Liaison (Ontario): PC: 44%, OLP: 35%, ONDP: 15%, OGP: 3%, OTH: 3%

The OLP has a huge disadvantage not having a leader in Queen’s Park, because those are clips not being made showing them “owning” Doug Ford and circulating them. Yes, it’s sound bites, but it works.

Anyways, whether Bonnie stays or goes as leader (and I strongly suspect the party will choose to keep her), moving forward, they need to do 4 things:

1. Spend at least a year uniting the party, because if it’s Crombie or someone else (even Nate), the party will be split. Crombie’s mistake was not spending time to unite those that didn’t vote for her as leader, and now she’s seeing the results of not delivering with the grievances of the leadership review.

2. Outflank the NDP on 1 or 2 progressive policies, because with a weak NDP, progressives who typically vote NDP will need a reason to keep voting for you. You don’t have to go full socialist at all. The centrists will vote for you regardless. But you need to show that progressive priorities still exist in the Liberal Big Tent.

3. Leverage the broader Liberal brand – scrap the whole campaign from the election that was centred around Crombie. Polling data shows shes the least liked Ontario leader. So leverage the broader Liberal brand thanks to the current popularity of the Federal Liberals.

4. Master social media algorithms and dominate the online marketing landscape – The federal CPC is the strongest when it comes to marketing themselves online. You even have Mamdani in the US doing well in this area. This is modern politics in the age of populism. Master it, especially since your leader will be absent from Queen’s Park. Have them talking about the state of healthcare in the province, and blame Doug Ford for it. Or traffic. Or anything on the minds of Ontario Residents.

Doug Ford stays in power because of weak opposition parties being ineffective in holding him accountable. Which is why the OLP needs to spend some time building a strong foundation first before anything else.

> Forty-two percent of Ontarians said they believe housing construction has remained about the same compared to five years ago. Another 33% said it has increased somewhat, while just 12% correctly identified that construction has in fact decreased. Housing starts in Ontario are down, especially in Toronto, compared to five years ago. Only 12% of Torontonians say construction has decreased – the same as the Ontario average.

> 43% of PC voters say more housing is being built today than 5 years ago – the number is lower for NDP voters (24%) and Liberal voters (28%).

I like when polls actually poll voters’ knowledge. It’s going to be hard to convince voters to move away from Ford when they don’t even know the facts. Misinformation and disinformation has become a huge problem in politics. It makes sense that voters aren’t going to be very receptive to parties that are campaigning on solutions for problems that voters are poorly informed about.

Political campaigning changed significantly in 2018. The media landscape is now much more favourable to the PC and worse for the ONDP and OLP. The ban on corporate and union donations helped the PC a lot. In fact, corporate donations have *increased* since then. The difference is they now shifted to political action groups, where donation amounts are unlimited. This type of American approach to campaign financing heavily favours corporate interests. The Ontario Proud model changed the entire game and has become the standard.

Crazy difference between Liaison and Abacus especially considering they were both pretty accurate in the last provincial election (Liason a bit better), though I guess Liaison is still ahead in my book since they were almost spot on in the federal election compared to Abacus.

Also 42% of people thinking the federal government has the most influence over housing availability compared to the 20% that think the province and just 15% for the municipal government is depressing.