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Not since the days when the Orange Order came marching to instil fear among the refugee riff-raff of Cabbagetown in the 1900s has so much orange been splashed in the neighborhood.

Our family has lived in this quaint downtown community through four Ontario elections, and usually the area has been flooded in a sea of Liberal red.

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But this time, orange is the new red.

Two factors seem to have resulted in the steep rise of Andrea Horwath’s NDP from third position to first in popular vote according to most polls, though not yet in the crucial seat count where the PCs lead.

For a start, the scandals of fake memberships and stealing of names and addresses from the 407 Highway records has left an indelible stain on the image of a folksy Ford Nation making him look more like mean Mike Harris.

Then the absence of a costed PC platform document even though Ford promised it, has given weight to a genuine fear that Doug Ford is all talk, asking voters to trust him to carry out his vague pie-in-the-sky undertakings because he is a businessman and knows what he is talking about.