Early polls have Progressive Conservatives cruising to re-election

By Kirk Winter

– Analysis –

With the release of a slew of public opinion polls late last week, it is now clear why Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford decided to call a snap early election rather than wait another 15 months to go to the electorate. All numbers not only point to a Progressive Conservative (PC) victory, but suggest that unless there is a seismic shift in voter support over the next month, Ford’s party could be returned with twenty more seats than they currently have and that Ontario’s three opposition parties with more than one seat in the house could be in for a rough ride.

338Canada, seen by many as the politician’s preferred prognosticator because of their riding-by-riding polling data, as of January 31 predicts the provincial Progressive Conservatives will increase their seat count from the 79 they won in 2022 to 99 in 2025, along with increasing their share of the popular vote by a full four percentage points to 44 percent.

338Canada presents a province-wide scenario that predicts Ford’s PCs will make a clean sweep of rural Ontario and that the only competitive ridings in the province will be found in Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto, Guelph, Hamilton and the Far North.

If 338Canada is right, Ford will return to Queen’s Park this spring controlling well over three-quarters of the available 124 seats.

338Canada has little good news for Ford’s opponents in the legislature predicting the New Democratic Party (NDP), who are currently the official opposition, will drop from 28 to 14 seats, the Liberals will remain without official party status dropping from 9 to 8 seats and the Greens will increase their popular vote slightly but will only hold the two seats they currently have.

338Canada has even worse news for the provincial Liberals predicting that leader Bonnie Crombie has only a 27 percent chance of winning Mississauga East – Cooksville in the upcoming vote.

338Canada however does predict that NDP leader Marit Stiles and Green leader Mike Schreiner will be returned to Queen’s Park winning in comfortable fashion in the ridings of their choice.

Locally, the news looks good for long-time incumbent Laurie Scott who is running to win her seventh mandate to represent Haliburton – Kawartha Lakes – Brock at Queen’s Park.

338Canada predicts Scott has a 99 percent chance of winning re-election, and that she represents one of 52 Progressive Conservative seats that are deemed to be “safe” in the upcoming election.

Current polling in Haliburton – Kawartha Lakes – Brock has Scott with 57 percent support of decided voters, the Liberals 15 percent, the NDP 15 percent, Green 9 percent and New Blue 3 percent.

On February 1, an anonymous Progressive Conservative strategist told the Toronto Star that as long as they run a disciplined focused campaign and keep Premier Ford on message, they feel very good about their chances on February 27.

4 Comments

  1. Wallace says:

    Just look at the destruction that has been caused in every western nation on earth, by liberal policies. It should be no surprise to anyone that the masses want nothing to do with liberals anymore.

  2. Randy+Neals says:

    Doug Ford has become a much better speaker in the last few years. He’s exhibited good leadership skill with the Trump Tariff event. Ford has been on major US news networks and didnt make Ontario look half bad. Most of the Premiers have pulled together and worked with Ottawa harmoniously in a way that rallied the resolve of Canadians.

    Ford still has the Greenbelt Scandal yet to play out, but once you open up the lid on scandals, then we have to be equal opportunity and talk about eHealth Ontario, Gas Plants, McGuinty’s Chief of Staff deleting email from government computers. Nope, McGuinty and Wynne were not perfect either. There is no perfect candidate.

    But we don’t vote for Doug Ford, we vote for a candidate in our local riding who will become our MPP.

    There is hardly a more reliable riding for the Ontario PC party than Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock.
    Well, now that I’ve said that, John Tory would disagree with me about reliability of this riding.
    (See the 2009 byelection in case you’re new here)

    What I’m pondering is the value for any riding in being an incremental part of a 99 seat blue sweep across Ontario?
    Whether Ford has 98 Blue MPPs or 99 Blue MPPs sitting in Queens Park, does that really make a difference? It’s still 30 seats over a majority. It’s simply incremental, and the needs of most communities will be resting with a backbench MPP having little to no power or discretion in Ford’s cabinet.

    Ford expanded the cabinet to 36 Ministers, but with 99 MPPs the odds of having any MPP with the super powers of a Minister is 1 in 3.
    99 MPPs is enough so they can have Parlimentary Assistants to the Parlimentary Assistants for all the Ministers.

    I’d love to see Hwy 35 widened down to the 115. I’d love to see a Go Bus to Lindsay. Would be nice to have ample Doctors or RPNs, and would be great if our hospital wasnt over capacity. But show me how my vote achieves any of that. Is there a candidate in our riding even suggesting what might be possible got HKLB ?

    At this point I’ll be using the well tested “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” voting method. Or maybe I’ll just close my eyes and poke the pencil randomly at the paper to see where it lands. I’m convinced that it results in the same outcome as if I actively made a concious choice for a specific candidate.

    But there’s still time to convince me. Who want to widen Hwy 35? Who wants a better hospital?

  3. Ms C Gibson says:

    I think Doug Ford has done more for Ontarians then any other Premier and I hope he does get a big majority
    All the others can talk but do nothing but tax the heck out of us when they get elected.

    • Ron+Sutch says:

      Just exactly what have they done for us? cut health care, cut school funding, put a ceiling on available funds for needed surgeries, so dont be fooled … greenbelt fiasco, beer in the stores (at a big expense) . Who is paying you and me as taxpayers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

*