Why have the polls in Ontario barely budged?

Jordan When Ontario’s election campaign began about a month ago, everyone in the province was waiting to see in which direction the polls would move. In two days now, Ontario votes. The province is still waiting. It was assumed that this election would be a referendum on Premier Doug Ford’s performance. Meanwhile, Progressives were looking towards the recent federal Liberal and NDP supply and confidence motion as an example that the left in Ontario could unite when it was in their best interests to do so. But that hasn’t happened. Ford has held steady in the polls the entire time, despite the occasional gaffe like his insistence that more highways will actually help fight climate change. Rather than teaming up to try to hold the Ford government to a minority however, Liberal leader Stephen Del Duca and NDP leader Andrea Horwath have spent much of the time attacking not Ford but one another. So on June 2, the fate of the province is in the hands of the voters alone. What will they have to say about it?

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is The Big Story. Richard Southern is the Queen’s Park reporter for CityNews. He has been on the campaign trail all month. Hi, Richard.

Richard Southern Jordan, it is good to be back with you. How exciting is this that we are so close to the big day?

Jordan So I don’t know how exciting it is because that’s what we’re going to talk about today. It feels like this month has pretty much flown by and not much has changed, I guess. Let’s just start with this, with a couple of days to go before Ontario votes, has anything about this campaign been surprising to you?

Richard Southern Just the only surprise to me is that it hasn’t been as hectic as maybe, dare I say, as exciting as I was expecting it. A lot of myself and my media colleagues were expecting for there to be a lot of mud slinging, for this to be a close race. None of those have really panned out. I mean, we’ve seen some mudslinging. There’s been some opposition research people have dug into the history of some candidates and some parties, the Liberals in particular have lost some candidates. But other than that, it’s been fairly peaceful as far as campaigns go. But the biggest takeaway, Jordan, is certainly that the polls haven’t budged. And the way this race looked on day one of the campaign is pretty much how it looks here on day 27, believe it or not.

Jordan So just break that down. Day 27, where do the polls stand? What do they say will happen on June 2?

Richard Southern The polls have pretty much all been in agreeance. You don’t see that all the time because some of these polls, they’re from organizations that are a little bit more left leaning or a little bit more right leaning. The polls have been pretty much in agreeance since January, and they haven’t budged much throughout this campaign. You look at the latest one that came in last night from Main Street, and this is pretty indicative of where they all stand, Conservatives with 37% support, and then it’s a battle for second place. If you believe the polls, Jordan, and it’s a cliche to say, but the only poll that matters is on election night. But if you believe the polls, it’s a race for second place. That’s where we’re seeing the exciting race here.

So PCs with 37% support there in the lead, the Liberals 27%, followed by the NDP at 24. So it’s a toss up at this point who could form the official opposition. That’s where your exciting race is. So all of these polls, if you break it down by seat, it looks like Doug Ford will win another majority. Some of the models, believe it or not, have the Doug Ford Conservatives winning a larger majority than they did four years ago. That’s astounding to think about when you look at how tumultuous things were certainly through the first half of the Doug Ford government, I don’t think anyone expected a larger majority than when the Liberals got trounced four years ago. But that’s certainly a possibility. That’s the question right now, Jordan. How big is the majority going to be and who’s going to come in second?

Jordan So considering that nothing much moved in the polls from the beginning of the race until it’s almost conclusion, can you maybe break down the campaigns run by the four parties and why nothing moved the needle? Everybody knows social media is not the world, but there was a prevailing thought on social media, and I think, as you mentioned among your colleagues, that this was going to be a wild election race. And what did the campaigns each party ran have to do with that not materializing?

Richard Southern Sure. Both the NDP and the Liberals and indeed the Green Party, they tried to throw all sorts of things at the Conservatives to try and budge this race. None of them really stuck. I mean, let’s look at the Liberals. And I think the Liberals really came out strong with Del Duca at the beginning of the campaign. They slowly launched their platform over the course of a week or two, a lot of easy to understand ideas promising a higher minimum wage of $16 per hour, promising a handgun ban. This is before we saw the tragic events in Buffalo and in Uvalde, Texas. But the Liberals on April 19 actually, for the first time they promised a handgun ban in Ontario. Went after affordability, the Liberals did, promising to get rid of the provincial tax on prepared foods under $20. So things like that rotisserie chicken you might buy will be cheaper. None of these easy to understand measures, though, really move the needle for the Liberals.

