Ontario 2018 election

[Pericles]

I think the NDP is going to win the election actually. Something like 41% NDP, 38% PC, 19% Liberal.

[Pericles]

Tbh I think the NDP will end up winning. Something like 40% NDP, 37% PC, 18% Liberal.

[Pericles]

Wow looks like the NDP are even with the PCs already and could end up even better. This campaign has gone brilliantly for them so far.

[Pericles]

They should have picked Christine Elliott.

[Pericles]

They should have picked Christine Elliott.

Absolutely, well maybe fourth time will be the charm for her.

Will she win Newmarket-Aurora?

[Pericles]

Do you think Wynne will lose her seat?

[Pericles]

It's annoying seeing the pundits with their crappy "everyone sucks" takes.

[Pericles]

I'm not impressed by the Liberal tactics. They smack of desperation. "SorryNotSorry", despite what the pundits are saying, doesn't seem like a silver bullet-it's basically saying "sorry you're too dumb to see we're so great but we're really great". Conceding defeat before the votes are counted is bad practice and also seems likely to encourage strategic voting for the NDP. It's too difficult to know if a vote for the Liberals will mean an NDP minority(and Ontarians may just prefer a majority anyway) or a PC majority(which is likely in most cases due to FPP). The Liberals have a bunch of convoluted desperate arguments, but they seem likely to just finish them off as a party. They are probably doomed regardless, but they should have just defended their record with vigor and hoped for the best. Otherwise, if they're conceding Wynne should just take the logical next step and endorse the NDP. So her latest tactics are more helpful for Horwath than herself.

[Pericles]

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.

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.

[Pericles]

If Ford somehow wins in a landslide, then maybe he was more electable than previously thought. But even if he wins a close election-it shouldn't have been close. And maybe if he loses in a landslide then he'd be an awful leader but that would suggest Horwath may have been able to beat Elliott too. It's pretty clear though that the Ontario PCs have done their very best to lose this election-the question now isn't whether they've run a good campaign but whether they win in spite of themselves.

[Pericles]

Are people more likely to refrain from telling pollsters their true intention if they are backing Doug Ford? I think so and I suspect PCs will do fine.

NOPE.

[Pericles]

A plausible outcome could be a minority government, around 5 Liberals and both NDP and Tories around 60 seats. NDP forms a government afterwards.

[Pericles]

A plausible outcome could be a minority government, around 5 Liberals and both NDP and Tories around 60 seats. NDP forms a government afterwards.

Plausible yes, but only if NDP has at least a 3-4% popular vote advantage over PCs, AND the Liberals manage to get above 20% (probably to around 22-23%). In that scenario, the distribution would be roughly: PC-58 seats, NDP-54 (or 53) seats, Liberals-12 seats (and Greens maybe 1 seat ).

Otherwise, if the PC and NDP vote is roughly equal, or even if NDP has a small advantage and the Liberal vote tanks, we are probably looking at a narrow PC majority.

Maybe, but I'm a bit sceptical that the NDP really needs such a large advantage. This election is very hard to model with the Liberal collapse and NDP gains, so I'm expecting the unexpected.

[Pericles]

If there's a polling error in which direction do you think it'll be?