Ontario Election 2022

[adma]

Well, riding-specific dynamics *can* play a part, as the aforementioned discussion of seats like Don Valley West and Eglinton-Lawrence demonstrates.  However, much as in the UK, it'd only work in the event that the NDP gained the upper hand.

For sure. Eglinton--Lawrence would be the perfect example of a riding where a strategic anti-Tory voter should back the Grits. The opposite would be the case somewhere like Essex or Oshawa where the NDP is naturally stronger than the Liberals - and for some really riding-specific cases, Waterloo and Niagara Falls, where the popularity of NDP incumbents Catherine Fife and Wayne Gates is a bigger factor than demographic predictors.

Then we also get weird ones like all the Brampton ridings, which are "naturally" Liberal, but the NDP made significant gains in 2018 (really, going back to Jagmeet Singh's provincial win in 2011), yet the Ford brand has a lot of resonance. Or perhaps somewhere like Ottawa West--Nepean, where all three parties could make a case for being the favourites to win - although given Ford's particular unpopularity in Ottawa and the general anti-Tory shift of the city in recent years, it may not be so. In ridings like those, strategic voting is really tricky and with strong PC numbers it could easily backfire for a large number of strategic left-wing voters.

But as I suggested: in the event that the NDP gained the upper hand--which'd mean, '18 foretelling a more UK-style dynamic.  Wherein a whole lot of those former "natural" Lib strongholds a la Brampton/Mississauga and most of the 416 would become "Labour", leaving the DVW's and E-L's in the Lib-Dem-esque Liberal camp.  But that's a hypothetical, rather than something realistic, unless Ontario's morphing into the next Manitoba or something...

Otherwise, once the *Libs* have the upper hand, *everything* is potentially in the Liberal pot thanks to the Libs' advantageous monkey-in-the-middle positioning (thus their federal sweeps under Jean Chretien).

[King of Kensington]

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

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

[brucejoel99]

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

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

If those numbers are accurate, then they'd likely mean a Liberal minority propped up by the NDP, but I'll honestly buy an OLP victory when I see it because when the campaign officially kicks off & the rhetoric heats up, you can bet that Ford & the PCs will tell people everyday that "while they may not like him, they should dislike Del Duca even more for reminding Ontarians everytime they pay their hydro bill of what he & Kathleen Wynne did to them the last time that the OLP was in power," & that "even if you dislike Ford, you just can't justify voting for the disaster that'd be a Kathleen Wynne protégé."

[adma]

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

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

If those numbers are accurate, then they'd likely mean a Liberal minority propped up by the NDP, but I'll honestly buy an OLP victory when I see it because when the campaign officially kicks off & the rhetoric heats up, you can bet that Ford & the PCs will tell people everyday that "while they may not like him, they should dislike Del Duca even more for reminding Ontarians everytime they pay their hydro bill of what he & Kathleen Wynne did to them the last time that the OLP was in power," & that "even if you dislike Ford, you just can't justify voting for the disaster that'd be a Kathleen Wynne protégé."

Though from what I've seen, the OLP's done extremely well in campaign recruitment--better than you'd expect from a party that lost OPS last time.  Like they *really* want to present '18 as a one-time nightmare--with comeback shades of Justin in '15, or for that matter Mike Harris in '95.  And Ontarians do have more of a comfort zone with the NDP as "third party"--23% being more a reversion to "upper mean" than, well, a Wynne '18-style catastrophe on *their* part...

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Here's how I read that Abacus poll:

1. 26% of Ontarians expect the Grits to win, while only 12% expect the same of the NDP. Should this kind of gap remain, it's good news for the Liberals, bad news for the Tories, and horrible news for the NDP - as we talked about recently in this thread, strategic voters in Ontario tend to rally behind whichever centre-left party they think more likely to win, and that's probably why the Grits are 9 points ahead of the NDP.

