Ontario Election 2022

[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.

[Benjamin Frank]

The problem is that Ontario is not the natural home for conservative politics, Doug Ford was a weak candidate in 2018 and the liberal self-destruction speaks for itself, Yet horwath has not been able to win that election and even winning oppostion status is looking like it'll fade away despite another poor liberal leader. Many other provincal NDP parites have managed to form governments or even displace the liberals as a major provincial party, but despite cirumstances being perfect horwath has not been able to do it.

If Ontario's not "the natural home for conservative politics", then how come the Big Blue Machine ruled from 1943 to 1985?  And yeah, I know the argument that it wasn't the same as *today's* Conservatives; but maybe also, as it turns out, Doug Ford isn't the "weak candidate" you presume--or at least, he's "strong where it counts" (thus the special nature of Ford Nation populism)--and even if he were so weak, he had and has a strong party machine behind him.  (Also, one might argue that thanks to changes in media consumption and political engagement over the decades, Ontario, like so many other places, has a bit of a "weak electorate" problem--that is, one that's incapable of clueing into how a Doug Ford might seem so much more of a leadership cartoon than Robarts or Davis were.)

And the "many other NDP parties" are all in Western Canada, where the political culture's different and historically far more favourable to NDP default-left populism.  Sadly, Ontario's too "Central Canadian" for that to be such an easy task; the entrenched Laurentian consensus puts the thumb upon the Lib/Con binary scale, albeit not to the same degree as in the Atlantic Provinces.

Whether one likes it or not, when it comes to "blowing it", Horwath vs Doug Ford provincially in '18 is *not* in the same brain-stem-disconnected category as Smitherman vs Rob Ford mayorally in '10.  And ultimately, rather than grousing over Doug Ford's so-called weaknesses, maybe it's worth engaging to his *strengths*--even if they're not precisely the kind of "strengths" that are your or my own cup of tea.  "Seeking to understand" is not always a matter of caving to the so-called "deplorables"...

I disagree with that in regards to the NDP in the West.  There is no major provincial Liberal Party in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba (and the B.C Liberal party isn't 'liberal'.)  It has been said by many that John Horgan was the 'best Liberal premier in British Columbia' 'Rachel Notley was the best Liberal premier' in Alberta, Roy Romanow was the 'best Liberal premier' in Saskatchewan and that Gary Doer was the 'best Liberal premier' in Manitoba.

Where the Liberal Party is strong, historically the NDP in Newfoundland and Labrador, presently in Nova Scotia, from 1995-2011 or so in Ontario and presently in Saskatchewan (even though there is no real Liberal Party in Saskatchewan) the NDP electorate is basically a coalition of isolated industrial/indigenous Northerners (industrial Cape Breton being the equivalent in Nova Scotia) and central areas of the big city/cities or, essentially, the disaffected left.

You're saying you're disagreeing re the NDP in the West, yet you're actually agreeing with and affirming my point re the political culture being "different out there".

And as far as Ontario goes; I think that, really, the moments when the CCF/NDP lineage has been more than such marginalia have been blips in the bigger picture--Joliffe in the 40s, Lewis in the 70s, the Rae government of course, and presumably Horwath in '18.  The NDP's clout is like a grunge record:  soft, then LOUD, then soft, then LOUD...

I don't think so. I think I'm saying that the NDP is successful in the west because they govern more like Liberals.  When the NDP governed in British Columbia more like NDP activist hardliners, they didn't remain popular for long.

[Benjamin Frank]

The Ontario Liberals and the NDP have taken positions on giving municipalities more power to limit the concentration of cannabis stores. It’s a very popular position to take. My friends and neighbours all buy cannabis from time to time and they all complain that there are way too many cannabis shops and that they are killing the street life in the neighborhood

1.Clustering of stores can be popular with many people in an area as well because the stores can offer different varities (not just in regards to marijuana) and become its own type of community. I can understand that the locals may not like it, but there can always be tradeoffs like that in an urban community. My understanding though is that these things tend to happen in downtown areas where there usually aren't a lot of homes (like an 'entertainment district' of bars, restaurants, movie theatres, play houses, art galleries and the like.)

