I would be leery of these polls.
The problem is that these polls just don’t get into the riding level. The LARGEST sample, the Abacus poll on 16-18 May, sampled 2824 people, which is about 26 people per riding. It is entirely possible such a poll would badly miss entire regions or would fail to note a disconnect between the popular vote and riding level results.
Yes, when it gets to the nitty-gritty of winning seats, the distribution of support by ridings is crucial.
It sounds like the PC support is concentrated around TO and Hamilton, which likely translates into more seats than the NDP, whose support is spread out more evenly, so results in fewer seats.
But the PCs aren’t going to spend my money! They’re going to be spending magical moon money that they get from “efficiencies”.
Their most important plank is “Wynne sucks” and they’ve been promoting that one pretty hard.
They don’t even have a platform yet so I’ve no idea if they plan on spending more money, less money, or the same amount of money. Of course, I believe Doug Ford no further than I can throw his fat ass.
Wynne DOES suck. The problem, of course, is that in a three party system, “That party sucks” as your central message is just as likely to make the voters vote for the OTHER opposition party as it is to make them vote for yours. I mean, thanks Doug, Whynne is a bad Premier. So I guess I’ll vote for Andrea Horvath and the NDP, they’re an alternative to Wynne and the Grits, I’m just following your advice, pal.
There is nothing more important in a winning political campaign than a* clear, affirmative reason to vote for the party/candidate.* If you give the voter a short, easily understood, positive reason to vote for you, you’re halfway there. I cannot for the life of me tell what the PC’s message in this regard is; they’ve made a lot of promises, but almost too many, and they’re not really tied together thematically.
I think the theme is, “We’ll give the rich people all the tax breaks they want, we’ll give the social conservatives all the limitations on other people’s behavior they want, and everyone else will get beer in convenience stores.”
While I’ll admit I do like that last one, the rest of it means it just isn’t worth the trade offs.
Ontario has plenty of rural constituencies which lean conservative. But these constituents sometimes have a negative view of Toronto, and I suspect Ford is seen as Torontois. Women are also said to be less impressed by Ford. One cannot help but think both the PCs and Liberals would have benefitted from different leaders. I still don’t know how I’m going to vote — big party/leader mismatches.
Ah. Perfect timing, eh?
I don’t even see the first thing, though. I honestly don’t know what their tax plan is. As God is my witness I tried to figure it out just now from their website, and it’s just awful; you have to divine their plans from a series of questions you answer, and to do that you have to give them your contat info. The one thing I do know they plan to do is to cut hydro rates by 12 percent, which is an incredibly stupid idea, but, in fairness, does appeal to voters. Of course, the NDP claims they’ll cut electricity prices by 30 percent, which is beyond stupid and into insane, but I have faith that, presented with reality, they won’t; Ford, conversely, cannot be trusted in any respect.
The CBC poll-aggregator in post # 1 has flipped this morning. It’s now got the NDP in the lead, by one point: 37.7% over 36.7% for the PCs. That’s obviously within the margins of error, and the seat projection is still showing a projected PC majority, but that’s a significant change.
The seat projection for the Liberals is now down to 1 seat. They’ve dropped below 20% for the first time.
Thanks for the updates. I haven’t been following the polls and seeing this now is amazing. This is an unambiguous, thorough rejection of Wynne’s Liberals, the kind that forces party leaders to resign. I hope the Libs have some competent leadership candidates in the wings, something the PCs have been struggling with for years and still are. I don’t know how long Ford will remain party leader but I suspect he won’t be in government long. Ontario has a long history of PC rule, but it wasn’t under an idiot like Ford.
Wow I couldn’t have been more wrong…
Defiant Ford says no change in strategy despite slip in polls
Blowing a wide lead and slipping to 2nd place in the polls (with less than 2 weeks left) isn’t enough to get Ford to change campaign strats. Nero would be impressed at the fecklessness of it all.
CBC article about the last time the NDP was threatening to take power. Some interesting parallels.
But man, look at Rae’s bug-eye glasses!
I’d forgotten that the 1990 election was Mike Harris’s first as PC leader. Went from leader of the third party to Premier in the space of two elections.
I think of Bob Rae in terms of the many recent pictures that depict him as an aged gray elder statesman. From that picture it appears Rae won that election when he was 12 years old! 
Mike Harris was the first of what I like to call the PC’s “can’t find a decent leader to save their souls” period after carefully presiding over the province’s thriving economy for 42 consecutive years. I might vote for the PCs myself if they were led by someone like Bill Davis. But no, not only can’t they find a decent leader, each one they come up with seems worse than the previous one. I swear that if Rob Ford was still alive they’d have picked him instead of his slightly saner and less drug-addled brother.
Zombie Rob Ford in 2022!
I was in an elevator with Bob a couple of weeks ago and he is looking very old.
According to Wikipedia, he’s almost 70.
Maclean’s vid: Why Doug Ford’s platform won’t actually save Ontarians money.
It all works out if you use Rob Ford math where a cut in tax income is equal to a cut in tax expenditures.