2. 36-32 is worrying for Ford - but the good news for him is that his favourability rating is 41%, and as we all know 41% in Canada is like 61% in the states. Macro-economic perception leans positive (and yes, I would consider "acceptable" to be positive, because voters rarely punish governments if they think their economic performance is acceptable). It also helps that there's a much bigger age gap than we normally see in Canada, because older voters turn out at higher rates. So all is not lost for the PCs, a strong campaign could still bring them up to majority numbers.

3. 23% for the NDP...oh boy.

Overall, good poll for the Liberals, mixed bag for Tories, awful for the NDP.

[adma]

3. 23% for the NDP...oh boy.

Overall, good poll for the Liberals, mixed bag for Tories, awful for the NDP.

It's only "awful" if everything's about being the party of government; and we *all* know the ONDP faces a lot of deeply-entrenched-and-in-spite-of-themselves obstacles to that end, even if they go into this election as OO.  However, in terms of glass-half-full, at least Horwath's holding her 2014 base (so far, at least)--and that's still better than anything from 1990 up to that time.  And in the "managing expectations" sense, it's probably even what they were bracing for in '18 had Wynne not imploded.

When their polling numbers drop into teens, Mulcair-style (or for that matter, Wynne-style or Iggy-style), *then* we can speak in terms of "awful".  Right now, there's still the impression of a cushion, rather than a free fall--these are numbers the party has seen several times btw/the writ periods, they're not uniquely lower.  It's only a couple of points below the previous poll; they're treading water, they're not collapsing, they are, as I said, reverting to a mean, and at this point still an "upper mean".

*However*, I *can* see a different kind of danger if the NDP leakage continues--that is, the joint hollowing out of *both* "urban Andrea" a la 2018 *and* "big-tent-populist Andrea" a la 2014...

[toaster]

ONDP at 23% isn't great, but also not so bad for them, it's probably the same number of seats as the OLP would get at 28-29%. The thing is, the ONDP could be at 0% in places like the Don Valleys, Etobicoke Centre, all of York Region, and much of rural-central Ontario, etc, which makes that 23% more like 30%+ in the rest of the province. The Liberals/PCs don't really have that "advantage", even in the Downtown Toronto ridings the PCs pull in more in the 15-20% range rather than the 0-10% the ONDP gets in the regions I listed.

[adma]

ONDP at 23% isn't great, but also not so bad for them, it's probably the same number of seats as the OLP would get at 28-29%. The thing is, the ONDP could be at 0% in places like the Don Valleys, Etobicoke Centre, all of York Region, and much of rural-central Ontario, etc, which makes that 23% more like 30%+ in the rest of the province. The Liberals/PCs don't really have that "advantage", even in the Downtown Toronto ridings the PCs pull in more in the 15-20% range rather than the 0-10% the ONDP gets in the regions I listed.

Well, technically, they'd only be zero if they didn't run a candidate at all--which'd only happen if they were depleted in the manner of the NB NDP or various Prairie Liberal parties.  The likelier possibility is that they'd be reduced to federal-style single-digit numbers or not much more than that in places like York Region and DVW/Eg-Law (by comparison, they were only below 15% once in '18, in Del Duca's Vaughan-Woodbridge).  And actually, in a lot of Conservative rural Ontario, they do respectably--mid-teens as a norm rather than single digits.

Their 23% in '14 was good for 17 seats.  They have a lot more incumbent advantages now which'll be good for a boost at the bottom (and indeed, when it comes to polling, who knows how many "Ruth-Ellen Brosseau" cases you'll have when prompting party preference and prompting candidate preference elicits different results).  However, I can see a number of their surprise 2nds reverting to a 3rd place norm, and indeed the NDP might wind up conducting what's essentially a save-the-furniture type of campaign, even if it's geared t/w *all* the furniture rather than just a fragment of the same.  So there's an excellent chance that they'd still wind up salvaging 25 seats; it's just that none of them would be gains.  But 25 seats isn't 7 seats a la the Libs in '18.

