Ontario 2011 (6th October)

[Linus Van Pelt]

To take a brief foray away from the numbers and into a policy rant (though it has political implications that I’ll discuss in the last paragraph):

Horwath’s platform sucks. It’s the worst I’ve seen from the NDP at the provincial or federal level - basically there’s a grab-bag of silly populist measures that don’t make sense from the point of view of any of economic growth, egalitarian redistribution or environmental protection. To take a couple of examples:

- the party proposes not to get rid of the HST altogether, but to eliminate it on ... gas! Why gas? If poorer people are struggling with the HST, why not just give them a rebate regardless of what they’ve spent their money on? Aside from the obvious carbon-increasing implications, it should be clear that this is not redistributive in the right way, since rich people buy more gas than poorer people. Imagine the NDP had said instead: “we’re just going to write a cheque every year to each Ontarian, and the amount will be a linear function of the amount of gas you buy. So Rakesh who takes the bus from his apartment in outer Scarborough to his job in a restaurant in North York gets $0, Dave who drives his Ford from his home in Windsor to his factory job 5 km away in another part of Windsor $50, and Bill who drives his BMW SUV from his home in Oakville to his office 40 km away in downtown Toronto $500.” This is functionally the same proposal as a cut to the tax on gas. Of all the ways of distributing money, this is the way the NDP chooses?

- Horwath promises to undo a contract already signed for new commuter trains for Toronto because she wants a “buy-Ontario” policy and the factory is in ... Montreal! Now, I have some sympathy for trade restrictions with countries that restrict labour rights, but seriously? We shouldn’t be trading with another Canadian province? Does she seriously think that Canadian manufacturing will stay competitive if companies have to give up economies of scale and have ten separate factories in different provinces?

As an expat I can only vote federally, but if I were in Ontario I’d be very tempted to cast a rare non-NDP vote. Social democratic views or no, Dalton is clearly the adult in the room.

Now, back to the politics: leaving aside what I think, the whole operation is clearly appealing to a certain kind of economically squeezed but not very poor voter in smaller manufacturing centres, but it's bad for the urban educated left-of-centre. Given the quality of polling, I'm pretty reluctant to make specific regional predictions, but it shouldn't be surprising if it turns out that the Liberal->NDP trend is reduced, or even in reverse, in central Ottawa and Toronto. (Especially since, in light of recent events at the municipal level in Toronto, the NDP/Smitherman voters are not in the mood to hear "normal people just gotta drive" type automotive populism.)

[Linus Van Pelt]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Again, everyone's doubts about the riding polls are correct, but still, these "questionable" results are quite consistent with a pattern that shouldn't be surprising just observing the campaign and thinking about the odd overall numbers, that the parties are basically trading class/education groups.

[Linus Van Pelt]

These are definitely more plausible than the earlier poll given the strength of the NDP incumbents in Toronto, but note that this still has the Liberals, relative to 2007, at +7 in Beaches-East York, +3 in Parkdale-High Park, and +2 in Trinity-Spadina, obviously all in the opposite direction from the province. I'd say this probably isn't great news if you're hoping for an NDP pickup in Ottawa Centre. (And probably not if you're a Conservative in north Toronto either).

[Linus Van Pelt]

I was checking out Singh's facebook page the other day, and his campaign videos are all shot in the neighbourhoods, and the place looks like suburban hell. Not the kind of place that votes NDP.  So, good news all around.

And yeah, I think the Liberals will probably win Ottawa Centre at this point. It's a lot like those downtown Toronto ridings where the Liberals are getting a bump from people scared of the Tories even though strategic votes make no sense there.

It's not caused by strategic voting. There are, to be sure, low-information voters everywhere who don't understand how ridings work, but there's no reason to think they would have suddenly increased this time around in a few concentrated geographical areas.

It has to do with the fact that in the very same year as Stephen Harper showed very skillfully how to win affluent suburbia and his rural base at the same time, and Jack Layton showed equally skillfully how to win urban centres and traditional industrial workers at the same time, both provincial opposition leaders seem to be ignoring these lessons and campaigning as if they're running in Ohio.

[Linus Van Pelt]

It comes from a series of Bloomberg-esque micro-regulations. He's banned, among other things: junk food sales in public schools; pit bulls; smoking on patios; displaying cigarettes in stores (in Ontario now you have to ask for the employee to get you cigarettes from behind this weird screen); smoking in cars with children in them (even your own car and your own children). A certain flavour of libertarian-conservative really hates this sort of thing.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The law about not being allowed to display cigarettes in stores is actually federal. Can't blame "Premier Dad" for that.

No, it's provincial - see, for example, this article from around the time:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=1ec674b6-afd1-4248-9f33-1140ef9764a1

[Linus Van Pelt]

So Ontario seems set to return to its usual basic pattern? By which I mean very different patterns of support in Federal and Provincial elections.

This is actually kind of complicated, since prior to the 1980's the OLP was basically a rural conservative party, while in the 1990's the voting patterns were actually pretty similar at both levels but the seat results were very different because the provincial PC vote was split federally. So voting for different parties in a parallel ideological space is actually pretty unusual.

