If Premier Doug Ford decides to call an early election, political strategists say he will need to give Ontario voters a compelling reason to head to the polls early.
Premier Ford has repeatedly refused over the past week to rule out holding an election before his government’s four-year term expires in June 2026. Multiple sources close to the Progressive Conservative party have said no decision has been made to hold an early vote, but late next spring is the most likely time. Premier Ford told Ottawa radio station 580 CFRA on Wednesday that there will be no election this summer or fall, but he is leaving the door open for a vote next year.
Strategists say there could be big political advantages for the Ontario PCs campaigning before a federal election is widely expected in October 2025. The biggest of these is the presence of a Liberal government in Ottawa, especially if Justin Trudeau remains in power.
Ford could use Trudeau’s current unpopularity to target the prime minister in much the same way he targeted Ford when the then-rookie prime minister was struggling with low approval ratings in the 2019 federal election.
But is political advantage enough to justify Ford calling a vote before his term ends? Fred Delorey, a veteran Conservative strategist at the federal and provincial levels, says no.
“If they did that [early] “If it’s a strategic mistake simply because the polls are in their favor, then it’s a strategic mistake,” said Delorey, who was operations manager for the Ontario PC2018 campaign that brought Ford to power and is now a partner at North Star Public Affairs.
As speculation grows at Queen’s Park, the Opposition says it’s prepared to call an early election in 2025. CBC’s Lorenda Redekopp has more on the possibility of an early election, given that Ontario has legislation that fixes an election date.
“You have to tell a story that there’s a reason for the election,” Delorey said. “If you have a story for the election and you tell Ontarians, ‘We need new powers because we want to achieve X, Y and Z,’ I think the cynicism disappears.”
“Invite people to punish you”
A similar view was shared by longtime federal and provincial Liberal strategist David Haar, who said the biggest risk to Ford from instituting early voting was that voters would perceive the move as cynical and self-serving.
“If it’s purely cloaked in politics, then people are going to punish you,” said Haar, who managed Kathleen Wynne’s state campaigns in 2014 and 2018.
Haar recently joined Rubicon Strategies, a lobbying firm led by Corey Teneyke, who ran Ford’s Ontario PC campaigns in 2018 and 2022.
He said one of the reasons Trudeau’s Liberals failed to win a majority of seats in 2021 is because the party failed to show voters a compelling reason why an election had to be held at that time, in the middle of a pandemic, just two years after the last election.
“when [an early election] “The reason it works is usually because the government is stirring up an issue that justifies the call,” Haar said.
Ontario’s Fixed-Date Elections Act sets the election date as four years after the government is formed, but it also explicitly allows the Premier to dissolve Parliament and call an election at any time before that.
While both Haar and Delorey believe Ford needs to justify an early election, they also believe the move would be beneficial for Ford.
“If an early election is to the party’s advantage, then we should do it,” Delorey said. “Just politically, if I were a Conservative premier of any province, I would want to call an election while Justin Trudeau is still prime minister. He’s historically unpopular.”
Haar’s view is that with Trudeau out of power, voters will look to place the blame for political and economic woes on someone else.
“Housing is still expensive, health care is still hard to get, groceries are still expensive,” he said.
“Right now, I think most provincial premiers are taking it pretty easy because Trudeau is the one shouldering all the blame. But once he’s gone, people are going to… [premiers] And then I ask, “So, what do you do?”
Another factor is the overwhelming evidence of more than 60 years of Ontario political history.
Since 1963, in all but one of the past 17 Ontario elections, the party that won power was different from the party in federal power at the time. (The only exception was Dalton McGuinty’s victory for the Ontario Liberal Party in 2003, when Liberal Jean Chretien was premier.)
“Voters don’t care about voting early.”
Larissa Waller, who served as Ford’s communications director until 2020 and is now with lobbying firm GT & Co., said historical trends alone should be enough to convince the prime minister to call an election before federal votes are held.
“I hope he makes that decision,” Waller said in an interview. “It’s the wise decision.”
She doesn’t believe Ford needs to give voters sufficient justification for a surprise request to vote.
“I don’t think voters would condemn the president if he called an early election. I don’t think one vote would change the situation,” she said. “Voters wouldn’t mind. There would be no additional costs to calling the election earlier than normal.”
Waller said the Ford government has largely delivered on the Conservative promises made in the last election and just needs to show voters that a new mandate is needed.
This may be a bit of a tough sell for Ford, given that housing starts are nowhere near his goal of 1.5 million, construction on Highway 413 has yet to begin and many of the new hospital projects he announced during the last campaign remain in the planning stages.
Still, Ford may consider an earlier election far preferable to a later one for another reason: It would mean less time for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to complete its Greenbelt investigation and, if necessary, lay charges.
Speculation about an early election has been growing at Queen’s Park since Ford announced plans last week to allow the sale of beer, wine and ready-to-drink cocktails in convenience stores starting in September, 16 months earlier than planned.
The move will cost taxpayers at least $225 million to pay Beer Stores for early termination of a contract that was set to expire at the end of December 2025. Industry sources say the change will also cost the government LCBO revenue that could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Premier Doug Ford’s move this year to allow beer and wine sales in convenience stores will cost Ontario taxpayers at least $225 million, as the government gives big brewers and supermarket chains discounts, rebates and subsidies that industry sources say total hundreds of millions of dollars, CBC Senior Correspondent Mike Crowley reports.
Kevin Gaudette, another veteran Conservative strategist and founder of lobbying firm Brightpoint Strategies, said the political risks for Ford in calling an early election are greater than the risks of waiting until 2026.
“If we call the elections early, the opposition and the media will easily denounce it as a cynical ploy,” Gaudette said in an interview.
“His opponents are confused.”
Gaudette believes there may be some strategic maneuvering going on in talk of early elections to help the Conservatives throw the opposition off balance.
“Why should the Prime Minister need to guarantee exactly what the future election date will be, when not doing so will only confuse and intimidate the opposition?” he said.
Ford’s Conservative party has an overwhelming financial advantage, having raised millions more dollars than any opposition party since the 2022 election.
The Conservatives have spent some of that money in recent months on attention-grabbing ads, including a TV attack ad targeting Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie and a campaign in which Ford said in a phone call that he was “listening to all Ontarians and working hard to make it better.”
The last time an Ontario premier with a majority called an election well before the customary fourth year, it certainly backfired: In 1990, then-Premier David Peterson sent voters to the polls in his third year in office, but his Liberal party was defeated and Bob Rae’s NDP won its first, and still only, victory in an Ontario provincial election.
