Here are my first projections for the Ontario election. Don't expect updates as regularly as during the federal election though. The reason being fewer polls being published. Also, Ontario has a tendency to have big fluctuations between polls (especially based on whether they are online or by phone). I therefore think there is a lot of noise in the data and updating too regularly amplifies this noise.
Anyway, here are the numbers, the map and the detailed projections. As usual, feel free to use the model and make your own projections.
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| Polling average, seat projections with 95% confidence intervals, chances of winning the most seats |
Map:
Play with the map here (it's a little bit slow, give it a few seconds after zooming in or out). You can see that the extended GTA has most of the close races.
Riding by riding projections at the bottom of this post.
There is not much to say right now. Ford's PC has a huge lead and is almost guaranteed to win the most seats. The uncertainty is really only about getting a majority. See below for a deeper analysis on that front. The PC wins most rural seats except in the North where the NDP is down (quite significantly according to Mainstreet) but is resisting. There has been a trend going on in the North for years now where the NDP is seeing its support eroding and the Conservatives are rising. Will it be enough to flip many ridings? Right now, no, but it could certainly happen and that would be devastating for the NDP.
This is especially the case since the NDP isn't making up for the drop in the North by increasing in urban environments. It's the Liberals, Ontario's natural party for many, that is back ahead in Toronto. After a disastrous election in 2018, the Liberals have a new leader who has the charisma of a traffic cone but has been running an okay campaign so far (the few bad vetting of candidates notwithstanding). The Liberals being the main challenger to the PC has more to do with the NDP and Horwath being quite useless than the Liberals being that good though.
Will the progressive votes coalesce around one option, Ã la 2015 at the federal level? Maybe but the conditions are a lot less optimal. Del Duca isn't Trudeau, Ford isn't disliked like Harper (he was before Covid though). But there is certainly a chance where the PC falls short of 62 seats. It's currently unlikely but based on my analysis (see graph), we are only a few percentage points from such a situation. Indeed, if the PC's lead over the OLP falls to 4 points, then it's 50-50 for a majority. In that case, it would come down to the close races in the GTA.
Detailed projections (yes I know the Liberals are running only 122 candidates, I'll make the adjustments later).
Ontario Proj May 13 by bryanbreguet on Scribd
