Which exit for Ontario voters, PC or NDP?
With just days to go before Ontarians elect a new government, the only prediction that seems a lock is that voters there can’t wait to dump Premier Kathleen Wynne and her incumbent Liberals who are badly trailing in the polls.
It hardly matters that most pundits judged Wynne won Sunday night’s final leaders’ debate, with the NDP’s Andrea Horwath and Progressive Conservatives’ Doug Ford focused on beating up each other.
That’s because the question Ontario voters appear to be most struggling with now is which direction to turn away from the Liberals on June 7 — left or right?
Even before the election was officially called on May 9, this looked like the Tories’ race to lose. The PCs had topped the polls for more than three years before the election call. As recently as early April — after the Liberals had unveiled a massive deficit-spending budget the month before — the Tories led Wynne’s government by 15 points.
But many observers question whether the Conservatives may have damaged their electoral chances after choosing Doug Ford as their new leader in March. Former leader Patrick Brown resigned in the wake of accusations of sexual misconduct in February.
Ford’s campaign has been dogged by controversies as well as concerns over the lack of a costed party platform explaining how he’s going to pay for all his campiagn policy proposals. Horwath’s NDP has been the beneficiary. The New Democrats have shot from third-place status to leading the opinion polls by three or four points in recent days.
If the election were held today, the PCs would still be favoured to win due to voter distribution. But if Horwath’s momentum continues at Ford’s expense over the next week and a half, the NDP could yet pull off an upset. Though there are clearly differences over issues like back-to-work legislation, Horwath’s platform most resembles Wynne’s. That gives disaffected Liberal supporters looking to stop Ford a tempting place to park their votes. The electoral outcome in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, will cast a long shadow nationally.
Where Wynne was a strong supporter and ally of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Doug Ford premiership would pose challenges for the federal Liberals on issues like carbon pricing and a potential national pharmacare plan. Political pundits say the federal Liberals would find it much easier dealing with an NDP-governed Ontario.
At the same time, observers say, the almost certain loss of the Liberal political stronghold of Ontario, where the party has ruled for 15 years, will be a psychological blow for Trudeau’s government. A Wynne loss would underline the federal Grits’ own recent vulnerability in the polls and increase uneasiness about their electoral chances in 2019.
- from The Chronicle Herald