Simulator for the 2018 Ontario election now available!

I just finished the first version of the Ontario model for the June general election and the simulator is now available for you to use. This election should be a good one. The current Premier, Kathleen Wynne is very unpopular but the Conservatives haven't won in this province in the 21st century. The recent massive increase of the minimum wage is also already bringing its fair share of debates -with some Tim Horton's owners literally telling their employees to go and complain to Wynne for the benefits they lost! Plus the NDP is high enough to possibly force a minority.

Anyway, I won't post my own projections today as I believe Mainstreet will publish a new poll tomorrow. For now, you are free to use the simulator. Remember, this is version 1.0. I'm pretty happy with it (and a similar one would have predicted over 93% of the ridings correctly in 2014 with the correct voting intentions) but there are likely some errors. From what I can tell, the current model might slightly be too harsh on the PC. The model uses regional coefficients and those show the Liberals to be incredibly resilient in the GTA. This gives them an edge where they can win despite getting fewer votes. Historically in Ontario, the two volatile regions have been the North and the Southwest, but with the OLP polling below 30% and the PC above 40%, this "GTA-wall" might not hold. The situation isn't unlike what we saw at the federal in 2011. So I might need to update or adjust the parameters of the model. We'll see.

So have fun with the simulator and please let me know if you find any error or weird result.

I want to thank Kyle Hutton without whom this simulator wouldn't exist today. Election Ontario changed the electoral map, moving from 107 ridings to 127 and didn't provide an official transposition of the results. Kyle did one himself and provided it to me. This is a lot of work and Kyle did a great job with this transposition. I'm very grateful I didn't have to do it myself.

You can find the simulator here.