Ontario general election 2018 - Results Thread

[Hatman 🍁]

Spent the night watching results at a bar. I think I pissed off some Liberals when I was loudly cheering when Harden won.

Anyways, I only got 11 seats wrong. Mainstreet only got 10 seats wrong. A great night for us pollsters!

[Hatman 🍁]

Spent the night watching results at a bar. I think I pissed off some Liberals when I was loudly cheering when Harden won.

Anyways, I only got 11 seats wrong. Mainstreet only got 10 seats wrong. A great night for us pollsters!

Doesn't Harden support BDSM?

So?

Nothing wrong with some ideological diversity in the NDP caucus. Doesn't hurt the Tories one bit.

[Hatman 🍁]

Well, the Liberals lost 20 points, with about half going to the Tories and half going to the NDP. Not exactly a 'left wing party'. We saw the same kind of fracturing in 2011.

Liberals hold the same kind of social values as the NDP, but are wary of the NDP's economic policies. Those in the 905 who are more concerned about economics went PC, while those in urban areas who care more about social issues went NDP.

Polling does suggest that the bedrock ~20% of Liberal supporters lean more towards the NDP as their second choice though, so there is room for the NDP to improve if the Liberals spend the next four years running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

[Hatman 🍁]

Some NDP pickups, 20+ swings:

Toronto Centre  53.7%  +34.2
Ottawa Centre  46.1%  +25.6
St. Paul's  36%  +25.5
University-Rosedale (new riding) 49.7%  +25.4
Spadina-Fort York  49.7%  +23.0
Scarborough Southwest  45.5%  +21.9
Davenport  60.3%  +20.1

Some PC pickups, 20+ swings:

Etobicoke North  52.5%  +30
King-Vaughan (new riding)  56.6%  +24.3
Vaughan-Woodbridge  50.5%  +23.4
Markham-Unionville  62.4%  +21.6

Markham-Unionville was one of the few CPC gains in 2015, and it also flipped here. Is there some kind of Conservative trend in the area?

Chinese people are trending Tory big time.

[Hatman 🍁]

Did the Sikh vote go NDP following Jagmeet, or were they Fordistas?

Looks like they were divided, but went NDP overall. The NDP won the three heavily Sikh ridings, but not by a large margins.

[Hatman 🍁]

Polling does suggest that the bedrock ~20% of Liberal supporters lean more towards the NDP as their second choice though, so there is room for the NDP to improve if the Liberals spend the next four years running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

And that's a very real risk for the Liberals. People look at Trudeau and Canadian volatility and assume that they'll be back fairly quickly. Trudeau was rather exceptional. There are lots of examples of parties suffering this sort of defeat either fading away or at least spending a long time in the wilderness.

My guess is that they are in for a long time in the wilderness but will eventually get back into power.

Well, a combination of Trudeau and also Jack Layton dying.

[Hatman 🍁]

And this is why despite all the complaints about it, I like the two party system in the US. So frustrating to see RW Govt's take power because of a fractured left wing.

Eh. There's underlying assumptions there that Liberal + NDP are "mere progressives" to borrow a Christian term and that merged party would get 100% of their votes. I don't believe that either assumption is true. The Liberals and NDP are more diverse than their old conservative counterparts and therefore would have trouble holding that coalition together.

I mean, can you really see Scott Brison sitting in a caucus with say Niki Ashton? My guess is if the Liberals and NDP merged right-Liberals would jump to the Tories in sufficient numbers to create a 50/50 two party system like Oz and the USA.

Exactly.  Had Andrea Horwath won, you'd probably have grousing over a "fractured right (or at least centre/right) wing".

Incidentally,  Ann Hoggarth in Barrie-Innisfil had by far the worst incumbent Lib result: 12.52% (a point worse than the non-incumbent running in BSOM next door)

Wasn't she the Liberal who won by the narrowest margin in 2014?

I think so. But due to redistricting, she had no hope in hell of winning.

[Hatman 🍁]

Question, are provincial-level ridings everywhere in Ontario identical to the federal-level ridings?

In Southern Ontario, yes. In Northern Ontario, there's a couple ridings which are different.

how different?

A couple of ridings (Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk—James Bay) with smaller populations than the other ridings were created, and neither of these exist on the federal level.

The rest of the north still uses the 1996 federal riding boundaries, so they're not identical either.

[Hatman 🍁]

Question, are provincial-level ridings everywhere in Ontario identical to the federal-level ridings?

In Southern Ontario, yes. In Northern Ontario, there's a couple ridings which are different.

how different?

