... The thing is, I bet the Liberals would have won this by election without appointing Thibeault and trying to buy off Olivier.
There was a short series of sketches on Saturday Night Live many years ago: What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly? What if Superman's rocket had landed in Nazi Germany? Speculative questions usually make me think back to that -- good for a few laughs, but just silly speculation for the most part. (For what it's worth, I agree that the Thibeault exercise ended up hurting the Liberals' chances more than helping them.)
I think that the Wynne Liberals tried to be too clever here, as they tried to be too clever in Kitchener-Waterloo in appointing a Conservative MPP to a comfy position in order to open up a seat they thought was "theirs". When I've canvassed, the "Toronto people are trying to tell Sudbury who their candidate shoud be" approach was received warmly (on very cold days) at many, many doorsteps. (To be realistic, many doorsteps also had the "blank look" that experience has taught me goes with Canadian voters who are too polite to tell a stranger that they have no intention to vote, so instead say "I haven't made my mind up yet" and hope you just let them shut the door.) The Sudbury Star has had by-election news every day, which would never happen for a Toronto campaign (the smaller the community, the greater the need there is to fill the Local News sction -- presuming the community is big enough to have a daily newspaper to start), so turnout will be a little better than other recent by-elections. But still, I think turnout will be about as low as it generally is for by-elections, and I think the Wynne advisors' antics will be enough of a reason for potential Liberal suporters to not bother to vote.
When I was in the NDP campaign office, every New Democrat I had met over the years from Sudbury and Nickel Belt was there -- if anything, Thibeault's defection not only failed to "bring a personal following along" with him to the Liberal camp, it motivated local New Democrats to work harder. There is real motivation for local New Democrats to not let Thibeault personally profit from the volunteer efforts they put in over recent years to get him into elected office.
I think that motivated voters lie disproprtionately on the NDP side in this campaign (that's just my two cents, of course, from knocking on doors). We shall see how many people actually get out to vote on Thursday.