TORONTO – Countdown to the election in Ontario. Once the possibility of early voting has ended – the deadline was set for 28 May – voters will have the opportunity to express their preference on Thursday 2 June, from 9 am to 9 pm. Frenetic, as was to be expected, the last weekend of the election campaign for the leaders of the main parties, who have traveled the length and breadth of the province to try to convince the undecided that they still represent a substantial slice of the Ontario electorate. 

NDP leader Andea Horwath was the protagonist of a real tour de force today, with election rallies organized in Windsor, Chatham, London, Bratford and some locations in the Niagara Peninsula. Outgoing Prime Minister Doug Ford, leader of the Progressive Conservative, attended an election event in London, while Liberal Party leader Steven Del Duca held a rally in Windsor before reaching Toronto. Green leader Mike Schrenier continued to campaign in Waterloo.

Meanwhile, the latest polls and the relative projections of seats continue to indicate the Conservatives clearly ahead, while the difficulties of the liberals and neo-democrats are confirmed, at least as regards voting intentions.

In the last three opinion polls, carried out by Mainstreet Research and Angus Reid, the advantage of the Progressive Conservative over the center-left political formations is now firmly in double digits. In the three polls, Ford’s party is attributed 38 percent, 38.3 and 39.1: impressive figures, especially when compared with those of the first phase of the electoral campaign, when the parties were giving life to a balanced three-way race with uncertain outcomes. Now the Conservatives’ lead hovers around or even exceeds 12 percent of voting intentions. The Liberals continue to stand at 26 percent – with a peak of 26.9 percent – while the NDP has a high of 24 percent and a low of 20 percent.

But how does this level of consensus translate into the distribution of the 124 seats available in this election? From the portal 338canada.com, which examined the situation in each individual district, there is no good news for grits and ndippini. Right now the projections speak of 83 seats almost safe for the Progressive Conservative, which would return to Queen’s Park with an absolute majority of deputies. In the worst case scenario – 338canada.com tells us – the Tories would win 59 seats (they would therefore have a minority government), at best the seats won would be even 100.

The NDP, despite being consistently third in voting intentions, would right now have a chance to win more seats than the Liberal Party. The political formation led by Horwath is expected to rank at 25 seats, with a minimum of 11 and a maximum of 37.

The Liberals, on the other hand, are leading in 15 constituencies: here the gap between the minimum and the maximum is 2 and 37.

In short, if the polls have been able to really capture the mood of the Ontario electorate, then the game for Queen’s Park seems definitively closed. However, there are still unknowns that could affect the final result: among them the turnout and the data on last week’s early voting.

In any case, at this moment the turning point for the opposition parties of the last legislature has not been there and even if it were to arrive in these days, we would already be beyond the maximum time.