And then the Liberal campaign got into some trouble. Three candidates dropped out. The Liberals are actually not running candidates in three ridings. This is the first time since Confederation that we’ve seen this happen. It’s because the NDP and the PCs, they dug into the history of some of these candidates. In some cases, they found some homophobic remarks that were written by these candidates in books or online and that led to their departure. So they’ve had some issues. That candidate for the Liberals dropped out in Chatham-Kent-Leamington last week because her paperwork was allegedly not correct. She didn’t have the correct signatures on it. So maybe you could argue a bit of a sloppy campaign in that regard for the Liberals.

The NDP were certainly hoping to just gain ten seats and then maybe work with the Liberals. That’s kind of what they were saying in not so many words. They came out with a lot of affordability issues as well. They’re promising a $20 minimum wage. They are promising to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They’re promising to cap the price of gasoline on a weekly basis to stop the big up and down moves for gasoline. They’re promising to hire 20,000 teachers and education workers. But I think if you look at the debates, NDP leader Andrea Horwath struggled to be heard over the other individuals in those debates. And then, of course, COVID came along. Andrea Horwath got COVID halfway through this race and that took her off the campaign trail for the better part of a week. She did campaign virtually, but it’s not the same. And she might have lost a bit of an edge in that regard.

Green Party leader Mike Schreiner, he may have run the best campaign, but it’s easy to do when you don’t have much to lose. But Schreiner looked great during the debates. He’s the only one talking about certainly what is a very important issue in climate change to any great degree. And the Greens could pick up a seat in Muskoka. It’s possible. They only have the one now, Mr. Schreiner’s, they could gain another one.

But then you come to the front runner, Doug Ford, and he has run a classic, Jordan, front runner campaign.

Jordan What does that mean?

Richard Southern He stuck to his message and he hasn’t made any mistakes and he hasn’t had the opportunity to make too many mistakes because they have kept him away from the media to a certain extent. We could talk more about that. I think some people have overblown that. But classic frontrunner campaign in that he hasn’t made any mistakes. He’s stuck to his message. He’s not out there making any wild promises. They put all their cards on the table platform wise at the beginning of the campaign. He’s been very reserved. If you’ve watched Mr. Ford over the years, he can easily get riled up. He speaks off the cuff. Maybe that’s a good thing, but sometimes he can say things that maybe he later wishes he didn’t say or that can get him in trouble. That hasn’t happened during this campaign. He has been well rehearsed. I think he stuck to his talking points. He knows he’s in the lead and they sort of buckled down and they’ve run this classic frontrunner campaign where they haven’t made any mistakes thus far. So that’s kind of where we are. Nothing has really knocked the Conservatives here in the 27 days of this campaign.

Jordan Well, the last time we spoke at the beginning of this campaign, we talked about where the polls were then. They’re very close to where they are now. And the one thing that stuck out to me that we spoke about was the potential for the Liberals and the NDP to work together to hold forward to a minority or back one another strategically, somewhat akin to the way their federal counterparts have done. Has that played out on the campaign trail at all? Have they been working arm in arm with one another?

Richard Southern No, they’ve been fighting each other. They really have been going at each other. Because if you look on a race by race basis, there’s a lot of areas where the Liberals feel they can take votes away from the NDP, especially in downtown Toronto proper. So it’s for that reason they’ve really gone at each other a lot. And you do have to wonder about the strategy there. Should they be attacking Doug Ford and the Conservatives in unison? I don’t know, perhaps. I mean, we did hear some talk before the election from both of the leaders, Mr. Del Duca and Ms. Horwath, about, hey, if there was a minority Conservative government, would you guys join forces? And they both seemed open to that possibility in that they both said we wouldn’t support a Conservative government. But this is also something that would happen after the election if there was a minority, not something that really plays out during the campaign. And I asked just last Friday, Ms. Horwath, ‘hey, do you wish you worked closer with the Liberals?’ And she’s back to her talking points of saying, no, we have a stark difference in policy. We have our own way. We’re the only way to unseat Doug Ford. So these are two parties that are very far apart.