A couple of ridings (Kiiwetinoong and Mushkegowuk—James Bay) with smaller populations than the other ridings were created, and neither of these exist on the federal level.

The rest of the north still uses the 1996 federal riding boundaries, so they're not identical either.

There are 111 co-terminous ridings in Southern Ontario, federally and provincially.

In Northern Ontario, there are 10 ridings federally and 13 provincially.  The provincial boundaries for 9 of the seats were set by the 1992-3 Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for Ontario, while the remaining 4 seats were determined last year by the Far North Electoral Boundaries Commission.

Was the commission really done three to four years earlier than the boundaries were put into law?

[Hatman 🍁]

Ottawa 8 ridings
Carleton, Kanata-Carleton, Nepean, Orleans, Ottawa Centre, Ottawa South, Ottawa-Vanier, Ottawa West-Nepean

Total votes: 435,231
P.C: 147,814, 34.0%
NDP: 130,184, 29.9
Liberal: 131,491, 30.2
Green: 16,866, 3.9
Other 8,876

The NDP's best ever showing in Ottawa, probably, and still third place (and just one seat!) We will never elect a progressive mayor.

[Hatman 🍁]

There are polling division maps, apparently (only select ridings): https://globalnews.ca/news/4260146/ontario-election-poll-level-results-2/

Can't find the data anywhere.

And the new polling divisions are ghastly.

[Hatman 🍁]

Yeah, these riding names were discussed in another thread. Mostly they are pretty terrible.

There are polling division maps, apparently (only select ridings): https://globalnews.ca/news/4260146/ontario-election-poll-level-results-2/

Can't find the data anywhere.

And the new polling divisions are ghastly.

Why are the new polling divisions the way that they are? Mostly much larger but with a bunch that seems to cover only one building, or one block. So strange.

It's to coincide with the move from using ballot boxes to voting machines. The thought process was it would be cheaper (bigger polling divisions means fewer poll workers) and quicker, but in reality was more chaotic and much slower.

It took me half an hour to vote. When we got in, we didn't know where our line began or ended. The actual voting 'booth' can hardly be described as such, and pretty sure the voter next to me was peeking to see who I voted for. After than you hold your ballot in an envelope (and aren't told which way it's supposed to go) and get into a massive line that wandered around the gym (our voting place) because there was just one voting machine for the entire gym. (I'm a bit confused, because there were the same number of polling stations within our polling place, but was it for just one poll?) And then when you finally get to the machine, a poll clerk shifts your ballot the other way, because of course it's in the wrong way (and I read some people had their ballots REMOVED from the envelope, exposing their vote), before putting it in a machine that looks suspiciously like a shredder.

[Hatman 🍁]

Yeah, these riding names were discussed in another thread. Mostly they are pretty terrible.

There are polling division maps, apparently (only select ridings): https://globalnews.ca/news/4260146/ontario-election-poll-level-results-2/

Can't find the data anywhere.

And the new polling divisions are ghastly.

Why are the new polling divisions the way that they are? Mostly much larger but with a bunch that seems to cover only one building, or one block. So strange.

It's to coincide with the move from using ballot boxes to voting machines. The thought process was it would be cheaper (bigger polling divisions means fewer poll workers) and quicker, but in reality was more chaotic and much slower.

It took me half an hour to vote. When we got in, we didn't know where our line began or ended. The actual voting 'booth' can hardly be described as such, and pretty sure the voter next to me was peeking to see who I voted for. After than you hold your ballot in an envelope (and aren't told which way it's supposed to go) and get into a massive line that wandered around the gym (our voting place) because there was just one voting machine for the entire gym. (I'm a bit confused, because there were the same number of polling stations within our polling place, but was it for just one poll?) And then when you finally get to the machine, a poll clerk shifts your ballot the other way, because of course it's in the wrong way (and I read some people had their ballots REMOVED from the envelope, exposing their vote), before putting it in a machine that looks suspiciously like a shredder.

The larger divisions I get - but why are some tiny?

Looks like they could be old folks homes and maybe large apartment buildings. Though, I'm not sure why the latter would be so special. Perhaps proximity issues. I can only see a sliver of my riding on one of those maps, but it appears some of the apartments on Riverside Dr got their own polls, perhaps due to the fact that nearest church or school was very far away.

[Hatman 🍁]

The Cube Rule of British politics states that the ratio of the seats won by each party is equal to the ratio of the cubes of their popular vote.  So if a party gets twice the votes of another party, they should win eight times as many seats.

