Big games, bad weather and an ad blitz on the radar for the final week of Ontario election
Experts say parties will turn up the ad volume in a bid to get their message out
A surge in campaign advertising, a push to get out the vote, and concern over the ferocious winter weather all swirl as Ontario enters the final week of the provincial election.
Experts say all of the major parties will spend the next seven days making their case to voters one last time, trying aggressively to break through a noisy media landscape. And a major showdown between Canada and the United States on the ice Thursday will kick off one final wave of ad spending from the campaigns.
Dan Mader, a founding partner at Loyalist Public Affairs and a conservative strategist, says the parties will use the platform provided by the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey final to blast out their last pitches to voters. The game happens as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to impose 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods.
"We've got a huge hockey game on," Mader said. "Those will be the big spots, and those will be the big closing messages really from the campaigns about why their leader is the right leader."
The Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and NDP all say they'll be running advertising during the game.
The Tories say they'll run two 30-second spots and one full 60-second ad. The Liberals say a new ad from their campaign will also drop during the game.
The three parties and the Green Party, confirm they'll be ramping up their ads across traditional and social media over the next week.
Noisy news cycle hard to break through, NDP strategist says
But reaching voters is a challenge for all of the parties right now, with Trump and tariffs, the shifting federal political scene, and general cost of living issues all pulling people's attention from Queen's Park, NDP strategist Melanie Richer says.
"It's super hard to punch through," she said. "There's so many external factors that folks are paying attention to."
Richer, a principal at Earnscliffe Strategies, says that chaotic environment also makes it hard for parties to guarantee their voters will turn out on Feb. 27 to cast a ballot. All of the campaigns will be focused on shifting from identifying potential voters to encouraging people to vote, she said.
"It's about making sure that you are getting all those voters out in the places that you can win, and focusing your energy and your resources there," she said.
Battle for strategic voters to heat up among Liberals, NDP
Former Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy says he expects the battle between the Liberals and NDP for strategic voters will intensify in the final week, with targeted outreach from both parties at the local level.
He knows what the fight for those voters looks like firsthand.
"What would I do in the final days? I would go and knock on all the doors which had NDP signs, and I would plead with them and say, 'Look, voting for the New Democrats is going to waste your vote, and it's going to help the Conservatives get in,'" said Milloy, now the director of the Centre for Public Ethics at Martin Luther University College.
Richer says the NDP has been hammering the opposite message for weeks, appealing to Liberal voters to join them since the start of the campaign. She thinks the Liberal pitch to NDP swing voters comes far too late in the election.
"It seems like it's a campaign that's not going well and is pulling at straws," she said of the Liberals.
All eyes shift to the forecast for election day
Ontario's wicked winter weather also has the strategists concerned about voter turnout both at advanced polls, which run from Thursday to Saturday, and on election day. It makes getting people out early all the more important, Mader says.
"It's one of the reasons that campaigns push so hard to get their voters out to the advanced polls," he said. "If it's a really snowy, cold day, that could have an impact."
Milloy says he thinks the weather could drive down vote numbers in unpredictable ways, even if low turnout historically tends to favour the governing party. Reliable voter blocks, like seniors or rural Ontarians, may not want to head out to cast a ballot in a blizzard, he says.
"It's not just a storm, it's extreme cold," he said. "This could be a real factor."
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