The tragic events in Moncton pushed the Ontario election campaign off the front page today and the three leaders found their air time on TV news programs cut back as everyone’s attention was drawn to the manhunt in New Brunswick.
With a week to go and the election still very much up for grabs the campaigns will be turning to strategies to get their vote out. This might be a day to focus on organization rather than trying to grab a headline, although there were some surprising news-worthy moments on the campaign trail today.
Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne made one with a surprise endorsement this afternoon. After Wynne’s campaign speech at the Canadian Club, Toronto’s Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly, came to the microphone and endorsed Wynne saying Ontario and Toronto needed a “city-friendly Premier.”
The Liberals are pulling every lever they can to bounce back after Wynne’s subpar debate performance. Yesterday she was in Ottawa sharing the stage with federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. This morning she was surrounded by municipal leaders from across Ontario, including Kelly, and then, to cap it off, the Kelly endorsement. After the endorsement there were big smiles from Wynne as she told reporters her partnership with municipalities is an important part of her government’s platform. Kelly recalled Wynne’s support for Toronto after last Christmas’ ice storm as an example of her leadership.
Virtually every day of this long campaign Tim Hudak has been up early in front of the cameras talking about reining in government spending. He did that again today in Ottawa and he went further. Ottawa is building an LRT line and today Hudak repeated that a PC government would not help fund the second stage of the line saying simply, “We can’t afford it.” There are a couple of close ridings in the Ottawa area and it will be interesting to see if the PC support is affected by the decision not to fund a big public transit project – even if it a few years down the road. Leaving the local PC candidates to clean up any transit fall out after him Hudak flew back to Toronto for media interviews.
Andrea Horwath started her day in the riding of Welland. The NDP have held the riding for a long, long time but in 2011 the Progressive Conservative vote jumped more than 13 per cent. The NDP still won easily. Horwath then went on to a much tighter race in Niagara Falls. The NDP narrowly won here in a byelection in February. Traditionally turn out is low in byelections and the NDP will need to hold off the Progressive Conservatives who came within a few hundred votes of winning the seat. Her last stop of the day was in the Liberal-held riding of St. Catharines.
With the core campaign messages now tabled, the campaigns will be freeing up time for the leaders to hit radio and TV as well as editorial boards. And all three parties will be looking at their internal polls and the published polls to see if and where there is a shift. An EKOS poll today has the Liberals ahead and the EKOS analysis has a bold prediction: “Wynne appears to be on her way to victory, with an excellent shot at a majority.” The poll is at odds with both Abacus and IPSOS which have the Progressive Conservatives in the lead. But the EKOS analysis shows the Liberal lead widens when only likely voters are counted. More poll numbers Friday when the latest IPSOS poll for CTV/CP24 is released.