I really think that even if McGuinty is held to a minority or even if Hudak narrowly wins, this election is one big own goal by the opposition parties. The conditions were present to replicate the federal result and really send the Liberals into strange-death zone; McGuinty is not well-loved and looked totally underwater in the polls a year ago even when Hudak and Horwath had low name recognition. And the local PC & NDP organizations in Toronto are newly energized by the federal result. But both opposition parties seem like they're actively trying to get anyone who isn't an angry populist to vote Liberal. Their platforms are just basically a random collection of cost-of-living related price interventions with no interesting campaign themes or policy initiatives. It reminds me of that period in spring 2008 when both McCain and Clinton decided that the thing to do was a "gas tax holiday" and Obama pointed out that this was just a dumb gimmick. Certainly I'm not asking for the reverse - a politics so elitist that it underperforms in the manufacturing areas (*cough* Democratic Party *cough*) - but as the recent federal election showed, it's not impossible to carry North Toronto and the farmlands together, nor to carry both the central city and the SW rust belt.

This third line here is the killer, from the recent EKOS poll - it's not an outlier; other subsamples are showing the same thing. (It goes LIB-NDP-PC).

[Linus Van Pelt]

So, yeah - for the Tories: Ottawa West-Nepean not picked up, Eglinton-Lawrence not close, Willowdale not close, Don Valley West really not close (!), Thornhill a bit close for comfort, Oakville not picked up, A-D-F-W not that close (!), London West not close...

And for the NDP, Ottawa Centre not close, Trinity-Spadina alarmingly close, only really dominating in Toronto-Danforth among the other city ridings.

Liberals were very strong in the GTA. Because of Harper and Ford, of course.

I seem to be not really getting through here (except to Al), but this is mainly because of Hudak and Horwath. The ridings in the first group like Harper (and they especially like Jim Flaherty going around to international finance ministers meeting in nice suits going on about how Canada has done well in the recession due to our low debt). They don't like Hudak's folksy anecdotes about how hard life is for everyone in Ontario now, nor his weird "foreign worker" stuff.

The ridings in the second group, meanwhile, really don't like cutting the gas tax and cancelling commuter rail projects. I don't mean to deny that there's areas of good news elsewhere in the province. But when Jack Layton just dominated the manufacturing areas while vocally supporting a cap-and-trade scheme, there's no reason to be in this economic la-la land where you're the party of reducing both usage and cost of traditional fossil fuels at the same time.

Weird pattern, meanwhile, in the old industrial areas, where in the cities the old tradition of the big Liberal boss seems to be still strong but the NDP wins the less urban surrounding area. I definitely wasn't expecting that particular distribution in Essex, the NW or the Niagara.

Anyway, kind of an unstable result there just on the verge of the majority, and some demographics are in flux, so it will be an interesting few years.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The four best Liberal results are St. Paul's (58.4), Don Valley West (58.3), Toronto Centre (54.9) and Eglinton-Lawrence (54.3).

I very much doubt that this list would be just from this region in any other federal or provincial election since 1867.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Dufferin Caledon has no business being Green, but it's been among the top few Greenist ridings for a decade

What? It's hilly, and thus beautiful but unsuitable for big industrial farming, unlike the flat and fertile areas in all other directions, and so in addition to the local rednecks, it's also full of people who make their living selling the organic products of their self-consciously small farms at farmers' markets in inner Toronto (and Guelph), or by selling artisanal pottery and that sort of thing to people from north Toronto who come for the weekend and stay in inns in restored old mills in Ye Olde Victorian Towns, and priority number one for the whole operation is making sure suburbia doesn't come north from Brampton.

[Linus Van Pelt]

it's also full of people who make their living selling the organic products of their self-consciously small farms at farmers' markets

Which does not fit in anywhere else in Rural ontario

Is this supposed to be sarcastic? In almost all of rural Ontario the overwhelming majority of farms use modern industrial agriculture and sell to food processors rather than directly to the general public, even if they are "family farms" in the sense that the owners live and work on the farm. The main exception is the old order Mennonite country north and west of Waterloo, but obviously here the politics are a bit different.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Yes - nicely observed.

Rural Ontario is really three distinct areas, not just two, in a way that will not be obvious from political maps, since it is hidden by the Conservative voting of both southern zones. There's a northern area based in unionized mining and forestry, a heavily farmed flat southwestern area where the countryside resembles US states starting with "I", and an east-central area that's more forested with lots of recreational tourism, with a landscape more reminiscent of upstate New York.

The following map I've just made shows this quite clearly. (outline map, with yellowish boundaries, from Earl on wikipedia).



The Green party's Ontario base, such as it is, is concentrated in the third of these areas - though particularly in the transition zone between it and the southwest, where you get that Vermont-like small-farms-in-the-wooded-hills look that's so appealing to a certain demographic.

Now, as regards Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, this much explains why it would be one of those ridings where the Greens are higher than average (Bruce County on the map is a bit misleading; the part in Huron-Bruce riding - which BTW includes Walkerton, so that explanation's off - is extensively farmed). But why they suddenly leapfrogged for a couple of elections into second place and then back down again to normal levels is probably just one of those weird things involving the strengths of local candidates and organizations without a deep demographic reason.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Which white area would you expect Greens based on my analysis where you find none?

The Green party's Ontario base, such as it is, is concentrated in the third of these areas - though particularly in the transition zone between it and the southwest, where you get that Vermont-like small-farms-in-the-wooded-hills look that's so appealing to a certain demographic.

2011 Ontario Provincial Election Maps - Greens Vote