Applying the Cube Rule to the Ontario election would give these results:

PC 74, NDP 42, Lib 8

The actual numbers are: PC 76, NDP 40, Lib 7, Green 1

Here's another thing I noticed.

Instead of having a complicated seat projection formula, if you just took the province-wide swing by party (Lib -19.08%, PC +9.19%, NDP +9.82%, Grn -0.22%, Oth +0.28%) and applied it to each riding based on the transposed 2014 votes, you would end up with 76 PCs, 40 New Democrats and 8 Liberals.

What would've changed with a uniform swing?

Ridings the NDP would've won:
Brampton West
Etobicoke North
Kenora-Rainy River
Mississauga-Malton
Thunder Bay-Superior North

Ridings the PCs would've won:
Don Valley West
Guelph
Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas
Ottawa South
St. Catharines
Scarborough-Guildwood

Ridings the Liberals would've won:
Ottawa Centre
Sault Ste. Marie
Scarborough Centre
Toronto Centre
Toronto-St. Paul's
Vaughan-Woodbridge

[Hatman 🍁]

Have I put any ridings in obviously wrong regions?  I didn't really know what to do with Haldimand-Norfolk and Huron-Bruce.

Mind breaking them down by the EKOS regions?

Here:

http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2018/06/ekos-seat-projection-2/


Regions broken down on a map:

I'll get around to it if nobody does it before me.  That said, I don't really like their regional breakdowns (too many regions and I think the ridings around Lake Simcoe should be recognized as a separate region - Cottage Country.)  In addition to that region being the strongest Conservative, it's also the strongest Green.  I think 'Cottage Country' is clearly its own region (it could also be called Central Ontario.)

In the Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock riding, the Greens received 20% of the vote.

I also think the idea of Nipissing being in 'the North' is really stretching things.


A couple of other points
1.In the last election, the Liberals received, I think, 38.6% of the vote (close to that anyway,) in this election, the Liberals received over 30% of the vote in just 18 of the 124 ridings.

2.The NDP lost 9 ridings by less than 5% of the vote, but they won 7 ridings (including Oshawa!) by less than 5% of the vote.  I don't know if that's a wash or not in close ridings, but if you're going to look at the narrow losses, I think you should also take into account the narrow wins.

It's odd that the NDP barely held on to Oshawa when they improved so much in Whitby (not sure about Durham.)  The Whitby NDP candidate was nominated a long time before the election, I don't know if that played a role or not in the NDP doing relatively well there.

Hey, I spent a lot of time thinking about these regions. And the idea that Nipissing being in the north 'as stretching things' is borderline offensive to this son of a North Bayer.

And 'cottage country' generally only refers to Parry Sound-Muskoka, and usually just the Muskoka party (though there are cottages in Parry Sound of course, including my family's!)

[Hatman 🍁]

Oh, good find! I didn't know these were available yet.

Well, I really hate these maps. Did the NDP win my apartment building? Maybe, but we'll never know

My polling station had 1400 votes. Grrr.

[Hatman 🍁]

I don't get it. When I went to my polling station there were several lines, which I assumed were for different polling divisions. But there's no way based on this map that this was the case. That polling station would've just been for just one polling division.

[Hatman 🍁]

The Liberals best results - outside of the hard left Toronto City, were in the 905 and Ottawa. These areas have high family incomes and can best be described as "too left for PC, too wealthy for the NDP." This hurt the NDP. The Tories won their majority on the back of 40%+ pluralities (and 50%+ majorities in a few ridings) in the GTA thanks to the Lib/NDP vote split. If the NDP wants to build itself as the new united-left party for Ontario, they need to do what every party before them has done and appeal to the 905.

Not sure what you mean here - if the PCs got 50%+ of the vote in those ridings how could they have won them "thanks to the Lib/NDP vote split?

If there was any strategic voting going on in the 905 - it sure didn't work.  

Mississauga Centre is a great example of a roughly 40-25-25 split (or more specifically PCs 40.9%, NDP 27.6%, Liberals 25.4%) - and it was pretty hard for voters to figure out how to "stop the PCs."  Yeah it went Liberal in the past - but it's pretty hard to beat the Conservatives if they're over 40%. The NDP vote surged and the Liberal vote sank.  Still, if the NDP becomes a contender for government this is the kind of seat they can win in.

Vaughan-Woodbridge is an example where the anti-Conservative vote did more or less unite - the NDP only rose modestly to 14.5%.  However the PC vote surged and won an outright majority (50.5%), so the Liberals (32%) just got crushed and they certainly can't blame NDP voters for "refusing" to vote strategically for this loss.  This was an epic failure for uniform swing projections and the media.  If the NDP becomes a serious contender for government and the Liberals remain stuck in third this should remain a safe PC seat.

