Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath takes a selfie with a supporter during a campaign stop in Sarnia Ont. on Monday, June 4, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Geoff Robins

TORONTO— Ontario voters could be in for a Trump-Clinton repeat on election night.

In the 2016 presidential race Hillary Clinton bested Donald Trump in the popular vote by a margin of almost 2.9 million votes. But Trump won where it counted in the electoral college.

As it stands, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath could be staring down the same prospects when the results roll in on Thursday night. With two days to go in the Ontario election, she is slugging it out against Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford.

Public opinion polls show the NDP and Tories in a dead heat but how that vote breaks down at the riding level leaves the Tories with the clear advantage. Analysis from the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy shows that a tied popular vote gives the Progressive Conservatives a majority government with 67 seats to the NDP’s 52 seats. Out of a 124 seat legislature, that leaves the Liberals with five seats.

[READ MORE: Map of seat projections, including those too close to call]

Associate professor Barry Kay says the New Democrats could end up with more votes than the Conservatives but still lose government. The disadvantage for the NDP becomes clear when you drill down to the riding level.

“Generally speaking, the NDP vote in this kind of situation is less efficient,” Kay said. Because the party’s support isn’t evenly distributed, Kay said the NDP will likely “win fewer ridings by more votes” compared to the PCs who are on track to win “more ridings by fewer votes.”

But Kay cautions that the seat projections reflect what would happen if the election were held yesterday, not what will happen when voters head to the polls on Thursday. And, with three days to go, more plot twists in an unconventional election campaign could change the dynamic.

Kay’s analysis is in keeping with other poll aggregators. For example CBC’s poll tracker puts the NDP one point ahead of the PCs in the popular vote (37 per cent to 36 per cent) but well behind on the seat projections (69 seats for the PCs compared to 52 for the NDP).

What it all boils down to, Kay said, is the NDP vote is more concentrated in urban and industrial areas like Southwestern Ontario, Toronto and the North while the Progressive Conservative vote is more evenly spread out across the province.

The NDP “are going to win a lot of those ridings, that in a bad year they win with a narrower margin,… by margins that are so large that they’re wasting votes,” Kay said.

“A week ago [the NDP] were three points ahead and they still were still behind” in the seat count, Kay said.

If Ford wins this way, it won’t be his first time. In the party’s March leadership race, Christine Elliott won the popular vote and the most ridings but lost in the party’s version of the electoral college.

In order to win more seats than the Tories, Kay said the NDP would likely have to surge ahead by five points.

Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne has already bowed out and polls show her Liberals are on the brink of losing official party status.

How the parties plan to seal the deal with voters

In spite of the structural disadvantage handed to the NDP, the party believes it has a shot at government, in what NDP strategist Sally Houser called a “nail biter.”

New Democrats see Wynne’s surprise concession on Saturday as the opening they need to convince strategic voters to fall behind Horwath.

Houser said the message heading into the campaign’s final days will be two-pronged: an appeal to Liberal voters that the NDP are the only way to beat Ford and a warning about the potential of cuts under a Ford government.

Still the Progressive Conservatives head into the final days of the campaign optimistic that they can best the NDP not only because of their more efficient vote but because they had more runway to identify voters and develop a ground game on election day.

“There’s enough voters in every riding to win this election for us,” said a PC party source. The source said the Tories have a “record number of identified voters” and now it comes down to getting them to the polls. “In tight races that’s where the ground game matters,” the source said.

The bottomline for the Tories: they’re “well placed to win this.”

New Democrats have frequently call this their “biggest campaign” yet, with more volunteers pouring into campaign offices and more money. To translate that into a win, Houser said the party needs women, young people and Liberals to get out and vote NDP.

Houser said the party “identified early on” that second and third tier ridings could swing their way and more resources were sent to them.

Identified voters vs. the air war

The party’s best paths to victory are also visible in their media and communications strategies, according to Lindsay Finneran-Gingras, a digital strategist with Hill and Knowlton.

She said the NDP’s recent surge means the party had little time to identify supporters and build a database, whereas the PCs have been working on voter ID for more than a year. Because of that the NDP are more reliant on earned media while the PCs can speak directly to their supporters through emails and phone numbers that the party has collected.

The communications options bare out in the leaders’ schedules. On Monday Andrea Horwath had a live interview and five widely publicized events, with journalists invited to all of them. Compare that to the Progressive Conservatives, who publicized just one event to journalists, even though Doug Ford was making multiple stops across the GTA.

New Democrat strategy is to “leverage earned media and earned social,” she said, while the Tories put their own content out throughout the day “framing the stories and issues the way they want” to reach their base.

Finneran-Gingras said the NDP are also “doing a strong job digitally,” identifying voters through online petitions and polls but said “they’re playing catch-up.”

The NDP have been in this position before and succeeded. Marcella Munro, senior strategist at KTG Public Affairs closely followed the NDP’s Alberta win and says Horwath has a “massive opening” following the Liberal’s concession. “This is the big momentum boost they needed,” she said.

To capitalize on it Munro said the NDP need to “turn up the volume” on their strategic voting message.

So far the polls haven’t shown a big change in favour of the NDP since Wynne made her announcement. That has to hold for the Tories to keep the upper hand.

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