This is why I have (along with others here) been speculating on who would vote -- if sufferage is high then that means that the weighted polls are going to be wrong and the younger totals will matter more. If voting is low then these polls could seem to be correct.
I'm not as sure that Horwath will win as I was Trudeau, but pretty close. I predict a high turnout from youth concerned about the environment. Her costed program will also appeal.
Even if that were not the case I think Doug Ford scares them and that will bring them out in droves.
Counting on young people not to vote I think is a mistake. The trend may have been dropping numbers but times they are a changing. Baby Boomers were so dominant and the parties so alike young people weren't motivated. Now that boomers are beginning to die off other people have more of a chance to impact the outcome.
Young people have been educated on pollution and climate change since kindergarten. They don't see businesses as providers because young people have no job security so when Ford champions businesses as the route to security it isn't very convincing. They want social services.
The problem here is that the Ford campaign is much more artful.
The strategy is to assume that older voters who want poor bashing and slashing and burning of social supports will vote conservative and will not need a platform. Younger voters are being bombarded with left "for the people" messages -- just look at you tube for an hour. Some will see through this but the more stupid ones will miss it. The Conservatives are working with a wink and a nudge on older voters and sounding as left as the NDP for the youth who won't know any better and may be encouraged by their parents.
Ford has put together the perfect coalition that works for the right -- the greedy and the stupid. all he needs is the greed vote with a decent cohort of stupid vote -- even with the more informed among the youth against him.
It will be a miracle if the NDP can beat this.
You just have to hope that the stupid vote and the not-bother-to-vote does not decide this thing.
Ford's advertising and campaign is the most opaque and dishonest as Ontario has ever seen.
The dynamic you are comparing with is totally different-- in 2015 it was the right party done like dinner and the most dishonest of opposition parties that won. (The NDP campaign was also dishonest with offers long into the futures and claims that taxes would not need to be increasesed in order to pay for needed social justice while the Liberals most sold policy was a bait and switch tax cut for the fairly rich.)
In Ontario you ahve an unpopular government on one side and on the other the NDP and the Conservatives trying to sound like NDP but not giving a platform so they can screw the people without looking like they are breaking platform promises too much.
When you have a party willing to go this low -- you cannot assume they will lose.
Also you cannot assume that the greedy + stupid in Ontario is not a majority. It is if you give an excuse to them to vote together.
Ontario is being fucked for a $1 beer, promise of cheap hydro and a lie.
It has always been a rule in bar economics that the cheaper the beer, the more you have to pay for security. Places with $1 beer are generally characterized by intemperate behaviour, which is not a Platonic virtue. With the collapse of the healthcare system, people will claim they are drinking for 'medicinal purposes', as in days of yore. So this is Ford's plan for healthcare. Well, there's half the provincial budget turned into a profit centre for the international beer oligopolies and local cartels.
