Facts or fear? Arithmetic or anger?

The winner of the Ontario election, it seems, will be the one who figures out whether the huge band of undecided voters — still making up their minds in the final two weeks of the campaign — are driven by emotion or reason; personality or policy.

If populism is truly a force in this Ontario campaign, as many say it is, the smart money may be on emotion and personality.

No one is calling this an issue-based campaign in Ontario. Doug Ford and the Conservatives haven’t even unveiled a platform and the NDP has been surging in the polls — despite a major math error in its platform costing.

Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath keep saying that it’s a stark choice voters are facing. But when undecideds are drifting from left to right in voting intention, it doesn’t seem too many Ontarians are bound by ideology.

So the persuasion game in the final leg of the Ontario election will be heavily influenced by what people are feeling, not what they’re thinking, public-opinion experts say.

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“It’s personality plus policies, with a heavy dose for a desire to change,” says David Coletto, whose Abacus Data firm has been conducting running “Ontario Pulse” polls throughout the campaign.

That said, however, Coletto adds: “I don’t necessarily think it’s pure emotion that’s driving voters in this election. Many are rational in their desire for change and are thinking carefully about the kind of change they want.”

Coletto said that the stalled momentum for Ford’s campaign is evidence that undecided voters are looking for something more than the Conservative pitch, which is almost entirely aimed at those angry with Wynne. The NDP, in the same vein, is framing itself as the anti-anger choice, but both challengers to Wynne are talking a lot about voters’ emotions.

That may be the best strategy. While people are looking for rational change, in Coletto’s view, their emotions may be shaping what they see as reasonable.

How you feel in Ontario at the moment is a good guide to how you’re thinking, says Heather Bastedo, managing director of New Square, a non-profit initiative that has been looking into how the election is being viewed by working-class and “elite” Ontarians.

Many people’s votes, says Bastedo, will turn on how well people feel they are doing in the current economic climate.

Voters who feel they’re doing well are not as concerned with government mismanagement, for instance, and more inclined to like the incumbent Liberals. “But if you’re struggling, you’re between the PCs and NDP,” says Bastedo.

In short, emotion is important when it comes to economic well-being and voting intentions, but so is geography and gender. Undecided men lean toward Ford, while it’s looking like slightly more undecided women are leaning toward Horwath or “none of the above.”

As for geography,“if you’re inside the GTA, you’re more likely to be concerned about affordable housing, and outside the GTA, electricity (costs) takes that spot,” Bastedo says. “In turn, you will look for facts or leaders to support you or turn against those who you feel are responsible.”

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This choose-your-facts phenomenon is increasingly being discussed in public-opinion circles. It was discussed extensively earlier this month, for instance, at the annual conference of the American Association of Public Opinion Research in Denver.

Doug Anderson, from Earnscliffe Research in Ottawa, was at that conference and said it featured some bracing reminders about the limits of reason and rationality in public opinion. Anderson was particularly struck by one presentation, by Duke University’s Brian Guay, which showed just how much people will cling to information they like, even when shown it is incorrect.

Here’s how Anderson summed up Guay’s findings:

“Whether one is good with numbers or bad, stubborn or willing to change, he found the same thing: people don’t tend to change their preferred policy even when they have been shown to base those opinions on incorrect information,” he said. “Facts, in that regard, matter less than something else.”

Anderson called it “disconcerting,” but he said it did go some way in explaining how U.S. President Donald Trump and other populist-style leaders can get away with fake facts. It’s all about delegating or contracting out the hard thinking.

“People are not stupid, but they are placing faith that a person or party has thought it through rather than thinking for themselves,” says Anderson. “And we, as a species, find it very hard to admit we are not being the wise consumers of information we know we should be.”

This could mean, depressingly, that the final days of the Ontario election campaign could be anything but rational and reasonable.

David Coletto, for what it’s worth, is slightly more optimistic. His “Ontario Pulse” polling puts the province’s undecideds now at slightly more than half of the total electorate. If this provincial election is anything like the last federal one in 2015, people’s minds will keep changing all the way up to voting day on June 7.

Coletto has separated this floating undecided group into three camps at the moment:

One he defines as those “who want change and are open to voting PC and NDP. They tend to favour the PCs but are open to voting NDP.”

The next group Coletto calls “truly free agents” — voters who are “more likely to be influenced by those in their lives who guide their political choices.” These are bandwagon voters, he says.

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And the last group: People who “can’t stand Ford and want a progressive(ish) government. They were leaning Liberal when the campaign started but have increasingly moved to the NDP as it’s become clear they are the alternative to Ford. They are strategic, and ideology and government approach guides their thinking and behaviour.”

Coletto believes that all these dynamics within the undecided camp would tend to favour the NDP. “They offer voters the best of both worlds — change and no Ford,” he says.

Then again, that could be just the feeling for now — and emotions in politics make things unpredictable.

Susan Delacourt is a former Star reporter who is a current freelance columnist based in Ottawa. Follow her on Twitter: @SusanDelacourt

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