EKOS Predicts PC Majority

ORDERED POPULISM PLANTS A FLAG IN CANADA

[Ottawa – June 6, 2018] In what has been a wild ride, the electorate are converging on a judgement that will see Doug Ford leading a comfortable majority for the next four years in Queen’s Park.

The campaign has been highly dynamic and the final results bear little resemblance to the results going into the election. The NDP has seen a profound improvement in their fortunes and jumped from 21 points just two months ago to 41 points just around the time of the final debate. Since then, however, they have fallen back and their four-point lead has turned into a four-point deficit. The Liberal Party, meanwhile, is suffering catastrophic losses, although they have staunched the bleeding in the last week of the campaign.

Here is a reasoned conjecture on what we believe the seat outcome will be on June 7th:

PC NDP LIBERAL GREEN OTHER 67-75 41-49 5-10 0-1 0

Contrary to some speculation that various late announcements about Doug Ford (such as his sister-in-law’s lawsuit) would have a negative impact on his performance, they have had either no effect, or even the opposite effect. This mirrors the strength of populist support enjoyed by Donald Trump, which seemed inelastic to his myriad of scandals.

The election of this conservative government is based on a different constituency than earlier conservative governments. It is based on a new ‘ordered populism’ that led to both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. This is something that we have seen vividly expressed in Ontario for the last year.

This ordered populism differs somewhat from the Trumpian variety. Trump’s victory was very much focussed among white voters. Doug Ford, while he does not do as well with minorities, he still does quite well.

Nevertheless, this ‘Northern populism’ does share many of the same characteristics as Trump’s populism. Ford’s supporters are economically pessimistic and they are much more wary of immigration, globalization, and ‘elites’. His constituency skews to lower socioeconomic status. It is unusual to see the NDP leading with the upper class and the PCs leading with the poor, but such is the new topsy-turvy political landscape. Ford supporters are not older and he actually leads with millennials and men, particularly younger and middle-aged men. Ford’s support is also focussed among rural and suburban voters. We will be providing a two-week roll-up of our regional numbers to create a more reliable regional profile in the next few days.

Survey results also reveal a growing expectation of both a PC victory and a PC majority, something that was not recognized by voters even a few days ago.

In many respects, this has been a remarkable election with profound implications for understanding the new fault lines in our society. Like others, we will be analyzing and trying to understand the results in the coming weeks. At some point, however, we should stop being surprised by such political events and begin thinking about what are the core drivers and policy solutions for this populist discontent.

Methodology:

This survey was conducted using High Definition Interactive Voice Response (HD-IVR™) technology, which allows respondents to enter their preferences by punching the keypad on their phone, rather than telling them to an operator. In an effort to reduce the coverage bias of landline only RDD, we created a dual landline/cell phone RDD sampling frame for this research. As a result, we are able to reach those with a landline and cell phone, as well as cell phone only households and landline only households.

The figures in this report are based on a three-day rolling sample. Each day, a new day’s worth of interviewing is added and the oldest day is dropped. The field dates for this survey are June 4-6, 2018. In total, a random sub-sample of 1,230 residents of Ontario aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/- 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are sub-divided (i.e., error margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, education). All the data have been statistically weighted by age, gender, region, and educational attainment to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to Census data.

Please click here for the full report.

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