Ontario Election 2022

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On election night four years ago I'd never have believed that Doug Ford would be in a position to win a second term, but here we are and it looks like he just might.

Here's a graph of provincewide polls from the 2018 election to now; as the campaign continues I'll put one up that just shows data from that period:

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Shocking in the sense that even Kathleen Wynne won her seat as Liberal leader in the last election despite the party's dismal finish.  Has there ever been an Ontario Liberal leader (provincially) who has not won their own riding?  That would be pretty remarkable, at least historic. I would call those things shocking, but guess we all interpret things differently.

David Peterson in 1990 immediately springs to mind; I think you have to go back to Mitchell Hepburn in 1945 to find another one.

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Shocking in the sense that even Kathleen Wynne won her seat as Liberal leader in the last election despite the party's dismal finish.  Has there ever been an Ontario Liberal leader (provincially) who has not won their own riding?  That would be pretty remarkable, at least historic. I would call those things shocking, but guess we all interpret things differently.

Has there ever been an Ontario Liberal leader who had no seat going into an election and had to win a seat away from another party?

Not until now.

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Shocking in the sense that even Kathleen Wynne won her seat as Liberal leader in the last election despite the party's dismal finish.  Has there ever been an Ontario Liberal leader (provincially) who has not won their own riding?  That would be pretty remarkable, at least historic. I would call those things shocking, but guess we all interpret things differently.

David Peterson in 1990 immediately springs to mind; I think you have to go back to Mitchell Hepburn in 1945 to find another one.

John Wintermeyer, 1963.

Quite right - not sure how I missed him.

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Another fabled Conservative leader to lose his own seat:  Premier George Drew in 1948 (to CCF temperance crusader Bill Temple).  And of course, the hapless Larry Grossman in 1987.

The NDP, though, hasn't seen defeated leadership since Ted Jolliffe (twice over) in the 40s and 50s.

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.

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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.

Indeed; a leader's loss coinciding with an increased majority for the government is also pretty unusual.

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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.

Indeed; a leader's loss coinciding with an increased majority for the government is also pretty unusual.

The classic example (at least in my mind) is Robert Bourassa losing his seat in 1985 amidst the Liberals winning one of the largest victories in the history of Quebec.

Yes, that equals - or even exceeds - Macdonald's 1878 loss (though Bourassa's riding was a natural PQ seat that he'd only taken at a by-election).

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As promised, here's a graph of polls for the first week of the campaign; trendlines carry forward three days from the final figures, which can come in handy for making final forecasts in the last couple days but aren't particularly significant at the moment.

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As promised, here's a graph of polls for the first week of the campaign; trendlines carry forward three days from the final figures, which can come in handy for making final forecasts in the last couple days but aren't particularly significant at the moment.

Interesting, I would have thought the transfer was NDP->OLP, not NDP->PC. I know support doesn't transfer cleanly like that, but still, this defies the narrative about this election.

The NDP fall, Tory rise & Liberal hold has been going on for a few months now (https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=453425.msg8585858#msg8585858); as you say, most people probably aren't switching directly from NDP to PC (though a few blue-collar populist types who for some reason didn't hop over to Ford last time may be doing so now) but the net effect is an interesting one.

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As promised, here's a graph of polls for the first week of the campaign; trendlines carry forward three days from the final figures, which can come in handy for making final forecasts in the last couple days but aren't particularly significant at the moment.

Looking back at this chart, through the individual poll indicators I can't see how this indicates a north-of-40-PC/south-of-20 NDP trendline--or it's like there's "liberties" taken in drawing said trendlines...

I don't know the specific math used to calculate the trendline, but it looks like what I would expect. This is how extrapolation works; there's a slight upward trend in the PC vote over the week shown and the exponential algorithm naturally projects that trend to accelerate. The fact that the results look so strange is why you should not take it seriously right now, as DistingFlyer notes himself.

Quite right; the lines are beginning to settle down a little more now (will update the graph if/when any polls from yesterday come in).

For those interested in the minutiae, the data from which the trendlines are derived are from 13 Mar to the present, and the trendline formula itself is a six-order polynomial (normally I use four - see the poll graphs for other elections - but it didn't produce very good lines for the 2018-22 period). Nothing nefarious involved.