2.Part of the problem may be that other municipalities have outright banned marijuana outlets, which I don't think should be allowed for a legal (though regulated) product.  So, this may force some people to go to other municipalities which means there are more shops in the municipality where they are legal than there would otherwise be.

3.In general I agree with Doug Ford's view on this. If there are too many stores, the market will take care of itself:

Ford said clustering is a temporary problem that market forces will solve without government intervention.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s cannabis or another type of store. The market will take care of it. There’s no way you can cluster any type of business beside each other. It’s like putting six convenience stores together. There’s going to be two that might survive,” he said at a campaign stop in London, Ont., on Saturday.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ontario-election-cannabis-policy/

While I think Doug Ford is making up his own numbers here in a not all that different way than the opposition paries (not just Marit Stiles) are in arbitrarily deciding what is 'too many stores', I think the economic principle Ford is arguing is absolutely correct.

[DL]

The Ontario Liberals could conceivably win in Davenport if “Del Duca-mania” was sweeping the province and Liberal support surged to the high 30s and it looked like Ford could actually be defeated. But so far Del Duca has been a total flop and a turnoff to voters and it looks like the Liberals will just get a modest dead cat bounce from what happened to them in 2018 and it will be the second worst election result they have ever had. Everyone is resigned to the fact that Ford will win again so people are not motivated to vote “strategically “

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Mainstreet's riding projections (available with ipolitics subscription) is very bullish on the PCs in northern Ontario. Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk--James Bay are shown as narrow PC pickups, and Timmins is a toss-up. PCs have a strong candidate in Timmins, but Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk are unique, the former is majority-indigenous and the latter is majority-Francophone.

I know, riding projections aren't always great. A big part of Mainstreet's analysis is regional subsamples, but Northern Ontario is big and diverse, the trends in, say, Thunder Bay or Greater Sudbury may not be reflected in the Hudson/James Bay regions. But there could be something to this detected trend.

1. In 2018, the NDP were the obvious anti-Tory vote. In a region like Northern Ontario with an NDP history and large unionized and indigenous populations, this only bolstered their margins. But in 2022, a lot of 2018 NDPers are going to the Liberals and Greens, reducing the margin the PCs have to make up.

2. Doug Ford has specifically focused a lot of his message on working class voters. His promises about mining jobs in the north for example might be playing well.

3. The north is a relatively poor and isolated part of Ontario with major infrastructural needs. Brokerage politics and candidate quality is generally more important in those kinds of places than ideological alignment. If it seems that the Tories are going to win, and electing a Tory MPP will give you a voice in the government caucus, maybe even cabinet, then it makes strategic sense to vote that way.

I could see a combination of those three factors helping the PCs up north.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

The Ontario Liberals could conceivably win in Davenport if “Del Duca-mania” was sweeping the province and Liberal support surged to the high 30s and it looked like Ford could actually be defeated. But so far Del Duca has been a total flop and a turnoff to voters and it looks like the Liberals will just get a modest dead cat bounce from what happened to them in 2018 and it will be the second worst election result they have ever had. Everyone is resigned to the fact that Ford will win again so people are not motivated to vote “strategically “

Not to mention, Marit Stiles is one of the more well-known members of the NDP caucus, and Davenport is emerging as the most orange seat in Toronto (as it did on the federal level, even without Andrew Cash).

[adma]

You're saying you're disagreeing re the NDP in the West, yet you're actually agreeing with and affirming my point re the political culture being "different out there".

I don't think so. I think I'm saying that the NDP is successful in the west because they govern more like Liberals.  When the NDP governed in British Columbia more like NDP activist hardliners, they didn't remain popular for long.

That's a cornerstone of my "different political culture" point.  But they're still...not Liberals.

[adma]

So, my point was simply that depending on what happens in this election that Andrea Horwath has remade the Ontario NDP 'in her image' as a left wing populist party that doesn't appeal to as many people in Toronto as the NDP had previously, but appeals more in these 'secondary cities.'

