>> Steve: It hasn't quite been a week but the first official push to get voters' attention has
begun in earnest since the writs were drawn up last Wednesday.
Has it changed the conversation or the trajectory of how contains are thinking about
voting?
Let's ask Erin Kelly.
She's joining us every week during this Ontario election campaign to tell us what the
artificial intelligence algorithm known as polly is seeing gain traction with
voters.
Tell us what's gaining traction.
>> Erin: Well, Steven Del Duca, just right there.
He is absolutely on fire.
We have seen polly has seen his seat count has doubled in the last week.
His projected seat count.
It's gone from a projected 10 seats to 20 seats.
Just since the writ was announced.
And that has been largely at the expense of the NDP.
So we mentioned last week that Andrea Horwath, her messaging wasn't resonating.
That is just picking up steam.
She is losing seats and, if this tips, by this time next week we'll -- if this continues we'll
probably see the Liberals in second place.
>> Steve: Erin do we know what accounts for that?
>> Erin: Yes, the NDP supporters and NDP itself seem to be putting out a lot of messages
around health care and quite frankly people are COVID tired.
I understand why six months ago this was a good issue to strategize around.
But today the issue really is affordability.
And Steven Del Duca has the best message on affordability.
It's focused.
It's easy to understand.
And when it's easy to understand and focused, people share it in their network.
They share it among their friends.
His message something just travelling a lot faster and much more efficiently than Andrea
Horwath's.
It's really translating into a big change in seat count.
>> Steve: Let's touch on an issue that the three so-called progressive parties, the greens,
the NDP and the Liberals take one position on differently from the conservatives and that's
highway 414 across the northern part of the Toronto area what's polly saying about that?
>> Erin: We're not seeing a whole lot of discussion about that right now.
I don't think it's an issue that is changing how people are going to vote.
>> Steve: In other words, everybody sort of expecting the progressive parties to oppose
it, they expect the government to favour it and that's the end of it?
>> Erin: Yes.
>> Steve: Gotcha.
How about dentia-care?
The NDP seemed to get a lot of attention when it was announced.
What's polly saying?
>> Erin: Again we're seeing the policy appealing to hard court supporters and there just aren't
enough of them to keep the momentum going.
It's not appealing to people outside the demographic.
And the other issue while we're on the topic of her demographic, she's also brought out policies
about freezing taxes for lower and middle income people but we see those people aren't
discussing taxes it's really higher income people who are in favour of tax break.
Again, she's not hitting the mark that will enable her to get to grow her base or to grow her
seat count.
>> Steve: Lots of stories about health care staffing shortages, nurses, doctors, not on the job
oftentimes because they're fighting Covid-19 themselves.
Stress, burnout, et cetera.
What kind of traction are you picking up on what the parties have to offer on those issues?
>> Erin: We're not seeing that -- I mean, really, people are seeing that the progressive
conservatives, they said they're going to invest in health care and have learned their lessons
from COVID.
And people, the electorate seem to trust that that party will do that.
And they don't feel that it's a reason to switch their vote.
>> Steve: Okay.
Let me circle back on the Liberals' issue.
Steven Del Duca you mentioned off the top.
He made a lot of promises in regard to education, hiring 10,000 new teachers, spending
hundreds of thousands -- millions on new schools and bringing back an option for
grade 13, and so on.
Again, as poly looks at this, how much traction are those policies having?
>> those policies are -- they get traction among NDP supporters.
So they are effective in getting some of that seat count from the NDP supporters to the Liberals
those issues are not taken from the PCs which Del Duca has to do and he can best do that by
focusing on affordability.
That really is the thing that is catapulting him right now is the feeling that he understands
voters to the extent that any of the leaders are seen to understand voters.
That's another issue.
Engagement on this election is really low and that's something we should discuss.
People actually don't feel that any of the leaders -- if they're being completely honest -- have
the right solution.
But to the extent that anyone does, we're seeing more and more people leaning towards Steven
Del Duca.
>> Steve: All right.
In terms of engagement, then, let's continue on that.
