TORONTO - Ontario voters, always critical to the outcome of any federal election, are taking on an even greater prominence Tuesday as Canadians pass judgment on Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government.
The reason, analysts say, is that Harper appears to have stumbled in Quebec where he had high hopes for a breakthrough, leaving Ontario, with its 106 ridings, as the main battle-ground province.
"Ontario is more crucial because the Conservatives are not going to make the gains they were hoping to make in Quebec," said analyst David Docherty of Wilfrid Laurier University.
"They're going to have to pick up those seats in Ontario."
It's been an uphill battle as Harper's campaign fought to navigate through a fierce economic storm that seemed to have come up as suddenly as a lethal gale on the Great Lakes.
Ontario, which has already bled tens of thousands of auto-sector and other manufacturing jobs over the past few years, has been especially dismayed by the market meltdown and the deepening economic crisis in the U.S., the province's largest trading partner.
"There's a tremendous amount of uncertainty and anxiety being felt in Ontario homes and to be experienced inside Ontario businesses today," Premier Dalton McGuinty said this past week.
McGuinty has been in a running feud with the Harper government over "fairness" in federal transfers, a battle made more difficult as Ottawa feels the economic pinch. The premier argues the feds are short-changing Ontario by about $11.8 billion a year -- money that could be used to ease some of the province's economic pain.
Instead, his finance minister warned a few days ago, the province could find itself back in red ink.
"Stephen Harper called the election early to avoid campaigning in precisely the economic times he finds himself campaigning in," Docherty said.
"Politics is timing, timing, timing. He did not get the timing right."
Ontario voters, too, might remember Harper's finance minister, Jim Flaherty, warning just a few months ago the province was a terrible place to invest in.
The Tories' flip-flop on taxing income trusts -- a broken election promise -- is another issue that some provincial voters will keep in mind as they go to the polling booth.
Many voters, however, will decide where to mark their ballots based on local issues.
Nowhere does this seem more likely than in Haldimand-Norfolk in the heart of rural southern Ontario, where Immigration Minister Diane Finley is in tough against both a Liberal and Independent candidate.
Finley's local leadership has been pilloried by many voters in the east end of the riding, home to Caledonia, the site of an ongoing First Nations land-claims dispute that has at times turned violent.
On the other end of the riding, hard-hit tobacco farmers finally won a promise of a $300-million exit-strategy package just weeks before Harper called the election but only after months of his refusal to entertain the idea.
In recent weeks, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Flaherty himself have tried to shore up Finley's campaign, signs of Conservative concern about their chances.
Further north, Health Minister Tony Clement has stayed close to his Parry Sound-Muskoka riding, which he won by an improbable 28-vote margin in the last election.
Even in a tourist playground known for its upscale cottages, jobs remains a critical concern for those who live there year round.
"The prime minister is saying things are pretty much OK," said Henry Jacek, a political science professor at McMaster University. "(But) people are more worried than he might think."
Still, analysts said, Conservative fortunes in the province are going to depend in large measure on how the opposition vote splits -- especially since the three closest races in the province in the last vote were all ones in which Conservatives squeaked through.
If the New Democrats and Greens siphon off enough votes from the Liberals, the Tories could win some seats with as little as one-third of the popular vote, something they couldn't do in the last election.
"That's why these ridings (like Haldimand-Norfolk) come into play," Docherty said.
Also crucial will be how many of Ontario's more than eight-million eligible voters make it to polling stations, which are open from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
About two-thirds did so in the January 2006 vote. A lower turnout would tend to favor the incumbent Conservatives, analysts said.