[adma]

The cartoonish platform for the dissident New Blue party.

https://www.newblueontario.com/new-blue-print

I've seen people overemote over "totalitarian lockdowns" as some kind of make-or-break mass voter obsession point; but acting as if *critical race theory* were an issue in Ontario is *really* out in lulu land.  (Though maybe it's the modern version of Cold War Ontario kids growing up knowing more about George Washington and 1776 than about Sir John A. and 1867, thanks to the influence of cross-border media and entertainment.)

[IAMCANADIAN]

The cartoonish platform for the dissident New Blue party.

https://www.newblueontario.com/new-blue-print

I've seen people overemote over "totalitarian lockdowns" as some kind of make-or-break mass voter obsession point; but acting as if *critical race theory* were an issue in Ontario is *really* out in lulu land.  (Though maybe it's the modern version of Cold War Ontario kids growing up knowing more about George Washington and 1776 than about Sir John A. and 1867, thanks to the influence of cross-border media and entertainment.)

Have you been paying attention to the past 4 years? How is CRT an American only issue?

[adma]

The cartoonish platform for the dissident New Blue party.

https://www.newblueontario.com/new-blue-print

I've seen people overemote over "totalitarian lockdowns" as some kind of make-or-break mass voter obsession point; but acting as if *critical race theory* were an issue in Ontario is *really* out in lulu land.  (Though maybe it's the modern version of Cold War Ontario kids growing up knowing more about George Washington and 1776 than about Sir John A. and 1867, thanks to the influence of cross-border media and entertainment.)

Have you been paying attention to the past 4 years? How is CRT an American only issue?

I think the answer to that may be if you reflect upon the marginality of your stated R-ON allegiance.  

In fact, more so than the Derek Sloan/Rick Nicholls Ontario Party (which at least piggybacks more coherently upon a Bernierite solidity of purpose), New Blue indeed comes across as nothing more than an inane "GOP cosplay" entity (and given the nature of right-wing discourse in the States these days, even the inanity might be part of the cosplay).  Otherwise CRT, "Don't Say Gay", etc only has resonance among those who were surprised that Faith Goldy didn't do a whole lot better in her race for Toronto mayor in '18...


[ETA:  though the sex ed curriculum *did* likely play a factor in defeating Kathleen Wynne in '18, in part by throwing focus upon her own sexuality]

[Hatman 🍁]

The cartoonish platform for the dissident New Blue party.

https://www.newblueontario.com/new-blue-print

I've seen people overemote over "totalitarian lockdowns" as some kind of make-or-break mass voter obsession point; but acting as if *critical race theory* were an issue in Ontario is *really* out in lulu land.  (Though maybe it's the modern version of Cold War Ontario kids growing up knowing more about George Washington and 1776 than about Sir John A. and 1867, thanks to the influence of cross-border media and entertainment.)

Have you been paying attention to the past 4 years? How is CRT an American only issue?

Because it is? I've only ever heard it come up from people on the far right, i.e. people who pay 100% attention to US politics instead of their own.

[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.

[IAMCANADIAN]

The cartoonish platform for the dissident New Blue party.

https://www.newblueontario.com/new-blue-print

I've seen people overemote over "totalitarian lockdowns" as some kind of make-or-break mass voter obsession point; but acting as if *critical race theory* were an issue in Ontario is *really* out in lulu land.  (Though maybe it's the modern version of Cold War Ontario kids growing up knowing more about George Washington and 1776 than about Sir John A. and 1867, thanks to the influence of cross-border media and entertainment.)

Have you been paying attention to the past 4 years? How is CRT an American only issue?

Because it is? I've only ever heard it come up from people on the far right, i.e. people who pay 100% attention to US politics instead of their own.

Similar material is being pushed in Ontario schools as well. Do you want me to provide specific examples from the curriculum?

I would have more respect for people if they acknowledged it was happening but tried to defend it than trying to deny it is occurring at all.

