Ontario 2018 election

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Rumours didn't involve doing anything to anyone, but having "competitions" with interns.

... that is appalling.

Honestly, though, I fear he'll get in on the 'throw the bums out' ticket.

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Consensual or not, a boss organizing 'competitions' (presumably of a sexual nature, given the preceding posts) is a platinum-level hostile workplace allegation. Who would want to work for such a boss, nevermind elect him Premier?

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Arguably she never really got out from under the shadow of McGuinty-era scandals (e.g. the gas plant cancellation, the renewable energy program and commensurate electricity rate hikes). She's also had aspersions cast on her over inside baseball dealings from the Sudbury by-election a couple years ago, though I believe she was exonerated (not that that matters in the court of public opinion).

For the most part, though, the lack of support comes from her being the leader of a party that's been in office for 14 years. Longevity, the accumulation of small and medium sized errors, and her taking unpopular (if unavoidable) decisions on taxes and energy policy are what's behind it all.

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Campaign Research puts Liberals ahead

35
34
22

I'm somewhere between dubious and confused by this. Most recent polls put the Tories way ahead, but every once in a while a poll like this comes along that says it's an even race. Is there something going on with the sampling or methodology that could explain this discrepancy?

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Sounds like their is some talk that pc executives might cancel the leadership convention allowing Fedeli to lead the party during the general election. I have a feeling such a move could backfire as some voters will see such a move as anti democratic potentially depressing PC turnout and pushing swing voters into the NDP and or Liberal column.

http://torontosun.com/news/local-news/furey-pc-insiders-tried-to-keep-ford-out-and-now-hes-storming-the-barricades#comments

It would also give the Libs and NDP a withering line of attack to throw at the PCs: You can't run a leadership race, what makes you think you can run a province?

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The problem I have with with their current prediction is that it seems way too small-c conservative and incumbent friendly. The Liberals are are given 24 safe seats and are considered a factor in many more toss ups at the expense of the Tories and NDP. E.g. Newmarket-Aurora was won by the Liberals by about 6% in 2014. There's been a double digit swing from Liberal to Tory since then and the Tories are running Christine Elliott, but it's called a toss up.

Well, re such caution, EPP's never been based upon *mathematical* projection based upon current/running polls--it's always been more a combo of moderator's gut + contributors "having their say". (Which, given how more supposedly "scientific" prediction/projection sites have faltered over the years, might be just as well.)

That's a fair point, though it's belied by the sheer inaccuracy of the aggregate predictions EPP generates: a BC Liberal majority in 2017; solid UK Tory majority in 2017; federal Liberal minority in 2015; Ontario Liberal minority in 2014; BC NDP majority in 2013; Canadian Tory minority in 2011. At least some of the scientific models called each of those races accurately.

As commendable as it may be to take such a granular approach, if the sum total fails to accurately predict the most meaningful consequences of an election, it's not really worth much. Especially when they boast about being "90.8%" or "90.9%" "accurate."

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I can't speak more than anecdotally on millennial trends, so take it with a grain of salt, but most of my Ontario friends here at McGill are genuinely torn about who to vote for. They generally don't like Doug Ford, but detest Kathleen Wynne and see Andrea Horwath as irrelevant.

I have one friend from a small Central Ontario town from a Liberal family who just doesn't know. One friend from Etobicoke who voted for Wynne but is a huge Doug Ford fan. One friend from downtown Toronto who won't vote for Wynne because she "screwed over schools" but doesn't like Ford much at all. Another one who is all in for Wynne and might work for the OLP if he doesn't get another political gig over the summer.

It's an interesting blend, and those are just a few.

Sweet, another McGill alum

To add to the anecdotal evidence: to my surprise, my Ottawa-based Liberal friends are still quite determined and upbeat. I would have thought many of them would have defected to the NDP or Tories by now, but at least with them it doesn't seem to be the case.

Meanwhile, my centrist-minded Dad thinks Ford is as disreputable as Trump; not sure who he'd end up voting for, though.

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To be more blunt, you're using historical evidence to make claims about a reality where the OLP is about as popular as AIDs and the NDP is polling near 40%. This is bizarre. You cannot talk about "structural advantages" when we don't see a structure and a party has surged by 15 percentage points! That makes no sense!

Rude.

Most "structural advantages" are pretty dubious, outside of cases in which you have a concentrated ethnic minority like black Americans or non-Francophone Montrealers.

