Wynne’s own riding of Don Valley West that “the choice is between me and Doug Ford.” Earlier, in an interview with the Star on the NDP campaign bus, she emphasized that she is concentrating on the election and “not focused” on the potential legislative m
With PCs, NDP neck and neck in most opinion polls, and Liberals badly trailing, will it be a minority?
The magic number is 63.
That’s how many seats are needed to form a majority government in Ontario’s 124-seat legislature — 62 MPPs plus one Speaker of the legislative assembly to referee the proceedings.
With the provincial election campaign coming down to the wire, public opinion polls suggest only Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford or NDP Leader Andrea Horwath can get close to that mark.
If the polls are accurate, Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, whose Grits have been in power for almost 15 years, could be fighting just to win the eight seats required to maintain official party status.
“Our ceiling right now is 12 and we could be as low as one or two,” confided one worried senior Liberal, allowing that with 46 incumbents running for re-election, those numbers should improve.
“But the NDP surge is a concern,” said the insider, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal strategy. Indeed, Horwath proclaimed Friday in
“It’s a majority or nothing — everyone knows that,” said a TTTory strategist, who believes t the party has at least 65 seats “locked down, ” far fewer than the “supermajority” of 90 seats they believe they had when the campaign started on May 9.
After a shaky performance in the last televised leaders’ debate Sunday, Ford trotted out his team of “star candidates” Monday to showcase his potential cabinet.
Surrounded by former leadership rivals Christine Elliott and Caroline Mulroney as well as potential senior ministers such as Rod Phillips and Peter Bethlenfalvy, the PC chief underscored that he has a deeper pool of talent than Horwath.
But Ford’s repeated claim that the New Democrats “are not ready to govern” may have been undermined by his failureto release the “fully costed platform” ffplatform” he has been promising f for weeks.
Instead, the Tories quietly unveiled a list of campaign promises on their website WWWednesday, such as a 10-cent tax break on a litre of gas, but offered no details on their proposed $6 billion in annual spending cuts.
With the election coming down to seat-by-seat trench warfare, Ford raced this week to Sarnia and Sault Ste. Marie, wwwhere PC incumbents are in jeopardy.
Wynne, meanwhile, has mostly been barnstorming Liberal ridings in what many see as a bid to “save the furniture” by keeping them in party hands. Before stumping with former prime minister Paul Martin in WWWaterloo, she acknowledged t this is not the campaign the Liberals had in mind, given Ford’s late entry into the arena and the surprise rise of the NDP.
“I can read the numbers like anybody else,” she said. “I know wwwe’re running third. I know that it’s a big hill to climb and I know we don’t have a lot of time.”
Wynne says she will fight to the end — as evidenced by her stop at the campaign office of Liberal candidate and Prince Edward County Mayor Robert Quaiff in PC-held Belleville on Thursday night.