Historically in Ontario, when the Liberals are in power in Ottawa, voters elect a Conservative provincial government. […] One explanation for this seesaw is that voters aim for balance: a more progressive party at one level of government, and a more conservative party at the other level.
Regardless of the dynamics of electoral swings, the quandary for Ford is that if Trudeau is re-elected in the fall of 2025, Ford can be fairly certain of victory a few months later. But if Trudeau and the Liberals falter, and a Conservative government under Pierre Poilievre takes power in Ottawa, Ontario voters are less likely to grant a third consecutive term to the provincial Conservatives.
In other words, Ford worries that a pivot to the Conservatives in Ottawa will compromise, or doom, his re-election bid in Ontario.
As such, Ford has an incentive to hold the provincial election a year early, in the spring of 2025, when the Liberals will likely still be in power in Ottawa.
Or will they?Trudeau would undoubtedly prefer that Conservatives were running the show in Ontario during the next federal election campaign. The many seats in the province, and especially in the Greater Toronto region, are essential for a federal Liberal victory. With Ford still ruling, the federal Liberals hope to once again capture these ridings.
We had that with Bob Rae in Ontario and Jean Chrétien in Ottawa from 1994-1995. It was a disaster for the NDP. They dropped from 74 to 17 seats and Mike Harris’s Conservatives took over Ontario.
To be fair, Rae took office during the worst recession since 1930. No one was coming out of that era in good shape, and Chretien benefitted from the complete destruction of the Tories under Mulroney.
Which is a pity, because Rae did a really good job, Had Harris beaten Peterson, Ontario would have had austerity instead of Keynesian economics, and would have been utterly crushed. Similarly, had Rae come in after the recession, we’d have had a (almost, barely) socialist government during a boom time, which is something we’ve rarely seen in North America.