It wouldn't take much stretching of the term 'ethnic minority' to encompass the white, rural, conservative voters of rural southern and Eastern Ontario who beget the PCs their 'structural advantage' in seats. I'm not prepared to go quite that far into the sociology of it, but I still think it's fair to say that the PC lock on the seats north of Guelph and along Highway 7 is well established and a genuine structural impediment to any other party wanting to win a majority.

In any case, it's a moot point unless the gap between the PCs and the NDP is under 3 points or so. More than that and either party will start getting those 'we have no business winning here' seats that will push them over the top.

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Maybe another angle might help clarify things:

At what point does the OLP reach BQ 2011 levels? That is to say, what province-wide percentage of support is the tipping point between being a respectable third (10-25 seats) and being utterly routed (<5 seats)? Digging a bit deeper, if the OLP *did* reach that level province-wide, where would they be polling in the GTA?

Also, Hatman, bless you for giving us that tidbit

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Not that I'm saying it'll matter in the end, but Bay of Quinte is the most likely seat the "poppy" issue will cost the NDP - if there's one.

I saw The National Post made something over that.  Maybe they should stop posting articles from disgraced convicted felon Conrad Black before they judge other people.

Is he still relevant? I know he went apesh*t when Bob Rae got elected and maybe single handily played a role in bringing down the NDP government. How will Bay Street react if the NDP wins this time?

He did?! What's the source on that?

If true, I wish I'd known that a couple years ago when I was at a conference with the two of them

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t if they fall to single digits or worse zero seats, they will likely never form government again and as such future elections will be fought between PCs and NDP.  

This is a very, very false prediction.

Second.

The BC NDP was down to two seats in 2001, and they were a viable party of government as soon as 12 years later. I'm pretty sure the PCs or the Libs have been nearly wiped out in some of the Maritime provinces, too, and yet they're still all around and mostly in contention. And that's leaving aside the fact that the Liberal Party in Canada, especially its federal and Ontario manifestations, is about as entrenched as it's possible to be in the Canadian financial, industrial, educational, legal, medical, military, and heritage sectors. They will never run out of viable candidates with the necessary connections and expertise to win elections.

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Yeah, any merger of the Liberals with the NDP would probably be unsatisfactory, if not outright unacceptable, to the majority of both parties.

Truth be told, there's not nearly as much incentive to do this in Canada. Excepting Alberta, right-leaning parties across the country are nowhere near as well entrenched or electorally successful as the Republican Party is in the US.

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Mainstreet is going to release a number of riding polls in what should be highly competitive districts today:
Thunder Bay—Atikokan (update)

Hi all, I'm new here, and I'm just curious as to what the situation is for TB-A. This is my home riding. In the urban portion of the riding, the Liberals are leading the sign war by a 3-2 margin over the NDP, while the PCs are a distant third. Of the 2 Thunder Bay ridings, this one is more likely to flip NDP than TB-SN.

Welcome!

As for your riding, the poll has the smallest Liberal lead possible over the NDP, which I suppose isn't too far off the sign war you mention. However, riding polls aren't known to be reliable as has been mentioned in this thread a lot.

Welcome to the fun, James

Another important caveat to add: sign prevalence isn't necessarily an indication of the competitiveness of the race. Between observer bias and the volatility of election campaigns generally, the signs generally tell you less about the race than one might think. 

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Whether or not it goes that far, this rather reminds me of the last second 'revelations' about Jack Layton during the 2011 campaign. They brought the NDP momentum in that campaign to a screeching halt and, IMHO, ensured the Tories got a majority.

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Caveats about predicting the future notwithstanding, I really think people are overestimating the impact of a single election on a political party, especially one like the OLP. Even a disastrous showing (1-5 seats) would leave them with enough presence in the legislature to organize. Beyond that, and more importantly, the OLP, like most well-entrenched parties, is much more than its elected representatives. The money, institutional memory, expertise, and informal networks that animate it now will still be available to it after the election.

On a broader point, if you look at the ways political parties have died before it's been through a combination of prolonged atrophy and a major issue that split the party (or that it ended up on the wrong side of). The US Whigs, the British Liberals, the SoCreds, the Union Nationale, the pre-merger PCs - they all suffered multiple terms out of office and generational shifts on major issues before they were extinguished (and even then, you can argue a lot of them are still around in some form or another).