[toaster]

What in the current curriculum pushes that?  Yes, please provide examples so we can engage in discussion about something concrete.

[brucejoel99]

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?

[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

[Хahar 🤔]

26% of Ontarians expect the Grits to win, while only 12% expect the same of the NDP. Should this kind of gap remain, it's good news for the Liberals, bad news for the Tories, and horrible news for the NDP - as we talked about recently in this thread, strategic voters in Ontario tend to rally behind whichever centre-left party they think more likely to win, and that's probably why the Grits are 9 points ahead of the NDP.

During the last election campaign I was talking to an online acquaintance who works as a lecturer at Ryerson U. She told me that even though she was unhappy with the Wynne government's privatization policies, she was still going to vote Liberal because the OLP was the only viable non-PC option. If she could think that in 2018, imagine how many people will think that in 2022. For all the talk that you hear about "tactical voting", in practice a large section of the electorate just interprets that as "voting Liberal".

Even with the Liberal Party almost absent from the legislature, when asked to contemplate an alternate government Ontarians opposed to the current government think of the OLP led by some guy they've never heard of rather than the NDP of Andrea Horwath, someone they presumably have known for years. There are a variety of reasons for that, but one that can be fixed is the leader. It's inarguable that Ontario voters don't view Horwath as a credible choice to be Premier.

Over the course of recent Canadian history, when a party has formed government after several decades out of power it has usually been with a new face. There's no real indication that the ONDP under Horwath can go any further than it's gone. If the goal of the NDP is forming government rather than self-actualization, then they need to seriously think about what they can do to get themselves there. These numbers indicate clearly that the present approach isn't working.

[adma]

The cartoonish platform for the dissident New Blue party.

https://www.newblueontario.com/new-blue-print

I've seen people overemote over "totalitarian lockdowns" as some kind of make-or-break mass voter obsession point; but acting as if *critical race theory* were an issue in Ontario is *really* out in lulu land.  (Though maybe it's the modern version of Cold War Ontario kids growing up knowing more about George Washington and 1776 than about Sir John A. and 1867, thanks to the influence of cross-border media and entertainment.)

Have you been paying attention to the past 4 years? How is CRT an American only issue?

Because it is? I've only ever heard it come up from people on the far right, i.e. people who pay 100% attention to US politics instead of their own.

Similar material is being pushed in Ontario schools as well. Do you want me to provide specific examples from the curriculum?

I would have more respect for people if they acknowledged it was happening but tried to defend it than trying to deny it is occurring at all.

When I talk about it not being an issue, I'm not saying that whatever one might label as "CRT" isn't happening.  What I'm saying is that Ontarians by and large aren't wound up over it being a big looming negative, except for the kinds of fringe yahoos who attend Charles McVety events.

Besides, this is Canada and Ontario, and one might say that TRC is our CRT--that is, if there *might* be a US-style "CRT backlash" impulse, it'd be over the perceived overwrought impulse to rename everything named "Dundas" or "Ryerson" or to "cancel" Sir John A. Macdonald...

[adma]

26% of Ontarians expect the Grits to win, while only 12% expect the same of the NDP. Should this kind of gap remain, it's good news for the Liberals, bad news for the Tories, and horrible news for the NDP - as we talked about recently in this thread, strategic voters in Ontario tend to rally behind whichever centre-left party they think more likely to win, and that's probably why the Grits are 9 points ahead of the NDP.

During the last election campaign I was talking to an online acquaintance who works as a lecturer at Ryerson U. She told me that even though she was unhappy with the Wynne government's privatization policies, she was still going to vote Liberal because the OLP was the only viable non-PC option. If she could think that in 2018, imagine how many people will think that in 2022. For all the talk that you hear about "tactical voting", in practice a large section of the electorate just interprets that as "voting Liberal".