What I am saying is that there wasn't any strategic voting. The NDP surged here, but because they were starting from near zero they got almost nothing. Meanwhile, the Libs got some of their best "second places" in the 905. Yeah, in the 50% ridings, mainly found to the north of Toronto, there was no hope of tactical voting if every PC voter stays with the PCs. However, if the NDP actually attempts to reach the median voter in the Toronto suburbs then there is a good chance swing voters might not break as favorably for the PCs. In 2015 after all, Vaughan-Woodbridge gave the Libs+NDP combined around 53.5% in 2015, and it doesn't look like the riding changed all that much in redistricting. So there are clearly swing voters who would vote against the PC if given the proper appeal. Much of Mississagua is a better example like you said, a place where the PC's largely snuck up the middle.

Heres the maps I made earlier that illustrate the phenomenon nicely.

I think you forgot to colour in Oakville on the Liberal map. They got 36% there.

[Hatman 🍁]

The transposed 2015 federal results in Northern Ontario:

Kiiwetinoong - NDP
Kenora-Rainy River - Cons
Thunder Bay-Atikokan - Lib
Thunder Bay-Superior North - Lib
Algoma-Manitoulin - NDP
Sault Ste. Marie - Lib
Mushkegowuk-James Bay - NDP
Timmins - Lib
Timiskaming-Cochrane - Lib
Nickel Belt - Lib
Sudbury - Lib
Nipissing - Lib

[Hatman 🍁]

The Liberals would probably do well to look outside of the provincial caucus for a leader.  There are a number of federal liberals who could be considered, and what about John Tory?

.........

Why would the Liberals look at John Tory for leader?

Because, as far as I can tell, he is the highest profile *liberal* in Ontario.

But he's not a Liberal. Not even close. He's supported the Conservatives both Federally and Provincially since at least 1988, and probably before that too.

Oh and of course, there is the little issue that he was Ontario PC leader.

Not exactly comparable; but the little issue that he was Ontario NDP Premier didn't dissuade Bob Rae from seeking the federal Liberal leadership;  (And even less exactly comparable: federal PC leader Jean Charest becoming Quebec Liberal Premier)

John Tory is the defacto Liberal mayor of Toronto. 

Only because there was no Liberal candidate for mayor in 2014, and for some reason (Ok, strategic voting to stop Ford) Liberals/progressives didn't want to vote for Olivia Chow.

[Hatman 🍁]

I hope Al doesn't mind me using his template (Not sure how much was altered from Smid's original map) but I wanted to make some quick swing maps:



Fairly proud of my city What is wrong with the rest of the province?

The other two areas that saw a decrease in PC vote share was Timmins (I guess the PC candidate was popular there in 2014, he was a city councillor at the time who was elected mayor later on that year) and London West (the PC candidate was a piece of sh*t.)

[Hatman 🍁]

Corresponding NDP map:



Decreases are easy to explain:
Northwest Tororonto: "Fordnation effect" - lower income immigrant ridings where the NDP did well in 2014, but where Doug Ford did extremely well in the 2014 mayoral election. Interestingly, despite the negative swing the NDP picked up two of these ridings thanks to the Liberals tanking even worse.

Oshawa, Windsor-Tecumseh, Essex: NDP 'populist' seats. Windsor West swung to the NDP though because 2014 saw a close NDP-Liberal race (Liberal incumbent). Many of those 2014 Liberal voters went NDP in 2018.

Niagara Centre, Brampton East, & the three in the far north: These ridings all went NDP in 2014 but had no incumbents on the ballot in 2018.

Scarborough North: Popular NDP candidate in 2014 who still lost and did not run in 2018 (he's now a city councillor)

[Hatman 🍁]

Earl, where's the lolLiberals swing map ?

You're a sadist. But fine:



Not very interesting at all. Smaller decreases in areas where the Liberal vote was already emaciated. Biggest decrease in the Soo.

[Hatman 🍁]

Timmins stay winning.

Earl, I wouldn't say Spacek was popular in 2014. He was elected mayor, yeah, but the bench was pretty thin that he had almost no opposition and municipal elections in Timmins are fueled by anger that he rode that wave (many city councillors also went down that year). He's not very beloved right now though.

Well, I'm trying to figure out why the PCs declined in vote share. Do you know why?

[Hatman 🍁]

I’d be interested in a PC-NDP swing map.

This was on my to do list, so here:



Probably a strong correlation with education levels.