Ontario NDP, Liberals spar over 'strategic voting' to defeat Doug Ford

The Ontario New Democrat and Liberal leaders are jockeying over who is best placed to stop Doug Ford from winning a second term as premier, and whether anti-Ford voters should even take that into account when they go to the polls.

The provincial election campaign is due to begin in just three weeks, with election day slated for June 2.

Polls published in the past few months have consistently suggested the Progressive Conservatives are the choice of nearly 40 per cent of voters, giving Ford's party a shot at another majority. 

The polls have been less consistent about which party is in second place, but the theme that emerges from that inconsistency is that neither the NDP nor the Liberal Party has emerged as the sole alternative capable of defeating the PCs. 

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is now trying to change that with what she calls a "straight up" appeal to Liberal voters to cast a strategic ballot for her party. 

"Voting NDP is the way to prevent Ford from being re-elected as the premier," Horwath said Tuesday. 

"I'm asking folks who may have decided in the past to vote Liberal to keep Conservatives out to recognize that this time, that's not the strategy," Horwath said. "This time, that strategy will split the vote and cause Doug Ford to come up the middle." 

Horwath argues that the NDP, building from the 40 seats it won in the last election, is better positioned to take down the PCs than the Liberals, who suffered the worst electoral result in their history in 2018 with just seven seats. 

"With all due respect to the other opposition parties, the New Democratic team is the strongest team," she said during a news conference over Zoom on Tuesday.

Speaking a few hours after Horwath, Del Duca rejected her pitch and said he won't be making such a call.    

"You're not going to hear me talk about strategic voting," Del Duca said during a news conference in Brampton. "You're not going to hear me talk about anything other than our team and our ideas." 

Del Duca said voters who live busy lives and aren't focused on politics don't discuss strategic voting at the kitchen table.

"I don't think they ... slice and dice what numbers look like from this poll or that poll," Del Duca said 

Encouraging strategic voting in PC-held ridings in Toronto is central to the mission of a newly launched volunteer group called Not One Seat. It aims to to persuade voters to pick the candidate best positioned to defeat the PCs in each riding, regardless of party stripe.