I felt I had to rationalize Brampton in 2018 because pointing all that out left open the response of "that can't really be correct because it doesn't explain how the NDP won those ridings in Brampton, which is a suburban city and not a 'secondary city.'

Actually, this is where "2014 Andrea" seems to have coloured a lot of impressions of her; because if anything, her '18 campaign marked an urban/Toronto-friendly "correction" from that misstep.  And indeed, if she ironically *lost* steam anywhere in 2018, it was with that erstwhile Andrea '14 populist-heartland "labour vote", whose hoped-for target drifted to Ford Nation instead--in the process of plugging one hole in their '14 strategy, they opened up another hole.  (Remember all that '14-based talk about places like Sarnia and Chatham-Kent being low-hanging Dipper fruit?)  Meanwhile, a lot of those so-called "secondary city" gains were actually more urban/cosmopolitan than "heartland" in nature--places with a modern campus/tech/service-economy element.  As far as other seats go, she gained *share* off the entrails of the Libs; but the Tories gained more and sealed victory.  And when it comes to Brampton: what was plain and clear in '18 was already evident in utero in '14--not just w/Jagmeet, but w/an unforeseen strong 2nd in Brampton-Springdale and a near-2nd in Brampton West.  All because of the viral, localized "Jagmeet effect".

Well, some. Kitchener (as opposed to Waterloo) isn't all that wealthy and nor is London.

Except that it isn't just about "wealth", it's also about culture--these aren't an Obama/Trump or Red Wall Labour kind of "not all that wealthy".  They're...urban hubs.  They're cosmopolitan, not rust belt.
 They're less conducive to Tory populism in the same way that the inner 416 is less conducive to Tory populism.  They're trending *away*, not toward; they're on the up-and-up.  And "not all that wealthy" might simply mean they're more affordably within reach to Justin/Jagmeet/Mike Morrice Millennials...

[Benjamin Frank]

So, my point was simply that depending on what happens in this election that Andrea Horwath has remade the Ontario NDP 'in her image' as a left wing populist party that doesn't appeal to as many people in Toronto as the NDP had previously, but appeals more in these 'secondary cities.'

I felt I had to rationalize Brampton in 2018 because pointing all that out left open the response of "that can't really be correct because it doesn't explain how the NDP won those ridings in Brampton, which is a suburban city and not a 'secondary city.'

Actually, this is where "2014 Andrea" seems to have coloured a lot of impressions of her; because if anything, her '18 campaign marked an urban/Toronto-friendly "correction" from that misstep.  And indeed, if she ironically *lost* steam anywhere in 2018, it was with that erstwhile Andrea '14 populist-heartland "labour vote", whose hoped-for target drifted to Ford Nation instead--in the process of plugging one hole in their '14 strategy, they opened up another hole.  (Remember all that '14-based talk about places like Sarnia and Chatham-Kent being low-hanging Dipper fruit?)  Meanwhile, a lot of those so-called "secondary city" gains were actually more urban/cosmopolitan than "heartland" in nature--places with a modern campus/tech/service-economy element.  As far as other seats go, she gained *share* off the entrails of the Libs; but the Tories gained more and sealed victory.  And when it comes to Brampton: what was plain and clear in '18 was already evident in utero in '14--not just w/Jagmeet, but w/an unforeseen strong 2nd in Brampton-Springdale and a near-2nd in Brampton West.  All because of the viral, localized "Jagmeet effect".

Well, some. Kitchener (as opposed to Waterloo) isn't all that wealthy and nor is London.

Except that it isn't just about "wealth", it's also about culture--these aren't an Obama/Trump or Red Wall Labour kind of "not all that wealthy".  They're...urban hubs.  They're cosmopolitan, not rust belt.
 They're less conducive to Tory populism in the same way that the inner 416 is less conducive to Tory populism.  They're trending *away*, not toward; they're on the up-and-up.  And "not all that wealthy" might simply mean they're more affordably within reach to Justin/Jagmeet/Mike Morrice Millennials...

Okay, I've heard from others that Kitchener and London aren't doing all that great, so that's good to hear.