Jordan This is where I want to stop you and speak for the voter, because the one thing that I’ve seen during this campaign, from the Liberals and the NDP and from the Green Party, of course, too. But leaving them out, both major progressive parties have messaged on Ontario cannot afford more of Doug Ford. He’s destroying this province. He’s privatizing things, etc. Etc. And to me, as a voter, again, it rings a little hollow when you run with that message so prominently and then spend your time not working together. If this is so important, you would think that they could put their partisan issues aside and agree that Doug Ford is the worst thing for Ontario and try to run on that. It doesn’t feel like that.

Richard Southern No, I mean, look, there’s a lot of money at stake in these two parties. They do have some stark platform differences, and we’re just not at the point where I think they’re going to say, let’s work together, because that could work to their disadvantage, their respective disadvantage in a lot of cases. So we’re not there yet. If there was a minority PC government elected, I think you could see some movement on that front. But it’s not something you’re going to see during the campaign. It is splitting the vote. I mean, let’s not beat around the bush. You’re going to have around 60% of Ontarians voting for a party that is not the Conservative Party that’s going to win likely. So, I mean, you have to take issue with, or blame that, if you will, on vote splitting, but also on the parliamentary system as it stands right now. So there’s broader issues to talk about when you bring stuff like that up, I think.

Jordan Okay, fair enough. Let’s talk about Ford strategy, as you mentioned, keep him away from the media, or at least keep them under control and not flying off the cuff. There have been a lot of accusations about not just Ford, but PC candidates ducking debates, ducking questions from the media. How open has this party been to taking questions from the public and the media? And I mean, CityNews reported extensively on this in various writings. And what’s that impact been in terms of coverage of this campaign?

Richard Southern Certainly the local candidates not participating in debates is a real thing and a widespread thing. And yeah, we have done a lot of coverage on this, and my colleague Cynthia Mulligan has done a lot of work on this. I think the majority of the ridings have seen the PC candidate not participate in the debates. Again, there’s a classic frontrunner strategy in that, why risk it? If we’re leading, why put these guys out there? Some of them are not as experienced politicians as others. Why put them out there to make a potential mistake? That’s the way the party is looking at it. Of course, this is not great for democracy. You as a citizen, you want to see your local representatives up there talking in a debate, having a lively debate about the issues. I think people deserve that. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s great that the candidates are not out debating, but you can see politically how the PCs are treating that. Why put these guys out there when they can make a mistake?

Now, on the issue of is Doug Ford available? Could he be more available? Absolutely. Has there been sometimes a combative relationship between the press and Ford’s office over the years? Yes. But if I want to ask Ford a question on almost any day, I could probably do it. They don’t take virtual questions as the other parties do. But a lot of the events have been in and around the GTA. So speaking just for me personally, if I, as I have done many times, want to head to Brampton, where a lot of the events have been for Ford because they have some close ridings there or to the southwestern Ontario, I can drive out there and I’ll be able to ask Ford one question and one follow up. So a lot has been made about him not being available and he could be more available. But at the same time, I’ve been able to ask a question when I want to ask a question.

Jordan I want to ask you about a few issues as we approach the end of the campaign trail that have been raised recently. One of them, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I want to ask since, as you say, the polls haven’t moved. Barring anything major, it looks like another Ford majority. There were a whole lot of reports this weekend about smaller items being removed from OHIP coverage, blood tests and things like that. Is this something that we should expect more of if Ford wins? I’m trying to get a handle on what the next four years will look like.

Richard Southern So I’m actually working on a story about this now and trying to figure out whether or not it’s true or not. Okay, so these are some tweets that people have made over the weekend talking about how blood tests or some blood tests are not covered under OHIP. I’m still trying to figure out all the details, but what I found out so far is there haven’t been any changes to OHIP blood coverage in like at least two years. Most blood tests are covered under OHIP. So I’m not going to say whether or not that’s true or not at this point. It’s not looking like it is very true. I mean, a lot of people accuse Doug Ford of privatizing health care. We actually saw on Sunday a protester run on the stage while Ford was holding a big event in London, Ontario, and he was stopped by OPP security just like a foot away from Ford. And he was yelling, hey, you’re, privatizing healthcare. There’s been no evidence that Ford has initiated any more privatization in healthcare. I mean, there’s been a lot of misquotes attributed to the outgoing health Minister, Christine Elliott, on this, but they are, from what we understand, misquotes. And from what I can garner at this point, there hasn’t been.