Is what you're finding leading us sadly to the possibility that voter turn out will be really
quite low?
>> Erin: Yes.
I think that's a real risk in this election.
Normally when an election is called, there is some fanfare around it and we see engagement
go up.
We didn't see engagement go up at all when the election was called.
It is people who are generally following issues.
Here's the interesting part: Young people very under represented in the discussion
except young women.
And there's a reason for that if you want to get into vote switching drama.
Because there is a potential vote switching -- we saw the first potential vote switching
topic that came up this morning.
You know, I mentioned last week that polly, normally she looks at decided voters then she looks
at undecided voters but this time we're going to look at vote switchers.
We saw in the last federal election, a lot of conservative voters switched their vote from
the conservatives because of the vaccine policy.
So those are people who are life-long conservatives who for the first time voted for a
different party because of the stance that the conservatives took on vaccines.
And so we decided to look at vote switchers, again for this election.
And we saw our first potential vote switching issue today.
>> Steve: Okay.
What's the issue and from what to what?
>> Erin: So this is an issue we've been tracking for seven years and we've never seen it
come up in any Canadian election and it's come up for the first time this morning and that's
abortion.
Polly is seeing that this is a potential powder keg that's waiting to be lit.
And that's why young women are much more engaged in the election -- in election talk
right now than young men.
Young men are saying the PCs are going to win, this is in the bag, there's no reason for me to
vote.
The women app women are saying there's a lot at stake here, I'm getting more engaged in this
election.
And I'm concerned because health scare is a provincial issue -- and this is a conservative
party.
Now people aren't worried about Doug Ford but there are people in his party that support --
that are pro life.
And people are paying attention to that.
And we do see some PC voters saying, if this issue comes up, and if I had any reason to think
that this party will lower women's right to choose I will switch my allegiance and there's
overwhelmingly saying they will switch it to the NDP.
>> Steve: Interesting.
Well, I well, remember the day that the American Supreme Court decision -- or at least draft of
a decision was looked.
Doug Ford was asked about it on the campaign hustings.
And he said: The U.S. Supreme Court has zero jurisdiction on the Province of Ontario.
He really tried to put this to bed quite quickly.
Can you tell whether or not he has been successful in doing that?
>> Erin: He has not been successful in doing that.
It's not Doug Ford personally.
If I were in the NDP strategy room right now I would be looking for candidates in the PC
party that I could poke to provoke them to say something controversial during this
campaign.
Because the I had cases are that could unravel for the PCs pretty quickly.
Right now the PCs are pretty steady.
They're in first place and are in comfortable first place.
But if there is one thing that could change that right now, polly is identifying abortion as
that potential issue.
>> Steve: Fascinating.
Last week you told us there wasn't a huge undecided vote out there and that it didn't look
like they were sort of leaning one way or another yet.
Any change in that?
>> Erin: There's not a change in the -- the worrisome thing here is that the undecided are -- as
it stands right now, there's a good chance they won't vote at all.
I mean we really are seeing low engagement here.
If there's low engagement that favours the conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or NDP supporter especially if you are a Liberal supporter and your
allegiances are somewhat new -- people were just hopping on the bandwagon last week, Liberal or
about NDP supporters are less likely to vote.
The main thing I think is to get this engagement up to have issues that are exciting to
people, that are easy to understand and really to make sure that you have a policy that
can work, right now with the exception of Steven Del Duca, all the leaders are saying we're
going to bring about housing affordability.
But there's a belief that that's not going to happen.
There is a lot of defeatism here among the electorate.
The leaders have to get more specific.
They have to really inspire confidence in the way they're not doing now.
That they have a solution that is going to work and that the newspapers aren't going to say
the next day, that's never going to work because that seems to be what's happening right now.
The analysts come out and say that's not going to work.
And so they need to consult with the experts and have people say yes.
This is a plan that will probably work.
And the first leader that can do that, who can actually get some momentum going if they have a
workable plan will shoot up.
And hopefully get the engagement up on this election.
>> Steve: Let's see what issues might do that.
You told us abortion had a chance to do that.
