Can we all stop saying that Doug Ford will be the deciding factor in the federal election?
We are living in a bizarre world where the Conservatives won’t say his name and the Liberals won’t stop saying his name. At the risk of insulting strategists in both parties, and hurting Ford’s ego, the Ontario premier simply is not that important to the federal race and the numbers back that up.
Back in the spring and through the beginning of summer, Conservative candidates and campaign volunteers were hearing plenty about Ford and, yes, some of the polling showed a slump for leader Andrew Scheer in that time period. That’s not the case now and hasn’t been since shortly after Ford parted ways with former chief of staff Dean French.
“We used to hear about Ford, now we are hearing about whatever the Liberals are throwing at us,” one Ontario campaign staffer told me.
There was a poll published last week by the Angus Reid Institute and some reporting tried to play up that this was proof that Ford was dragging down Scheer but again, the numbers don’t back it up.
The National Post called it a big problem that 51% of Ontario voters said the policies of the provincial government would impact their vote. Things got worse when that 51% were asked about how it would impact their vote.
“A whopping 85% say the “policies and actions” of the provincial PC government will make them less likely to support Andrew Scheer’s federal Conservative party,” said the Post.
That would be horrible news for any party but when you read to the end of the Angus Reid Institute news release on this poll would have learned that those voters almost exclusively voted Liberal or NDP in the last provincial election.
Wait! What? NDP and Liberal supporters don’t like Ford and won’t vote for Scheer? It’s as shocking as finding out water is wet and fire will burn.
The data tables posted online by Angus Reid tell a different story. Among those who voted for the Ontario PC’s in 2018, 83% say they will back Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives federally. Before Liberals and New Democrats start pointing out that they are losing 17% of the Ford vote, they might want to look at how their own parties fare.
Trudeau’s Liberals only have 80% of the vote of those who voted for the Ontario Liberals last year while Jagmeet Singh’s NDP only has the support of 37% of those that voted for the Ontario NDP in 2018.
The problem these numbers show of Andrew Scheer is that the provincial NDP vote may collapse in behind Justin Trudeau and if that happens he is in trouble.
In a column the other day, Warren Kinsella asked why Scheer isn’t a shoo-in to win this election. It’s a good question but what I can tell you is that Doug Ford is not the answer, at least not in the way most people are playing it.
Trudeau’s non-stop invocation of Ford’s name isn’t about peeling away disgruntled Conservative voters, it’s about scaring people that might cast a ballot for the NDP or Greens. Ford voters are still backing Scheer, the question is what happens on the progressive side of the aisle.
If Scheer doesn’t win this election, the last person he can blame is Doug Ford.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