Jordan Where do you think this fear comes from then?

Richard Southern Canadians, not just Ontarians, Canadians, as you know, Jordan, they are very passionate about our socialized medicine. And look, healthcare maybe hasn’t been a big enough issue in this campaign. Doug Ford four years ago promised to end hallway medicine. And you walk into most hospitals now and you’re still going to see a lot of overcrowding issues and certainly COVID highlighted those issues. Has Doug Ford fulfilled all his promises on health care? I don’t think so. Should we be talking about that more? Perhaps, yes. But again, I don’t think there’s been any more privatization going on. Ontarians are always worried about that. And I think there are people on the left who maybe want to bring up some maybe personal issues they’ve had like going into a Life Labs and being charged for a test. And they tweet that out, though, without realizing, is this new? Is this something that’s been changed in the last four years? They put it out there under the guise that it is, but I’m not 100% sure that that’s accurate right now, which is why I think mainstream media is important. And again, this is a story we’re working on to try and get to the bottom of it.

Jordan Fair enough. The other issue I wanted to ask you about, you already mentioned it at the beginning, that aside from Mike Schreiner, there hasn’t really been a lot of talk about climate from the candidates. And we actually did an episode on this with one of our friends from the Narwhal at the beginning of the campaign, illustrating that none of the candidates, aside from Schreiner, really had a climate plan at all. Halfway through this campaign, we saw a terrible storm that eventually killed nine people. There are still people without power in Ottawa right now where Doug Ford is today to talk about this emergency. Why do you think, given all of that, that climate hasn’t been an issue?

Richard Southern Yeah. I mean, it’s crazy when you think about it, isn’t it? I mean, with what’s going on. I mean, it’s not a case in Ontario. I mean, you look at the US election, it hardly came up there in their presidential election almost two years ago. It’s hard, I think, for people to look at this issue, and a lot of it is still ten years out, or even though we are feeling the effects now, it’s something that is down the road, and people are concerned about going to the grocery store and being able to afford their grocery bills. So they’re more concerned with those immediate issues. Why is it costing me $150 to fill the gas tank? That’s what people are worried about. PC Leader Doug Ford, he’s run his campaign around, one of the big issues is building two new highways. Just today he was in Ottawa not visiting with people who have had their power out for eight whole days. There are still thousands of people without power for eight days. He hasn’t been visiting with them. He was today promising to expand highway 417, which is a major highway that cuts through Ottawa. So he has run his campaign on building highways. He actually said the other day last week, as a matter of fact, he was asked about climate and the highways and all this. And he says, well, we believe that ending gridlock will improve emissions. This was his thought that if you don’t have people stuck bumper to bumper that there’s going to be fewer emissions. Don’t think that’s necessarily true, but that’s how Mr. Ford was trying to spin it.

Jordan That’s why they keep him away from the media during the campaign.

Richard Southern Case in point, but it is crazy that we haven’t talked about climate more. And I think you hear that exasperation from Mr. Schreiner when he talks.

Jordan I want to briefly return to the polls, not to harp on them and not to necessarily predict the outcome, but to ask you, we spoke at the beginning of this campaign again about the key ridings that would have to flip for the Liberals or the NDP to have a chance at keeping Mr. Ford to a minority. I know what the polls say, but what about at a riding level? The Liberals in the NDP can go at each other all they want, but if the people decided to vote strategically, is this still within a margin where some of those key seats could flip and we could be talking about a minority government?

Richard Southern Potentially. There are some very close ridings. I mean, you need to look no further than Brampton North. It’s been a key battleground. You’ve seen all the leaders spend a lot of time there. Right now, you have the PC candidate, Graham McGregor in the lead, but only very slightly in Brampton North. That’s one that could go either way. You look at the riding of Essex, another very close one in that region. Tory candidate Chris Lewis lost by just 2700 votes to the NDP there four years ago. The NDP Incumbent Taras Natyshak is no longer running. That’s a riding that’s up for grabs. Ottawa West Nepean, that’s another nail biter at this point by all accounts, PC incumbent candidate Jeremy Roberts won by just 175 votes four years ago. He was with PC leader Ford today. Ford was there trying to give him a bump. The new Democratic candidate, Ms. Pasma, is close in the polls there. And then you have Parry Sound – Muskoka. This has been a Tory stronghold for a long time, but it looks potentially like the Green Party candidate Matt Richter could perhaps unseat the Tories in Parry Sound – Muskoka. There’s a few close races here, Jordan. Whether it’s going to be enough to make it for an interesting election night for Doug Ford on Thursday, I don’t know. I would say at this point, I don’t think so.

