Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca holds a rally in Scarborough, Ont., on May 29.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
We can safely predict that the Liberal Party will improve its standing in the Ontario Legislature after the June 2 election. But that may not save its leader, Steven Del Duca. And the party itself could be in serious trouble.
Let’s take a look at the electoral landscape in the final days of the campaign.
Pretty much everyone agrees that Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives will form the next government. 338Canada.com, which weights and aggregates polls, had the Conservatives at 38 per cent on Sunday. Philippe J. Fournier, who runs the site, projects a Conservative majority government of better than 80 seats.
The Tories appear likely to dominate in the 905, the band of suburban seats surrounding Toronto, named after their area code. A virtual sweep of the 905 just about guarantees any party a win.
With 27 per cent of the popular vote, the Liberals are ahead of the New Democrats, who have 23 per cent. But the 338Canada projections have the NDP taking 25 seats and the Liberals only taking 15, enough to achieve party status in the legislature, which they lost after the past election, but still a distant third-place result.
That’s because the NDP vote tends to concentrate in city centres and in Northern Ontario, while the Liberal vote is more evenly spread out. This makes things both frustrating and tantalizing for the Liberals.
“The NDP vote is highly efficient in the 20-25 per cent range. That’s why it can surpass the Liberals at this point,” Mr. Fournier told me. “However, the NDP vote is highly inefficient in the 25-30 per cent range, unlike the Liberals.”
If the Liberals could manage to win a few more points in the popular vote, vote splits at the riding level could start to work in their favour. They could steal a bunch of seats from the PCs, form the Official Opposition and maybe even deprive Conservative Leader Doug Ford of a majority government.
But unless they can pull off that surge, the Liberals appear doomed to languish in third place in the seat count, again.
There is more worrying news for the Grits. Mr. Del Duca seeks to enter the legislature through the 905 riding of Vaughan–Woodbridge, which he once held. But he was defeated in the previous election by 8,000 votes, and the 338Canada riding projection has it as a toss-up.
Coming third in the seat count and losing his own riding could cost Mr. Del Duca the leadership.
Since this is Andrea Horwath’s fourth campaign as leader of the NDP, both opposition parties might be replacing leaders. If so, which party would be more likely to unseat the Progressive Conservatives could depend on which leader each party chose.
For most of the province’s history, the Liberals have been one of the two governing parties, along with the Progressive Conservatives. Most recently, they governed for 15 years under premiers Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne.
But the NDP formed a government in 1990 under Bob Rae. It is currently the Official Opposition. After June 2, it could be the Official Opposition again. If so, anyone who wants to donate to the progressive political party most likely to unseat the Tories would have good reason to send that money to the NDP rather than the Liberals.
This portrait of Liberal woes may be undeservedly bleak. As my colleague Jeff Gray reports, the Liberal Leader has done a good job of paying down the party’s debt and establishing a solid platform. If the Grits win back party status, and if Mr. Del Duca can find a way to get himself into the legislature, he could continue to lead the party and that party could reassert itself as the governing alternative to the PCs.
But the strength of the Liberal Party, in any province or nationally, is also its weakness. It caters to a broad coalition of voters, grouped on either side of the political centre and committed to pragmatic, responsible, mildly progressive government.
But that coalition is always at risk of evaporating, if voters decide they want either a more emphatically progressive or emphatically conservative alternative.
Either with Mr. Del Duca or with someone else, the Liberals need to get back in the game. Otherwise, voters might forget about them altogether.
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