However, these areas aren't great for the NDP federally, although they do hold London-Fanshawe federally.  Not so much Kitchener (which isn't exactly favorable ground for the NDP federally either) but all of these other 'secondary cities' are fairly strongly Liberal federally.  I do think that Horwath did more or less successfully reposition the party as more populist left wing that favored the smaller urban centers and less so Torontocentric.

[brucejoel99]

What's the bar for the OLP to not stick with Del Duca for the next election? Just losing his seat, or losing out on the O.O.? Because if he at least delivers a respectable-enough increase in vote share to return the caucus to official party status, then I could understand not turfing him even if he does lose his seat (ofc, he may very well just moot it anyway & resign to make way for somebody else in that event; &, obviously, if the OLP somehow won or at least take over as the O.O., then it'd be moot because he likely won his seat in the event that the OLP was strong enough to be doing either of those), but at the same time, if the OLP only makes marginal gains, then it has to ask itself why it's struggling, since it's quite telling that the people who swung to the PCs from the Wynne/Del Duca Liberals in 2018 are pretty exclusively staying with the PCs this time around, with OLP support gains emanating pretty exclusively from the 2018 OLP->ONDP vote. Maybe most importantly, the OLP will certainly have the 1.5-2 free years needed to both stage another leadership convention & install a new permanent leader with enough time for them to hopefully garner some good experience in time for the next election.

[DL]

So let me get this straight just about every single NDP premier in Canadian History is described by some as “really a Liberal” but then I have also see. People say Kathleen Wynne was “Ontario’s first NDP Premier” and Justin Trudeau Is often described as “Canadas first NDP prime minister”. I’m confused

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

So let me get this straight just about every single NDP premier in Canadian History is described by some as “really a Liberal” but then I have also see. People say Kathleen Wynne was “Ontario’s first NDP Premier” and Justin Trudeau Is often described as “Canadas first NDP prime minister”. I’m confused

A lot of those takes are loaded and try to advance certain political views, so you can safely ignore them. But as part of a broader trend, I think it's fair to say that the Liberals have moved more to the left over time, and it's fair to say that provincial NDP governments have generally been more centrist than their federal counterparts - maybe it's not fair to call Horgan or Notley Liberals, but they're clearly not as left-wing as Singh.

For that matter, I've never heard anyone claim that, for example, Tommy Douglas and Dave Barrett were "really just Liberals", because they ran pretty socialistic governments. But with people like Horgan, Notley, Romanow, Dexter, their policies were/are pretty generic centre-left stuff that would fit into the Liberal Party.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Isn't that mostly just a comment on the fact that as the motivation ideology of the Liberal Party is Canadian Nationalism it isn't anchored to any particular domestic policy agenda and so anything that isn't obviously extreme¹ will seem 'like the sort of thing a Liberal government would do' precisely because a Liberal government could very easily do almost anything? Most NDP provincial administrations have been recognisably social democratic ones, including 'woefully incompetent' (Rae, BC in the 90s) and 'semi-forced liberalisation as a result of financial crisis' (Romanow)² varieties. The only real exception would be Dexter, but that's just because all Maritimes governments amount to much the same in practice, no matter the party label.

<sub>1. By Canadian standards.
2. It was always more Hawke-Keating than Rogernomics...</sub>

[DL]

I’m not sure that Jagmeet Singh actually is personally more leftwing than is John Horgan or Rachel Notley. He just has to operate in a different political context. He has to create a space for the NDP that is distinct from the governing Trudeau Liberals so he has to present himself a more leftwing. Horgan and Notley operate in provinces with a totally polarized two party system and they don’t have to deal with the pesky nuisance of a Liberal party. If the federal NDP surged ahead of the Liberals and became the dominant non-rightwing party in Canada you would likely see Singh move to the centre left very quickly and try to occupy the space vacated by the Liberals. Mulcair tried to do that in 2015 but it was very poorly executed

[adma]

Okay, I've heard from others that Kitchener and London aren't doing all that great, so that's good to hear.

