Politicians are not race horses. We rarely see their workouts. They sometimes come up lame after our assessment. What we try to do is give you the best guess of where the politicos might be on the morning after election day.
The election being held June 2, 2022 in Ontario is not the easiest to forecast. And bear in mind that the person writing a morning line is not necessarily impartial. All I can do is use my experience over more than 60 years of involvement in political campaigns to describe a likely outcome of the campaign. And I am going to simplify this for those who are not used to using race track odds. Let’s even forget the percentages and talk seats in a 124-seat legislature. Because we use first-past-the-post voting, we actually have 124 elections going on and the results of those elections might be as follows:
Progressive Conservatives: 58 Seats.
The broad swath of rural ridings stretching from Ottawa to Windsor has seen little reason to leave their roots in conservatism. They might not really like Doug Ford and his fellow conservatives but many seem comfortable voting that way. Where the conservatives are losing votes as the ballots are counted is in the cities of Ontario and their suburbs.
Liberals: 37 Seats.
While some might scoff at the possibility of the liberals going from seven seats on dissolution to at least 37, it has happened before and is logical based on the anger many people feel about Mr. Ford’s conservatives and their mismanagement of the pandemic, the environment and general arrogance. The positive feeling about Mr. Del Duca of the liberals is that he is unlikely going to do any harm.
New Democratic Party: 26 Seats.
There are just too many seats that the NDP picked up from the liberals last time that are likely to return to their liberal leanings. What the NDP needs to learn is that offering the voters a smörgåsbord of promises leaves them with no concrete reason to support the party.
Green Party: 3 Seats.
I might be doing this just to be perverse but if the liberals and NDP think they could make a deal, they should also include Mike Schreiner and his Greens if he can get a few more elected. And maybe Doug Ford would learn a few things if he watched the governing process from the opposition seats.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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