Even with the Liberal Party almost absent from the legislature, when asked to contemplate an alternate government Ontarians opposed to the current government think of the OLP led by some guy they've never heard of rather than the NDP of Andrea Horwath, someone they presumably have known for years. There are a variety of reasons for that, but one that can be fixed is the leader. It's inarguable that Ontario voters don't view Horwath as a credible choice to be Premier.

Over the course of recent Canadian history, when a party has formed government after several decades out of power it has usually been with a new face. There's no real indication that the ONDP under Horwath can go any further than it's gone. If the goal of the NDP is forming government rather than self-actualization, then they need to seriously think about what they can do to get themselves there. These numbers indicate clearly that the present approach isn't working.

A lot of this is long-term.  And one might say that going into 1990, Ontario voters didn't view Bob Rae as a credible choice to be Premier, largely because of his party.  They saw him as a credible voice and leader at Queen's Park--but, *Premier*?  Come now.  For *that*, he should have done what he ultimately *did* do; join the Liberals instead.  An NDP government in Ontario?!?  Hahahaha.  It was either the commanding hand of David Peterson...or folksy Mike Harris haplessly assigned to prop up the hollow husk of the once-regnant PCs at a time when his party's label was mud thanks to the federal Mulroney Tories.  Which meant...in 1990, Peterson, and no other.  Right?  Like Bourassa ought to have been in '76.

And the way the Rae government actually *performed* in office vindicated that "come now" skepticism; and that endures in the glass ceiling Horwath's confronting.  Which is why Ontarians are still hardwired into red vs blue when it comes to the "Premier question".  However, because it's a parliamentary democracy, to view the election in such front-loaded "Premier-centric" terms is simplistic to the extreme, as if any system which offers anything but a de facto strict binary choice a la Dem vs GOP or Aussie-style Labor vs Liberal-National is hopelessly confounding.  Which is why a historically "3rd party" such as the NDP can win even as it loses (and which is why I emphasized pre-1990 Rae as a "credible voice and leader at Queen's Park" in separate terms from Premiership).

[Хahar 🤔]

Yes, I'm well aware (as, presumably, is everyone else in this thread) that the memory of the early '90s NDP government has caused problems for the NDP since. I'm interested in ways that the NDP can overcome those problems. As you allude to, Bob Rae was still relatively new in 1990, having been NDP leader for eight years. Andrea Horwath has been leader for half a decade longer than that and there's no indication that she successfully has made or will make Ontarians rethink the way they see her. The results of the last election put the NDP in a straightforwardly favorable position, but they don't have a leader who can take advantage of that. The NDP can't go back and change the '90s, but it can change its leader.

As I'm sure you know (as does everyone here), in the Westminster system the parliamentary minority is effectively powerless. The choice is far more binary than in other systems: either a party wins and has power or it loses and does not. This is why I added the clause about my analysis hinging on an assumption that the NDP's goal is forming government rather than self-actualization. Somehow this seems to be the end result of every discussion of the NDP on this forum. If the NDP by and large is able to conceive of politics and elections as a never-ending string of moral victories, it's no wonder Ontario voters don't perceive the NDP as a plausible future government.

[adma]

Yes, I'm well aware (as, presumably, is everyone else in this thread) that the memory of the early '90s NDP government has caused problems for the NDP since. I'm interested in ways that the NDP can overcome those problems. As you allude to, Bob Rae was still relatively new in 1990, having been NDP leader for eight years. Andrea Horwath has been leader for half a decade longer than that and there's no indication that she successfully has made or will make Ontarians rethink the way they see her. The results of the last election put the NDP in a straightforwardly favorable position, but they don't have a leader who can take advantage of that. The NDP can't go back and change the '90s, but it can change its leader.

I wasn't alluding to Bob Rae "still being relatively new in 1990".  In fact, going into that election, he was viewing it as a third-time-around last kick at the can...and then, surprise!