However "great" they're doing (and given the nature of political Twitter and social media, you have to take a *lot* of heckhole claims with a grain of salt), when it comes to urban/rural sorting they're still distinctly on the leftward-trending side of the threshold.  It's why nobody speaks of Kitchener Centre in terms of bellwetherdom the way they might have a decade or two ago (though there *could* be a possibility in the event of a Tory landslide that London West goes PC--a former Mayoral runner-up's their candidate there, and it's always been the most "affluent middle class" of London's urban ridings).

However, these areas aren't great for the NDP federally, although they do hold London-Fanshawe federally.  Not so much Kitchener (which isn't exactly favorable ground for the NDP federally either) but all of these other 'secondary cities' are fairly strongly Liberal federally.  I do think that Horwath did more or less successfully reposition the party as more populist left wing that favored the smaller urban centers and less so Torontocentric.

However the NDP does federally really doesn't matter in the bigger picture due to the peculiar nature of Liberal-defaulting "promiscuous progressivism".  Under the circumstance, I'd say that the quarter of the vote the NDP under Jagmeet has gotten federally in the other 2 London ridings is actually pretty good (not to mention a 10-point improvement on '15).  And as far as Kitchener Centre goes; of course, the federal centre/left spectrum there over the past couple of elections has been *very* unique, thanks to Mike Morrice as well as the Liberal-candidate implosion in '21.  But you can be sure that given the kind of riding that it is, had Mike Morrice not happened it would have been the NDP w/a quarter of the vote in '19, and defaulting into pole position in '21.

And as far as Horwath goes: once again, it might be putting the cart before the horse re her having an effect in such places other than through the foot-in-the-door Waterloo and London West byelections--had those byelections (and that for Niagara Falls) not happened, I doubt she would have been putting so much effort into those targets in the '14 general; it was save-the-byelection-furniture pragmatism that led to at least some of her strategic thinking that year.  And by '18, her "smaller urban centre" reach had more to do with such seats being sufficiently "Toronto-like"; whereas those seats which weren't quite as inner-cosmopolitan (like the other Waterloo Region seats, or Brantford-Brant) were places of so-close-but-not-quite heartbreak instead.

[adma]

So let me get this straight just about every single NDP premier in Canadian History is described by some as “really a Liberal” but then I have also see. People say Kathleen Wynne was “Ontario’s first NDP Premier” and Justin Trudeau Is often described as “Canadas first NDP prime minister”. I’m confused

Compounding the confusion, I like to think of Wynne as "Ontario's last Red Tory Premier".

[adma]

Mainstreet's riding projections (available with ipolitics subscription) is very bullish on the PCs in northern Ontario. Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk--James Bay are shown as narrow PC pickups, and Timmins is a toss-up. PCs have a strong candidate in Timmins, but Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk are unique, the former is majority-indigenous and the latter is majority-Francophone.

I know, riding projections aren't always great. A big part of Mainstreet's analysis is regional subsamples, but Northern Ontario is big and diverse, the trends in, say, Thunder Bay or Greater Sudbury may not be reflected in the Hudson/James Bay regions. But there could be something to this detected trend.

1. In 2018, the NDP were the obvious anti-Tory vote. In a region like Northern Ontario with an NDP history and large unionized and indigenous populations, this only bolstered their margins. But in 2022, a lot of 2018 NDPers are going to the Liberals and Greens, reducing the margin the PCs have to make up.

2. Doug Ford has specifically focused a lot of his message on working class voters. His promises about mining jobs in the north for example might be playing well.

3. The north is a relatively poor and isolated part of Ontario with major infrastructural needs. Brokerage politics and candidate quality is generally more important in those kinds of places than ideological alignment. If it seems that the Tories are going to win, and electing a Tory MPP will give you a voice in the government caucus, maybe even cabinet, then it makes strategic sense to vote that way.

I could see a combination of those three factors helping the PCs up north.

Though re Kii (especially) and MJB, the polling samples might skew the picture, particularly if they're disproportionately non-Aboriginal--sort of like how the federal Cons won the advance polls in Kenora's far north largely because the advance vote was (presumably) heavily concentrated within non-FN centres...