You said buck-a-ride had uptake among people on social media and public opinion was reflecting
that.
Any other issues that you can see right now at this early juncture of the campaign that
might get more reflection and get people more interested?
>> Erin: Well, having a strategy around housing that people will believe and that seems credible
and realizable, in the next term, that would be the big vote winner right there.
Affordability, cost of living issues.
And keeping it very simple.
Having tax breaks and stuff like that, this doesn't -- I mean tax breaks resonate with wealthier
groups but they're not the ones complaining about affordability.
So you need to have something that appeals to the people who are having trouble making ends
meet right now in the province.
>> Steve: Let me follow up on that.
Of course I will give one example here.
Just before the election was called, the progressive conservative government offered
$1 billion rebate to people who drive cars.
Right?
They're saying you don't have to drive these licence plate renewal sick stickers any more
and we'll send you a cheque in the mail to rebate last year.
$1 billion in the treasury and there are arguments pro and con on the advisability of doing
that.
Similarly the Liberals have promised with their buck-a-ride to subsidize urban transit use
to the tune of $1 billion as well.
Do you have anything in your research which suggests that people see those as genuinely
making life more affordable or more akin to try to bribe me with my own money?
>> Erin: People liked the rebates on the licence plates.
We saw that that was very good for Doug Ford.
He's also getting credit for the child care deal.
People are really happy about that.
He is definitely getting kudos for that.
And buck-a-ride is popular, too.
Even though the experts said how affordable is buck-a-ride or is this good for the treasury, it
definitely worked for the electorate because it's easy to understand.
Are you giving money back.
We're being able to take the bus and it's only costing $1 I can really understand how that helps
me.
I'm not sure how the tax cut will help me.
Does it help me right now?
I need more money because food is very expensive and shelter is very expensive.
So keeping the status quo isn't going to help me.
>> Steve: It sounds like they're not making the connection.
The voters any way are not making the connection that $1 billion rebate today means
inflating the deficit today which means raising taxes or cutting programs tomorrow.
They're not making that connection?
>> Erin: Absolutely not.
If I need to pull out the spread sheet to explain why this is or isn't a good policy then you've
lost me.
That's what's killing it for Andrea Horwath.
She's too complicated.
You want something where you can say to your friends, hey, do you feel if we vote for Steven Del
Duca, transit is buck-a-ride?
That's easy to communicate.
But if we say if we put money into the economy and that's going to make prices worse now I
need an economics degree to know what you are talking about.
This is the job of the leader to have policies that are well grounded.
So you've done all that work in the background.
And are easy to communicate so that people can tell their neighbours about it.
>> Steve: Erin, let me ask you one last thing.
There was a book written maybe two decades ago called "what's the matter with Kansas."
For those who didn't read it it seemed that lower income people were voting republican in the
United States despite the fact that that could be against their own economic self-interest but
that they lined up with the republican party in terms of values: Pro-capital punishment,
anti abortion, that kind of thing.
We're usually a few years behind the U.S. on those kind of culture wars.
Can you tell whether that's happening right now in this province right now?
>> it's happening toll -- yes, it is happening in this province now.
But it's still a small slice of the population.
Ontario is overwhelmingly, for example, Pro-choice and I haven't seen anybody talking
about capital punishment.
We even looked at crime.
We're specifically tracking crime and nobody's talking about crime as an issue in this
particular election.
We have seen it another elections.
We definitely saw it in the federal election that that conservative -- those values are
strong.
And even among people like you say who are lower income and would benefit in some of the
program that is Liberals and NDP are proposing, but they vote according to values we
definitely have that cohort in Canada.
That's not playing right now in this election.
It is playing like I mentioned on abortion but it's because it's a pro choice kind of
movement that's coming up in the electorate.
We're definitely not seeing conservative values being discussed a lot right now for
this particular election.
>> Steve: Understood.
Erin, thanks for today.
And we will talk to you again next week.
>> Erin: Great, thank you.
>> Steve: That's Erin Kelly, CEO of Advanced Symbolics Inc.