Wynne playing defence, Horwath playing offence?
In an election, there’s offence — trying to win over voters in ridings you’ve lost — and defence — trying to hold on to ridings you’ve won in the past.
In the Ontario campaign so far, which parties have been playing offence and which have been playing defence?
One measure is to look at the party leaders’ schedules and see where they’ve been. And if you do that — tally up whether leaders are spending more time in ridings they don’t hold or those they do — you see that the Ontario Liberals are defending and the NDP are attacking.
Here are the scores as of May 27, based on an informal count of events in the campaign so far. A number in the negative means more events on home soil, and a higher positive number means more events in ridings the party doesn’t hold.
Liberals: -2
Progressive Conservatives: 11
NDP: 31
A couple of caveats: Obviously, if you hold fewer ridings, you’re going to be spending more time in ridings you don’t have than those you do; at dissolution, the Liberals held 48 ridings, the PCs 37 and NDP 21. Still, the NDP has only visited two ridings of the 21 they already hold: Trinity-Spadina, also going through a heated federal by-election, and Niagara Falls, which the party won only recently in a by-election.
And this score is only based on the movements of the party leaders — Kathleen Wynne, Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath — and not indicative of the activity or inactivity of local candidates.