I went for a walk in the western part of the riding today, in and around Bloor West Village. I stopped when I had reached 100 lawn signs. Here are the share of signs on private property:

Cheri DiNovo (NDP) 47%
David Hutcheon (PC) 27%
Sylvia Watson (LIB) 24%
Frank de Jong (GRN) 2%

I’m calling this one for the NDP. There is a byelection in the riding on Sept. 14 in which the NDP are running Cheri DiNovo, the Liberals Sylvia Watson and the Tories John Hutcheon. The NDP has grown immensely in the riding and the changing demographics - fewer Eastern Europeans, more young professional types with progressive values -benefits the NDP and hurts the Liberals.

Gerard Kennedy’s leadership run to date has been a flop and he doesn’t have the “star” appeal he did before. Kennedy had this image of being practically an NDPer, and combined with strategic voting, that depressed the NDP vote considerably. Now that the NDP is up in the polls, Kennedy is gone and John Tory isn’t some scary rightwing type making strategic voting no longer an issue, I say this is going NDP.

100 signs is not a big enough sample.

I’m calling this one as an NDP victory just edging out the Liberals

I’m going to call this one for the NDP. This riding, like all of central Toronto, is dominated by social activists and left-leaning ethnic groups. They are the reason this went NDP in the federal election, and they will get their 9th seat in Queens Park here. The PC’s are tarnished badly by the poor reputation of the federal party in Toronto (many still think Harper is scary) and will spread to the provincial scene.

Predicted results: DiNovo 47%, Watson 40%, De Jong 6%, Hutcheson 4%, others 3%.

Watson pissed a lot of people off with her develop the waterfront stance and her attitude when questioned by locals. In a riding that has voted anything that is Liberal for years (the Flis dynasty) it really does seem that the times have changed in the NDPs favour. This election will show how true that theory is. People forget that there ae still a lot of Liberal voters in the north of the riding. And now Gord Perks is running to take Watsons place; I guess he senses this NDP change.(I vote NDP but find him a bit of a nutbar).As long as Watson is gone, at whatever political level she is at I will be happy. sd

I agree with Anonymous that the NDP will take this riding although his/her conclusions seem a little off the mark. Yes, the CPC won’t fare well - but they’ll get more than 4%. Also while a lot of social activists live in P-HP the ethnic communities (largest being Poles and Ukrainians) aren’t particularly “left-leaning”. Anyway the decline of the working class Slavic vote and growth of university-educated anglos benefits the NDP.

Prediction: DiNovo 42%, Watson 35%, Hutcheon 17%, De Jong 6%

“Also while a lot of social activists live in P-HP the ethnic communities (largest being Poles and Ukrainians) aren’t particularly “left-leaning”. ” That makes no sense, then who exactly has been electing Liberals and who exactly has not been voting for Conservatives over the years?

Its a ndp victory here, but not gonna get 40 some precent maybe 39% at most or 34% instead
ndp- 39%
pc- 29%
lib- 25%
green- 5%
others- 2%

The right leaning press people are having fun with the Federal NDP wacky policies being considered at their convention. Liberal voters realize how wacky the NDP are and will stampede back to the Party. Watson with 40% of the vote.

NDP

Supported Watson last municipal as a progressive. Not this time. An article in the PARKDALE LIBERTY(?) quoted her as only becoming a Liberal party member once she was guaranteed the nomination (not contested). She said she considered herself a “progressive socialist”.????????????. In South Parkdale, south of Queen Street(part of her city ward), the majority of her signs are on small/ medium apt buildings obviously sanctioned by the landlord/apt owner/ propert management. (Don’t tell me all the tenants in the buildings support her!) This is what she did three years ago in the municipal election. There are few on private property(homes). Her sign locations are stagnant while NDPer DiNovo’s are legitimate (mostly) locations and increasing daily…surpassing MP Nash’s winning campaign earlier this year. In fact, one couple have a DiNovo sign after 25 years of putting up Liberal signs, the latest for Sam Bulte in the last federal. So…what does this all say?

