Ontario Provincial Election October 6th, 2011

[harry]

Toronto Star, Saturday headline story

Tories 35%, Liberals 35%, NDP fading.

[admin]

NDP 23% You can say the number, Harry, I can take it. I want to see another poll that says something similar before I believe this one. It's a little bit irregular though it may be accurate. All the other polls had the PCs ahead. In any case, I'd still accept a result that had the NDP holding the balance of power. That's even better than being the opposition to a majority government.

We'll have to see what happens Tuesday night. I'm going to McThirsty's on Tuesday with my NDP friends to watch the debate there. If anybody else wants to come, feel free.

[HappyPaul]

How did the Leader's debate go?

[admin]

I was sick so I watched it at home. I think Andrea defied expectations. As probably did Hudak. McGuinty was good but it was his to lose. Nobody stumbled that I could say. Did you see it?

[HappyPaul]

No, I am in Nova Scotia. I imagine it is available on the Internet?

[admin]

Here it is:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/09/23/ontario-leaders-debate548.html

I hope you voted before you left.

[HappyPaul]

Sorry, still an American Citizen.

Hard to believe the Election is only a week away.

[admin]

Not hard for me. It's been excruciating.

[admin]

This is going to be a very close election:

In terms of trends, this is Environics's first poll of the campaign so they have nothing to tell us on that score. But the other three all show stability for the two main parties, with changes being comfortably within the margin of error. However, they also all show the Tories slipping a little and two of them have the NDP gaining. Taken together, it would appear that Liberal support is solid, PC support is sliding, and NDP support is on the rise.

( http://threehundredeight.blogspot.com/2011/10/mcguinty-down-to-54-seats-aylward-to-2.html )

Seat projection (based on multiple weighted polls, not just the last few) has:

Liberals 54
PCs      32
NDP     21
Greens   0

54 seats is the minimum number of seats required for a majority. With the NDP trending upwards and the PCs down, it could still be a minority Liberal government but it looks pretty much like the Liberals will be re-elected now. I wonder if Hudak will resign. It's his first campaign as leader but I'm sure the PCs thought this was an election they were supposed to win.

I have to note that if the Liberals get their majority, they will do so with the smallest popular vote in decades at a little more 1/3 of the electorate. You really do have to ask yourself it it's fair that 1/3 of the electorate gets to decide 100% of the decisions.

[HappyPaul]

New Polls

Polls are coming out at the rate of two or three a day now.  Rather than copy them all out, here is a link to the Wikipedia article containing the polling Data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_general_election,_2011

The Liberals appear to be consistently in the Lead.  Minority or Majority?