Your Home, Your Vote – home stretch

We’re now just days away from Thursday’s provincial election — and that means some intense last minute campaigning for all three political leaders and their candidates. That’s especially true in ridings where voters seem to be undecided.

One of those ridings is a Liberal strong-hold in our region known as ADFW — Ancaster, Dundas, Flambourgh, Westdale.

This has been a Liberal strong-hold, and it’s really incumbent Ted McMeekin’s riding to lose. From the outside, it would appear that McMeekin’s campaign has been on cruise control. But over the weekend, there was a hint that maybe the road to re-election is not as smooth as it appears.

With less than a week to go before election day, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne have rolled through the riding with the endless name.

Peter Graefe, McMaster University: “The fact that they’re going leads me to believe they’re seeing something in the polling.”

And what they’re spotting in the polls, may be uncertainty:

“Actually I just had lunch — there were five of us, and all five of us said we were still not sure.”

Outside Picone’s — the hotbed of politics in Dundas — opinion is clearly divided:

“They’ve blown so much money that I cannot believe that the Ontario electorate would elect one Liberal.”

But that doesn’t mean that Progressive Conservative Candidate Donna Skelly — will win.

“Most of my friends are pretty sure that they don’t want Skelly in.”

This riding has been the property of Liberal Ted McMeekin through 14 years and three cabinet posts. His political roots in the community stretch back to the early ’80’s — when he was Mayor of Flamborough. But could the mix of urban and rural voters in this patch-work riding be ready for a change? Peter Graefe says: “don’t bet the farm on it”. It’s not clear that the farmers of say, Flamborough are ready to give up Ted, particularly after what the was able to do around the race tracks.”

Still, party leaders don’t generally waste time on ridings where they see no hope of victory. Especially, three days before the vote.

Donna Skelly is the P.C. Candidate: “We have a sense that this is a riding that could definitely switch to blue. I know that the feeling at the door is positive — people like what we’re presenting.”

And that Conservative confidence — is shaking the faith of at least some, Liberal supporters:

“I’m nervous. Yes.”

Ted McMeekin has won by a comfortable margin in four consecutive elections here — the last one by four-thousand votes — over Donna Skelly. But the hybrid mix of upscale subdivisions, farm land, and young urban professionals that encompass this riding — make voting patterns very hard to predict. Some believe Skelly might have won last time — if the Hudak campaign hadn’t shot itself in the foot. This time around, Hudak’s campaign is on track — despite some terrible math — and that might add up to a surprising upset on Thursday night.