[Hatman 🍁]

Northern Ontario regional polling is always a crap shoot. The NDP always does better than the polls there, probably due to low response rates among certain groups (Indigenous, Working Class, and to a certain extent, Francophones)

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I’m not sure that Jagmeet Singh actually is personally more leftwing than is John Horgan or Rachel Notley. He just has to operate in a different political context. He has to create a space for the NDP that is distinct from the governing Trudeau Liberals so he has to present himself a more leftwing. Horgan and Notley operate in provinces with a totally polarized two party system and they don’t have to deal with the pesky nuisance of a Liberal party. If the federal NDP surged ahead of the Liberals and became the dominant non-rightwing party in Canada you would likely see Singh move to the centre left very quickly and try to occupy the space vacated by the Liberals. Mulcair tried to do that in 2015 but it was very poorly executed

I agree with that, and that's kind of my point. There's a general trend where the closer the NDP is to power (or indeed, in power), the more centrist they are.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I’m not sure that Jagmeet Singh actually is personally more leftwing than is John Horgan or Rachel Notley. He just has to operate in a different political context. He has to create a space for the NDP that is distinct from the governing Trudeau Liberals so he has to present himself a more leftwing. Horgan and Notley operate in provinces with a totally polarized two party system and they don’t have to deal with the pesky nuisance of a Liberal party. If the federal NDP surged ahead of the Liberals and became the dominant non-rightwing party in Canada you would likely see Singh move to the centre left very quickly and try to occupy the space vacated by the Liberals. Mulcair tried to do that in 2015 but it was very poorly executed

I agree with that, and that's kind of my point. There's a general trend where the closer the NDP is to power (or indeed, in power), the more centrist they are.

Isn't that inherent to the nature of power in a democracy ? you gain more power by becoming representative or attractive to more people, hence as the NDP's power increase so does the number of people it has to appeal and it moves more towards the center of the provincial politics.

[toaster]

What it means to be in the centre is also very dependent on the culture and how far Ontario has shifted to the left on most things.  When even the Conservative party is proposing increasing minimum wage, building affordable housing, increasing ODSP + OW, it makes it seem like the ONDP is closer to the centre because they have similar positions/increases as the Conservative government of today, however these are all left wing ideas.  Quite frankly, current PC, LIB, ONDP and Green platforms would be seen as pretty far out there even 10 years ago.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I’m not sure that Jagmeet Singh actually is personally more leftwing than is John Horgan or Rachel Notley. He just has to operate in a different political context. He has to create a space for the NDP that is distinct from the governing Trudeau Liberals so he has to present himself a more leftwing. Horgan and Notley operate in provinces with a totally polarized two party system and they don’t have to deal with the pesky nuisance of a Liberal party. If the federal NDP surged ahead of the Liberals and became the dominant non-rightwing party in Canada you would likely see Singh move to the centre left very quickly and try to occupy the space vacated by the Liberals. Mulcair tried to do that in 2015 but it was very poorly executed

I agree with that, and that's kind of my point. There's a general trend where the closer the NDP is to power (or indeed, in power), the more centrist they are.

Isn't that inherent to the nature of power in a democracy ? you gain more power by becoming representative or attractive to more people, hence as the NDP's power increase so does the number of people it has to appeal and it moves more towards the center of the provincial politics.

Yep, which is why it annoys me to no end to hear NDPers accuse the Liberals of not really being progressive because they're willing to compromise on progressive values when in power. The NDP does the same, and for that matter, Tories compromise on conservative values when they're in power.

[adma]

Yep, which is why it annoys me to no end to hear NDPers accuse the Liberals of not really being progressive because they're willing to compromise on progressive values when in power. The NDP does the same, and for that matter, Tories compromise on conservative values when they're in power.

And that tendency to compromise from all ends helps explain why it's truly a fluid 3-way dynamic, or should be viewed as such, rather than as "conservative vs 2 competing progressives".  And which is why the Lib/NDP jockeying among one another is a distraction from the *real* goal; which is, to subtract Tory votes, and not simply passively expect the dissident-right forces to do the heavy lifting on that front...

[DistingFlyer]

Another poll graph update (almost there!):

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The PCs inch closer and closer to certain majority territory.