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“Ontario wants change,” Horwath said Friday. “Doug Ford is not the kind of change Ontario needs.”

Brenna Keatinge, a self-described “very progressive” Toronto resident in the normally Liberal riding of St Paul’s, said she used to consider voting Liberal when the party seemed the only viable contender against the Conservatives. This time, she said she planned to cast her ballot on June 7 for the NDP to try to keep Ford out of the premier’s office.

“If I think there is a really strong chance the Conservatives would get in, then I would tend to be more strategic and vote Liberal,” Keatinge said. “But this time around, the NDP actually has a chance so â¦ I think overall voting NDP makes the most sense.”

Peter Graefe, a political science associate professor at McMaster University, said the anti-Tory coalescing appears to have started in the Ontario campaign much earlier than usual.

“The Liberal and NDP campaigns are set up on this idea that there’s going to be the first part of the election — which is a primary between the two of them and the winner will then go and fight the Conservatives,” Graefe said.

“What’s really remarkable this time is that within about two days of this campaign starting, that decision had more or less been made — that it was quite clear that it was going to be the NDP against the Conservatives.”

Brenda Stockdale, 54, a Cambridge, Ont., resident, might be one of those anti-Ford voters the Liberals have traditionally won over, but not this time. Her faith in the Liberals was shaken and her vote will go to the NDP, she said.

“They’re for the working people. I’m the working people. And that’s important to me,” Stockdale said after attending a Horwath rally in Kitchener, Ont., this week.

“Our health care system and our education system has been cut so much,” said Stockdale, a health educator. “(Horwath) gives me hope that she’s going to change that.”

Ford’s claim to be “for the people” is just a “facade,” she said.