of course when there was a "Tory vs. Lib Dem" pattern in Eg-Law.  Ironically in the 80s Eg-Law would probably have gone PC if had its modern-day boundaries (since then Brahmin Liberalism, the rightwing shift of the increasingly Orthodox-dominated Jewish community and Ford Nation populism has flipped the pattern).

[King of Kensington]

Yeah it was the massive underperformance west of the Allen that did Colle in.

Normally you'd probably see something like a 60-20-15 result there.

[King of Kensington]

Across the downtown three, the NDP obtained 64% of the combined NDP/Liberal/Green vote in '18 with virtually no difference between them. Toronto Centre is higher, largely because it has the weakest Conservative support base (no Rosedale, fewer high income condo dwellers, lower income, social housing etc.)

Of course because of the Vuong controversy, the arguably least NDP-amenable of the downtown three, Spadina-Fort York, was a near-miss for the NDP in the last federal election.

[King of Kensington]

Indeed, the LPC wins NW Toronto and Scarborough with huge margins, but they were also bulwarks of support for the Fords municipally which had significant carryover into provincial politics too.

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.

[King of Kensington]

Interestingly the NDP did win three outer Toronto "Ford Nation" seats, showing that Ford explicitly under the PC banner was a bridge too far for some.  But only in Scarborough SW was it really a commanding victory.  In YSW and Humber they had a voting base and sort of came up the middle to win (thanks to the PCs becoming much more viable and turning them into three-way races because of the Ford effect).

[King of Kensington]

Mainstreet poll:

PCs  36%
Liberals  30%
NDP  24%
Greens  5%
others  5%

https://twitter.com/CanadianPolling/status/1523396066346950656

So it looks like 10 points on the opposition side has swung from the NDP to the Liberals.  Tories down a bit, and may be some leakage on the far right.  But the "anti-lockdown" crowd doesn't seem to really have its act together and the movement increasingly looks more like a carnival with dwindling interest as most of "the mandates" are gone and people have moved on.