LILLEY: Ford survives 3-on-1 attack during provincial election debate

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In hockey, you would call it a 3-on-1 breakaway. Doug Ford stood on a TV studio stage in downtown Toronto on Monday night as three people trying to take his job took their best shots on net.

For an incumbent like Ford who is leading in the polls, the optics of being attacked from all sides is always good, as long as the leader can keep their cool. Voters don’t respond well to someone being ganged up on and Ford was definitely ganged up on by NDP Leader Marit Stiles, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie and Green Leader Mike Schreiner.

In the end, Ford kept his cool and neither Crombie, Stiles nor Schreiner did much in the way of getting shots on net. They were as effective as Team Canada against Team USA on Saturday night — entertaining at times, but ineffective.

On health care, all four parties had policies that sounded similar. Ford’s plan to connect every Ontario resident with a family doctor was written by Dr. Jane Philpott, Justin Trudeau’s former health minister who Crombie had speak at the Liberal party convention just before Ford tapped her to devise a provincewide plan.

On crime, none of the opposition parties sounded credible as they repeated the federal Liberal talking points on the “root causes” of crime without calling for violent criminals to be locked up.

The debate was an interesting exercise, but the outcome is unlikely to change anything.

Ford and his Progressive Conservative party have held a strong lead in most public opinion polls since the campaign began with most putting him above 40% support, while some have said 50% of voters are backing him. The closest challenger to Ford has been Crombie, who has taken her party as high as 31-32% in some polls and as low as 24% in some recent polls.

Barring any last-minute surprises in the last nine days of this election campaign, the real battle appears to be for second place. In the 2022 election, the NDP and Liberals each received 23% support — the Liberals even took a few thousand more votes – but the NDP took 31 seats, while the Liberals took eight.

So while Crombie and the Liberals are ahead of the NDP in most polls right now, the Liberal vote is widespread and not concentrated and the NDP vote is what politicos call efficient. The Liberals haven’t been able secure official party status in the last two elections, so to be able to be a recognized party once again would be a big step; to take over the mantle of official Opposition would be a major step.

What Crombie and her team have to worry about as we get closer to Feb. 27 is that the NDP takes a smaller percentage of the vote, but still comes out with more seats.

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If the NDP is able to maintain its status as the official Opposition, it will still likely be with fewer seats. The New Democrats haven’t been able to capitalize on their position of strength since becoming the official Opposition in 2018.

Ford’s time in office has not been an easy ride for him. Had the NDP played their cards better they could be in a position to defeat Ford or at the least finish off the Liberals. In every province west of Ontario, the provincial Liberal party is essentially a non-entity.

The NDP didn’t do this over the last seven years and now they may be replaced as the Opposition by the Liberals.

These sorts of scenarios, these possibilities will be the interesting part of this election. Unless a meteor strikes or Ford is arrested, it’s not clear how his PC party doesn’t win handily.

Which is exactly the result that Ford was hoping for when he called this unnecessary election.