Ontario Election Watch - News You Can Use

The latest in Ontario Election Watch news is out on the airwaves. The Liberal government's budget is due next Thursday.

Kathleen Wynne says budget defeat would force 'unnecessary' election

When speaking with reporters in Toronto on Wednesday morning, the premier said she believed the government’s budget would be "very supportable" by both opposition parties.

But she also said that if they decide to vote against it and an "unnecessary" trip to polls is triggered, the Liberals are prepared to take on their opponents during a campaign.

“We’re ready for that and we’ll be campaigning in every seat across this province,” Wynne said.

Veteran strategist Don Guy declines to run another Ontario Liberal campaign  

Although Mr. Guy will continue to advise the Liberals, his decision will likely place more responsibility in the hands of Tom Allison, who ran Ms. Wynne’s leadership campaign this past winter and will step into that job in a general election. Ms. Wynne’s principal secretary, Andrew Bevan, is also expected to play a senior strategic role, as is Liberal backroom veteran David Herle.

Meanwhile, on the Opposition front:

Ontario PCs ‘thrilled’ with Doug Ford’s vow to run in next election, challenge to Premier Kathleen Wynne

“I’m calling her out — call an election, Kathleen Wynne, in May and I will run — I will guarantee it and we will defeat you and we will make sure the fiscal ship of this province is going in the right direction,” Ford declared on the The John Oakley Morning Show Wednesday. “If she calls it in May I’m going because this province right now is in deep trouble.” 

Tim Hudak enlists U.S. help to prepare for possible spring election

To help him improve, Hudak is using the services of Greener and Hook, a high-profile Alexandria, Va., political consultancy firm that does work for Republican clients such as House Majority Leader John Boehner and one-time presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann.

The increased amount of spending on the part of so-called "third-party" groups (a confusing term if ever there was one) during elections has not gone unnoticed.

Third-party spending tripled in last Ontario election  

Essensa notes that only one third party raised and spent more than $1 million on political ads in 2007. But in 2011, three third-party groups exceeded this threshold, with the ETFO representing the largest single spender at nearly $2.7 million.

Ontario should limit ‘third party’ election spending: Editorial

A gaping loophole in Ontario’s election finance rules allows so-called “third party” interest groups to dodge campaign spending limits. They’re increasingly using this lack of oversight to outspend bona fide political parties and sway the results of a vote. And that isn’t healthy for democracy.

EKOS Poll: PC Majority Government

The latest figures released by EKOS and fed into our projection model suggest that the PCs would end up with a solid majority government and bring the Ontario Liberals below 19 seats.

The Ontario NDP, meanwhile, would gain a handful of seats and Andrea Horwath would become the leader of the official opposition.

This is something to keep in mind as the Liberals and NDP negotiate over the upcoming budget.

Perhaps the NDP's list of micro-demands are a very deft move, as Horwath's reasonable gains for various constituencies in the middle of a jobs crisis wouldn't be seen as precipitating an election. If she obtains them, people may thank her. If she does not, and the Liberals take a my-way-or-the-highway approach to the budget, causing an election, the Liberals will look bad for having nothing to offer on youth unemployment.

The prize of earning Official Opposition status might be very valuable symbolically for the NDP, even though it would actually represent a net loss of power for them.

On the other hand, Hudak's preferred policies are extreme enough to likely prompt the NDP and Liberal bases to pressure their leaders to find a solution to avoid an election, which looks set to lead to an even more austerity-prone government.

Projection: "Minor Majority" for Hudak

Edit: Due to an update of our model, we now see the PCs once again in minority territory.

Based on new polling reported today in the Toronto Star, our projection whirlygigs have informed us that Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives are poised to form a majority government at 54 seats, versus only 27 for the Liberals. With only one seat between Hudak and the rest of the chamber, some accommodation would be needed for the Speaker position, however.

Of course, we know that this differs from the Star's headline which suggests a minority for the PCs. Indeed, our uniform swing model does come out with a minority government. We respond to this divergence in opinion by responding: you be the judge!

Seats going over to the PCs this round: Ajax-Pickering, Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, Brampton-Springdale, Brampton West, Brant, Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, Kitchener Centre, Mississauga-Erindale, Niagara Falls, Oak Ridges-Markham, Oakville, Ottawa-Orléans, Ottawa West-Nepean, Peterborough, Richmond Hill, St. Catharines, and York Centre.

Click to view the full projection scorecard. 

The Front Lines of Ontario - Battleground Clusters

Number crunching and statistical analysis can get you some pretty strange things.

You've probably heard of the idea of "battleground ridings". But in this entry, we're going to take a look at battleground clusters, a name we've just made up for different k-means clusters of Ontario electoral districts.

How We Did It

We told our statistical software program to divvy up all Ontario ridings by party votes in 2011, as a percentage of electors. This puts a party's relative attractiveness into the context of how well it was able to get out the vote on election day.

We might think of these Battleground Clusters as battle fronts on a map. A battle that I must sadly view from the sidelines (for now!), as I don't work in any paid capacity for a political party, consultancy, etc. I will let the professionals be my judge.

(I am also pleased to finally be able to offer some insight into Northern Ontario ridings, because this data doesn't depend on inconsistent, well-dated census data).

Hudak's Heroes - Cows, Coal and Government Cash

Don't change horses midstream, goes the saying. Something that could apply to the 2011 Ontario Election and this website as well. How's that, you ask? Well, we've recently tweaked our methodology just in time for the last episode of this mini-series on the greatest electoral shifts among the parties in 2011. Soon we'll be going back and adding in the adjustments, and changing our commentary accordingly.

In any case, we're going to be looking at where Tim Hudak managed to get out the vote for his party in 2011, by comparing over time the correlations to a bunch of demographic indicators from the 2006 Census (the 2006 census being the latest reliable census in Canada, naturally).

Because the data for Northern Ontario ridings comes from the 2001 census, it is rather dated, and lacks a lot of the finer detail of the 2006 survey. So, once again, the following is for the Rest of Ontario only: 

What are immigrants anyway? Conservative Progress on City Dwellers

PC - it's a brand of food at the grocery store, a type of computer, a rather dated pop culture epithet, and also a political party in Ontario. The Progressive Conservative party, under its relatively new leader, Tim Hudak, didn't manage to seal the deal for a majority government in 2011.

Rather like his transatlantic counterpart Michael Howard in 2005, the PCs failed to capitalize on fatigue with a would-be third term government, and were outshone by a third-party upstart, in that case Charles Kennedy's Lib Dems (though we all know how that turned out). 

Here is a rather extensive comparison of the 2011 Progressive Conservative platform against the NDP and the Ontario Liberals, although it all reads much like the instruction manual for a microwave.

How to Lose Toronto

One bump in the road encountered by the Hudak team was its controversial criticism of tax credit programs for hiring immigrants. Having been seen, rightly or wrongly, to boldly go after one of the sacred cows of globalization, the shifts in support between the 2011 and 2007 elections certainly reflect that: