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Ontario polling thread (April 18, 2012)
April 18, 2012 - 7:27pm
New from Environics, conducted April 10-13:
PC: 37% (+2 from election)
NDP: 30% (+7)
LIB: 27% (-11)
GRN: 6% (+3)
Quote:
The results may explain the more conciliatory tone taken by Premier Dalton McGuinty and Finance Minister Dwight Duncan since last weekend.
http://ontarionewswatch.com/onw-news.html?id=308
The NDP might be able to win an election like that if it could avoid the blame for a writ drop.
Given that the PCs have refused to consider the budget, this is an opportunity to steal some of their support by doing something PC supporters would like. I wonder if this is why Andrea was asking for the HST exemption for home heating fuels.
looking at the increase in Green support, I'm thinking if an election was called we'd get that extra percentage. We'd be quite competitive with the Hudak cons. I don't know if home heating would be the draw.
I realize this is not the right attitude to take but I am not sure that the ONDP is ready to be in power. Only 8 MPPs have any experience and I would not want have to take power with a totally inexperienced caucus with a 16 billion dollar deficit.
I guess that depends greatly on who they recruit as candidates. NOBs you're right. Get a team in place with lots of real life experience dealing with competative interests (which could come in a large variety of fields) and they could be okay. Not sure that is possible, but it isn't imposibble.
I know what you are saying Stock - that said, the Cons are never shy of taking power even when we know they are so not ready to be in power - to me it's about getting good people to surround the newly elected, and help them govern competently and with a social democratic focus.
Assuming that the poll is not an outlier I think those running the ONDP have hit on something most of us missed, including probably the Liberals. I know it has been poo-pooed around here, but the connection between the HST cut that most people can see themselves benefiting from, evennif only a little bit, combined with calling for a tax on those earning more than $500,000 has created a real problem for the Liberals. The Liberals have been put in the position of having to oppose both a little bit of help for the average person AND taxing those reaping the most benefit from a system most people feel is squewed against them. The Liberals are getting painted into a corner. I'm no longer convinced the NDP is afraid of an election. I think with the 'let's work together' approach, the moderate demands and the way Horwath has approached public comment, the ONDP might just actually be positioning themselves for an election with two vulnerable parties less ready than they seem.
You try to win when you can. Whether the ONDP is ready or not, to win or to govern, is another question. Anyways, McGuinty owes the ONDP some love and Dwight Duncan better look to his seat. What do his constituents want? Austerity without balanced budgets? The finance minister running defence for the richest and greediest of Ontario?
And another poll tonight, and even more promising:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1163869--ontario-bud...
Wow! What a misread of the public by the McGuinty Liberals! They'd better fold and fold fast or Horwath has a totally winnable election on her hands. 46% approval!
The forum poll is interesting when you consider where the strength of each party is.
No surprise:
NDP first in North 40% Cons 30% Liberals 23%
Cons first in Eastern Ontario 43% NDP second at 26% Liberals third at 24%
Liberals first in 416 at 37% to 31% for Cons and 25% for NDP
Cons first in Southwest followed by NDP at 30% and Liberals at 27%
Here is the biggie:
905 NDP in first place 35% Cons second 33% Liberals 3rd 28%
Rarely does a party win in Ontario without winning the 905.
Thanks for highlighting that. I didn't see that coming.
To be fair, that is a three-way fight with the NDP in poll position, but still wow...just...wow. Not expected. I hope Mulcair is also paying attention to this. I bet the NDP would be doing better in Eastern Ontario with a more francophone leader. In the 416, that is where I could see the biggest voter shifts happening in an election where it is clear the Liberals are going down to defeat. If the NDP can close the gap with the Conservatives in Southwestern Ontario before any writ drop, then I would say they stand a great chance at government. Having a Hamilton leader, that did better than many probably expected in the last campaign (she has some steel AND charisma!), probably helps.
Nanos poll:
http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/Ontario%20Ballot%202012-04.pdf
If you look to the bottom of the new Forum poll it also shows the federal results for Ontario:
Con 36
NDP 32
Lib 24
Green 5
The Cons run 2% better than they do provincially. The NDP 1% better and the Liberals 4% worse.
The 905 numbers are C 38 N 32 Lib 21.
The big encouragement for the NDP, both fedderally and provincially is the 905, an area of historic weakness. It will also be where most of the new sears will be allocated.
LIB: 35.4
PC: 32.1
NDP: 26.5
Oh, Nanos. What are we going to do with you?