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Its interesting to note just how inefficient the Liberal vote is in Ontario when its at relatively low levels. The latest topline numbers from the Mainstreet daily tracking has the PCs at 36%, the Liberals dropping to 26.8% and the NDP rising to 24.4% - with the OLP leading the ONDP by 2.4% - they project that with this provincewide split, the NDP would take 26 seats and the OLP would take 13 (with 11 tossups) and the PCs would romp to a majority with 73 seats.

https://twitter.com/elxnometre/status/1525498671772717057?s=21&t=dm5MaUrQyXhXfaEMb72RSw

Let's not forget that in the 2011 federal election in Ontario the NDP took 25.8% and the Liberals took 25.3% - but the NDP took 22 seats and the Liberals just 11.

Would be far from the first time such a thing had happened provincially: the CCF/NDP came third in votes but still made Official Opposition in 1948 & 1975.

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Here's the updated poll graph:



Tories have dropped a few points in recent days, but that loss appears to have gone to the smaller conservative/populist parties (which are generally lumped in under 'others' in the polls) rather than to the Grits or New Democrats.

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Poll graph update:

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Haven't updated this for a few days; allow me to rectify:

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Poll graph update:

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I've been wondering: what happens in the event that two parties tie for second place? For example, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Liberals and NDP both tied at 20 seats in this election. Who becomes official opposition? Do we have any precedent for this in Canada?

Actually there is a precedent for this. I think it happened in Saskatchewan in the 70s when the Liberals and PCs were tied. If I'm not mistaken the party that is the incumbent official opposition retains the title! But i could be wrong

There's a precedent in Alberta from 2014, when Danielle Smith led most of the Wildrose caucus across the floor to the PCs. 5 Wildrose MLAs refused to cross the floor, and the Liberals (who also had a caucus of 5) challenged them for the Official Opposition title. The Speaker ruled that the Wildrose would stay as Official Opposition as they were the incumbents.

Its a bit of a different situation when you have a tie as a result of floor crossing mid-session as opposed to a tie in seats from an election

It also happened in Nova Scotia in 1999, when the Liberals went from a minority government to tied with the NDP at 11 MLAs each; the NDP, which was the Official Opposition going in, held that title as a) they had it already and b) they got more votes than the Liberals (albeit 0.1% more). They also looked like electing 12 members to the Liberals' 11 on election night itself, before recounts put them at 11 apiece.

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Update to poll graph:

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Another poll graph update (almost there!):

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Prediction time, I guess:

PC - 80 MPPs (40%)
NDP - 28 MPPs (23.5%)
Lib - 15 MPPs (25.5%)
GP - 1 MPP


Didn't do too badly last time (forecast was PC 72 & 40%, NDP 44 & 35.5% and Lib 8 & 20%); hopefully I'm pretty close here too.

(Updated 2 Jun, four hours before polls closed)

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My only prediction will be that the Libs get more seats than everyone expects here, even though Ford still waltzes back into office. This is because Liberal vote efficiency is better than what everyone expects it to be, mainly cause the baseline of 2017 is a bad indicator of the base vote in many areas, and a rebound disproportionately affect specific types of seats.

Had the Liberals been the clear favorite vis-a-vis the NDP I would agree (as happened federally in 2015), but I'm not so sure here. Still betting we'll get a repeat of 1948/1975, where the NDP comes third in votes but still gets Official Opposition.

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It seems a surprise, to me, that the late minute polls seems to have broken in favor of PC.  My impression of Canada elections is that usually last minute breaks, if any, are in favor of an opposition party at the expense of the ruling party or at the expense of another opposition party.

They can be, but just as often it's the incumbent party that does better than expected (ON 2014, BC 2013, SK 2020, etc.) or the (non-incumbent) perceived frontrunner (ON 2018, AB 2019, etc.).

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One last poll graph update:

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Del Duca has lost; that's not a shock, but I am a little surprised at just how badly the Liberals are bombing: they may very well lose official party status again, and look likely to come third in the popular vote too.

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The grimly predictable landslide. Still, the a clear second place finish (it's seats that matter) for the NDP, which positions them better for the future, but they'll need to change a few things to make anything of it.

On this point Horwath has resigned.

And now Del Duca has too.

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Those last two northern ridings (Kiiwetinoong & Algoma - Manitoulin) should start reporting their results in a few minutes; on the basis of the other northern results I'd guess the NDP will keep both but with sharply reduced margins.

With the Grits cleaned out of the north, that leaves Kingston as their only seat outside Ottawa & Metro Toronto.