Walked my dog this morning and went to work, i decided to count the signs. i forget them now but i saw dozens of ndp, alittle bit of liberal and conservative, lots of green as well. I saw 1 or 2 other party signs. When it comes to signs ndp has it made here and there is no question about that. Now when it comes to personality i might as well not even vote the only people now i feel comfortable with voting with (I’m not socialist.) are The greens.

I see Cheri DiNovo winning this race very closely. I also think that the PCs will do better than most people give them credit for. New NDP and PC signs seem to be going up daily. My prediction:

NDP: 39%
Lib: 36%
PC: 20%
GP: 5%

Ugh, Cheri bugges the i don’t know what out of me. she drew her eyebrows to high and just everything. If the freedom party had a better chance here i’d go with them, so i think i’ll either go green or stick with the conservatives.

Although I do not live in this riding, I donated 100.00 to Cheri’s campaign after reading Carol Goar’s article on the editorial page of the Toronto Star, a couple of weeks ago. She walks the talk. Go Cheri!

This was a Gerard Kennedy seat. People must remember that BOTH the Liberals and NDP were courting him to run as Bob Rae’s replacement in this riding. This will be a close race and will depend solely on the ground war on election day. I think it will be a slim NDP victory only with a strong E-Day campaign.

My prediction:
NDP (DiNovo) - 34%
LIB (Watson) - 30%
PC (Hutcheson) - 24%
Green (de Jong)- 8%
Others - 4%

I do not even live in the riding or have much interest in politics at the provincial level, but the disgusting bile coming out of Kinsella and Cheriak was enough to encourage me to donate to the DiNovo campaign, the first time I have ever done so to any candidate at any level of government.

Clearly the backlash against this kind of cynical liberal politics and character attacking is impressive enough to engage those who otherwise have no interest in the by-election.

scott D: the Ukrainians of Toronto are very different from their counterparts in say, Winnipeg. Most came after WWII as DP’s and are pretty rightwing. They even voted Tory in pretty large numbers during the Trudeau years because he was perceived as being too soft on the Soviet Union. Very very few vote NDP. And considering how strong the NDP in this riding, it’s ridiculous to refer to “left-leaning ethnic groups”.

For an analysis of how the votes could play out, please see “Parkdale-High Park By-Election Too Close to Call”.

Well after the liberals embarissing attemp to get ahead, they will not win, and the,
(canadian alliance-reform-progressive (c-r-a-p) trying to coast on the lie-beral, ndp(communists) brawl, i do believe these are the most accurate results. I will include the greens and other parties by the way because (tehe) the greens get my vote.
Cindanne’s version of tomorrows newspaper results:
Commies-35%
Liers-32%
C-a-r-p-19-20%
Greens-12-13%
Others(un-significant)-1%

-Cindanne Gazilers

Hey, what did Kinsella say? Did he get involved in the DiNovo’s-a-Ho smear?

Results with 219 of 220 polls reporting:

NDP - 41.3%
Liberal - 33.1%
PC - 16.8%
Green - 6.3%

Congratulations to Cheri DiNovo on getting elected.

results 220 of 220

ndp-41%
liberal-33%
con-17.3%
green-6.2%
other-2.6%

Well, as it turned out Watson was stomped, pretty brutally as it turned out. The Liberals lost about 60% of their vote from the general and the NDP percentage almost tripled.

What’s unknown is how much the Liberals’ disgraceful performance (and its outright rejection by the voters) will hurt the credibility of the McGuinty government. In the past, they have been wise to mostly take the high road but in this relatively unimportant byelection they couldn’t resist getting down into the muck and mire of a whispering defamation campaign.

It’s not surprising. The liberals have simply shown themselves as being corrupt, and the federal Conservative pork barrelling under “Muldoon” has entirely destroyed their credibility