Jordan Fair enough. Last question then, assuming that there isn’t an upset, what happens next if the Progressive Conservatives do retain power and here, I guess because I assume nothing would change from the government’s point of view, specifically to the Liberal and NDP leaders and parties. This would be twice in a row that they’ve lost to Doug Ford, which has to make them think changes are necessary. ‘

Richard Southern I think it’s possible you could see two party leaders resign on election night. This is very possible. Certainly NDP leader Andrea Horwath, she’s running her fourth election. If she were to, as the polls are suggesting, lose ground, perhaps lose the official opposition status, I think it would be incumbent on her to step aside. We’ll see if we see that on election night or not. Mr. Del Duca is going to be an interesting case. His riding of Woodbridge, which is very close. He is actually losing that riding in terms of the polls right now. It’s very possible that Mr. Del Duca does not win his home riding, of Vaughan-Woodbridge, where Mr. Michael Tibollo, an incumbent PC candidate, is leading in the polls. We’ve seen Ford go door knocking with Mr. Tibollo a few times. Del Duca running behind in his home riding. So if he were to, first of all, not really have his party contend to any great degree to form government number one, but also to lose his home riding, you could think that it might be incumbent on him to resign on election night. So there could be a lot of turbulence going on across the aisle if this is how it plays out on election night.

As far as what it means going forward for the Conservatives, it’s going to be really interesting. A year ago Doug Ford was in trouble. Last April going back just over a year ago, we had that big wave of the pandemic come in. Ford had that much maligned news conference where he said we’re going to have the police check everyone’s ID, we’re going to close down the playgrounds. A day later, he backs away from that. There was turbulence. There was a big trouble around Doug Ford politically at that point. What happened then? We had two people step in, Mr. Kory Teneycke who is running this PC campaign, and Nick Kouvalis, a longtime Ford family friend and pollster. These two gentlemen took over at that point and they righted the ship. They have run this campaign, you could argue, very well. Basically from October or November, we’ve seen the messaging being brought in by the Conservatives. They have righted the ship. They have steadied Doug Ford. They have prepared him for these media avails where I say he’s been very relaxed and very in control and sticking to his talking points.

So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when these two gentlemen leave because the campaign is going to be over. What does Doug Ford do then? What does he do in his first 100 days? When does he bring the Legislature back? It’s going to be interesting. Who does he fill the key portfolio spots with? He’s losing his health Minister and deputy Premier in Miss Elliott. He’s lost one of his top ministers in Rod Phillips, who does he replace these people with and who’s going to be in control in his office? Big questions going forward.

I should mention Jordan, we just got the numbers in from Elections Ontario. The advanced polls were opened for ten days, just over a million Ontarians voted. 9.9% of eligible Ontarians voted in the advanced polls which were open for ten days. How does that compare to four years ago? Well, it’s up. 6.8% of eligible voters voted four years ago in the advanced polls, almost 700,000. However, those polls were only open for five days. The numbers are not double even though the polls were open for twice as long. So there’s a couple of ways to look at that but I still say it’s pretty interesting that almost 10% of the electorate voted in the advanced polls. That shows certainly some interest in this election.

Jordan We will see how the other 90% vote if all 90% of them do.

Richard Southern Usually about 50%. We’ll see. If we get over 50% turnout, that will be interesting to see.

Jordan We’ll see what the other 40% want to do with this province. Richard, thank you. And it’s not over till it’s over. So let’s see what happens on election night.

Richard Southern Can’t wait. We’ll see. Thank you Jordan for having me.

Jordan Richard Southern Queens Park reporter at CityNews. CityNews.CA by the way is where you will find Richard’s story on OHIP changes or on no OHIP changes.

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Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.

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