That is provincial of course-- still goofy but not federal
Don't be too harsh on Nanos as he has the NDP gaining 6.3% on the Liberals in just over a month.
Go Andrea Go!
Doesn't surprise me at all. In the United States, poverty is growing fastest in middle-class suburbs, and no doubt with the demographic make-up of the 905 that the same shift is happening there.
The anti-nuclear folks won't vote NDP.
and autoworker, how many anti-nuclear folks are out there? Just curious because alas the Green team has continually lost support both federally and provincially for a long while.
I am not convinced that the Greens have many progressive voters left that could move to the NDP-- they are either very committed Greens or not open to progressive politics-- often being fiscally Conservative. Many Greens, I think would stay home before they vote for another party. And that is what they usually do. I am not convinced that Green vote moves to the NDP often-- I have always argued against simplistic vote migration models. There are usually many small rivers of support change going on at a time and we average them all and make presumptions that x went to y when it may have been some x stayed home some z went to y some w went to x etc. You often see Con vote go down and NDP go up for example but that does not mean any Cons voted NDP-- just that this is the net result of a pile of other moves.
Sean, I still think that some voters still park their vote with the Greens between elections which explains why they always poll higher between elections than in comparison to the real results of any given election.
I have never believed this parking theory. Nor even the idea that huge amounts tell pollsters they vote Green and don't.
I believe that is a misunderstanding of how polls work -- a popular one but wrong nonetheless.
First-- it takes more commitment to be polled than to vote not less. Pollsters get upwards of 95% refusals while over 50% who can vote usually do.
Every party has their core supporters who are died in the wool and want every opportunity to help their party-- they do those polls and certainly get out and vote.
I think the Greens actually have a very low number of voters and just as small a number between elections but a higher percentage of those are willing to be polled. This makes sense when you consider that they are pretty much just a small core of fairly committed people.
In other words I don't think the issue is that they don't vote or park or change their minds but that they are over-counted in polls because many supporters of other parties are less willing to take the time to register their support and are under counted so this implies a higher level of support for the Greens than was ever there.
Put another way: the polls presume that those who do not answer the polls and those who do vote roughly the same way and I think increasingly they don't. We cover the problem by pretending there is some kind of shift that happens. I think the real problem is the methodology and that the shifts are just excuses to explain methodological problems.
If I am right there are not that many loose Green supporters for others to pick up -- and in fact not that many of them ever.
I think that many of the Ontario's Finance Minister's constituents are concerned about their wages, pensions and benefits, and whether Fiat will invest in a new platform for Chrysler's Windsor Assembly Plant, without public subsidies, major labour concessions, or both. Moreover, austerity has been a way of life, in this neck of the woods, for some time. If the ONDP has a credible candidate who can challenge Dwight Duncan, let her come forward and present a viable plan that addresses these anxieties.
Maybe the most interesting possibility (perhaps reflected in the 905 numbers) is that now, pollingwise, the ONDP is in the position to wag the federal party's tail--the reverse of when Horwath and her team seemed to lurk in Laytonmania's shadow...
Buried in this article about a poll on public support for Gay-Straight alliances is the news that the Ontario NDP are statistically tied with the PCs for first place.
Forum Research survey, May 14 2012:
PC - 34%
NDP - 32%
Liberal - 27%
Green - 5%
And that Andrea is the most popular leader by far -
Forum’s poll found that Horwath remains the most popular provincial political leader. She enjoys a 50 per cent approval rating compared with McGuinty’s 27 per cent and Tory Leader Tim Hudak’s 20 per cent.
Majority of Ontarians favour gay-straight alliances and oppose Catholic school funding, poll findsHopefully that will prevent the Liberals from winning the seat left vacant by Wittmer.
On one side of it, that's a valid point. However, how much real preparation for governing do you get while sitting on the opposition benches?
And I think we can pretty much assume that, no matter when the next ONDP government comes to power, the Liberal or PC government it replaces will leave some sort of fiscal booby trap for the ONDP to step into. That may, in fact, have been Peterson's calculation in calling the election two years early in 1991...that the NDP would get in just when the hardest of the hard times were going to hit, be forced to destroy their popularity by making deeply unpopular choices that alienated their core voters, then the Liberals could come roaring backat the next electon by promising to restore "the good old days". If Peterson hadn't unexpectedly lost his own riding, this strategy might well have succeeded, producing another OLP majority in 1995 or 1996.