NDP’S Horwath urges Liberals to vote for her as only way to stop Ford’s Tories
Only the New Democrats can prevent the Progressive Conservatives under Doug Ford from forming government in Ontario next week, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Friday in her most direct pitch yet to Liberal voters.
Speaking at a campaign stop in Toronto, Horwath said she expected a close election on Thursday.
“One thing is certain: Ontarians will elect a new premier to replace Kathleen Wynne,” Horwath said in the Liberal premier’s own riding. “The choice is between me and Doug Ford, (and) to those who have voted Liberal in the past, I invite you to join us to stop Doug Ford and vote for the kind of change that Ontario needs.”
In past elections, voters opposed to the Conservatives have tended to coalesce around the Liberals as their best bet.
This time, however, it appears the strategic vote is poised to break in Horwath’s favour. Horwath’s voting pitch — typically seen as Ontario and federal elections move into their final stretches — comes as polls suggest either she or Ford will become Ontario’s next premier.
Myer Siemiatycki, a politics professor at Ryerson University, said polling suggests a shift to the NDP away from the Liberals began unusually early this campaign given the “fear factor” around the Tories, who’ve been criticized for not detailing how they’d pay for their campaign promises.
“In the past, the Liberals have typically — either federally or provincially — been regarded as, and have been, the stronger party, so the messaging has been to NDP supporters not to waste their vote,” Siemiatycki said.
Wynne, who has been making her own last-ditch appeal to both Liberal and NDP voters to go with her as the voice of pragmatic experience, has also tried to frame the election as between her and Ford’s Progressive Conservatives — despite polls suggesting the Liberals are trailing badly.
In an interview with The Canadian Press this week, Wynne said it was too early to discuss strategic voting — or whether it was going to break in favour of the New Democrats for the first time in years.