As I indicated, voters did, in fact, see him as having a certain seasoned party-leader gravitas--which actually inadvertently *helped* him in 1990.  It's his party that was the problem--the NDP in Ontario always having that third-party socialist-hordes not-to-be-trusted-in-power stigma.  (And federally, too; when it looked like Ed Broadbent was poised for power going into the 1988 elections, third-party advertisers came out with warnings of an NDP government being "very very scary".)

Ontarians gave the NDP a chance in '90--and the NDP proceeded to apparently vindicate those not-to-be-trusted-in-power misgivings.  And the ghost of that lingers.

As I'm sure you know (as does everyone here), in the Westminster system the parliamentary minority is effectively powerless. The choice is far more binary than in other systems: either a party wins and has power or it loses and does not. This is why I added the clause about my analysis hinging on an assumption that the NDP's goal is forming government rather than self-actualization. Somehow this seems to be the end result of every discussion of the NDP on this forum. If the NDP by and large is able to conceive of politics and elections as a never-ending string of moral victories, it's no wonder Ontario voters don't perceive the NDP as a plausible future government.

And big effing deal.  The way I see it, electoral and parliamentary democracy is too dynamic a thing to boil down to zero-sum "plausible future government" at every freaking level.  It'll come when it comes--if it comes--and even in the event that the NDP *doesn't* form government, it can be positioned to inform policy (like w/the present Justin/Jagmeet deal federally).  And that even goes for the PCs and Liberals (and Mike Schreiner for the Greens) when *they're* out of power.  Indeed, in some ways, *all* these electoral forces are *most* insufferable when they overplay the "plausible future government" angle.

Same reason why the first round of any given French election is almost invariably more psephologically exciting than the second-round runoff.

[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. 

[adma]

And of course, it took 4 elections for Jack Layton's "Orange Crush" breakthrough, even if it wasn't precisely a *win*.

Plus there's a bit of an "NDP tradition" of "loser" candidates plugging and plugging in there until they finally make it--Mel Swart being the most fabled case, but you can also point to various recent candidates a la Chris Charlton, Irene Mathyssen, etc.

One thing about Horwath: she shares a certain "shame about the party" thing with Bob Rae.  In Rae's case, his virtue was stateliness; in Horwath's case, her virtue is folksiness (that is, she's got more of a touchy-feely "Rob Ford" quality than even Doug Ford does).  But when the party in power doesn't give you official opposition oxygen, when major/corporate media treats your party as a non sequitur because their "left" comfort zone lies with Liberal red, and when the general populace is less "engaged" to provincial parliamentary politics than it might have been 30-40-50 years ago when traditional news media ruled, it's *really* hard to assert one's presence.  So NDP marginalization comes with the package, and it's something that no leadership change can address.  All it can do is try its best to be the proverbial "plausible future government", or if not that, a plausible future *influence* on government, through its being a valid representative of certain interests.

Otherwise, boiling it down to the "future government" is reductio ad absurdum--it's like suggesting that just because the Libs or NDP aren't going to win in rural Alberta, they shouldn't even *run* in rural Alberta, sort of like how certain vote-sink US Congressional seats become acclamations or only have token Libertarians and the like running.  That is...*dumb*.  It's like reducing motor travel to a map-free matter of programmed GPS destinations with complete uninspired incuriosity to what might be on the way...

[Хahar 🤔]

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. 

Dexter became Premier in his third election as leader (official opposition in 2003 and 2006, government in 2009) and at the time of victory he had been NDP leader for eight years, which is significantly less than the timeframe we're talking about. Doer is a reasonable comparison, although his case is obviously rare and in any case I doubt that the Manitoba NDP was in third place in the polls in the year of his fourth election.

In any case, I am not an expert. I do not live in Ontario so I am not exposed to Ontario media and I have no particular inside knowledge. I was merely offering a suggestion for the NDP's poor performance in recent polls. Even if it had made sense, it would obviously be too late to change leaders now, but I would be genuinely interested in hearing an affirmative case for Horwath from the perspective of someone who thinks that the NDP should be trying to win the election. What about Horwath makes her the one to lead the NDP back into government?