New Poll Puts Ontario Liberals in Minority Position. Really?

The Star has an article on a Forum Research poll that somehow gives the Liberals basically the same number of seats, with the Tories down one and the NDP up one (Libs 53, 36, 18). The poll has the Liberals tied at 32% each with the NDP bringing up the rear at 27%.

First about that seat distribution. Certainly the Liberals vote distribution across the province is very efficient for getting seats at these levels. However if I recall correctly, the last election had the Liberals grabbing 37% of the popular vote versus 35% for the Tories. For the Tories to lose a seat, I would be curious to see which Tory seat had the smallest margin of victory. Is this shift in the popular vote enough for the Tories to lose a seat? Maybe. I should really load in the vote data from the last election so I can play around with it. It does seem odd that the Liberals would go down several percentage points and be in a tie with the Tories and not lose a seat.

Second, what should the opposition do? There has been some clamoring for the PCs and NDP to immediately go to the polls and try and keep Wynne off-balance, especially when earlier polls had the Liberals in third place (and I don't care how efficient your vote is, that's going to cause problems). However now that the legislature is finally back in session, after being prorogued for four months, there's lots of committee time for the opposition to hammer away at the Liberals for Ornge and the gas power plants. Maybe more importantly, third and fourth quarter growth have been very weak for Ontario (right now we only have the Canada number, but there's no indication that Ontario will outperform it). So weak that GDP growth per capita was probably negative. That's bad for revenue and the current large deficit. It's also bad for Wynne since there's still a budget that needs to be tabled and it will have to deal with this weak growth (and possibly weak growth in Q1 of 2013). Voters generally don't like a bad news budget.

Also for the opposition, how accurate is this poll? Some pollsters give better results for better parties. Further, the Ontario teachers unions have usually been a force in recent Ontario elections for the Liberals. Let's just say they won't be making their best effort for the Liberals in the next one.

So what will the opposition do? Considering the news won't be good for Wynne for the next few months, I expect the opposition won't pull the trigger right away, however if there are consistent polls putting the Liberals in third place, they won't hesitate to go.