Close Ontario Election Coming

It has appeared for some time that the next election in Ontario would be close. A poll out this weekend from SES gives us a tie between the Liberals and Conservatives:

Liberal - 35
PC - 35
NDP - 19
Green - 11

This would give us a minority PC government of 53 seats with the Liberals at 38 and the NDP holding the balance of power with 15 seats. The Greens would win 1 but would have to get all of that 11 percent to do so.

Those are high numbers for the Greens. I suspect they measure more the importance of the environment issue than actual voting intention - the Green vote was quite low in recent provincial elections in Quebec, PEI and Manitoba - but we are living through an unprecedented period of growth in concern about the environment, so I do expect significant Green improvement on their 2.8 percent share in 2003.