Ontario PC Leadership 2009: The Scenario Breakdown For B2 and B3

Well it looks like the 2009 leadership race for the Ontario PC Party will be going to three ballots with Randy Hillier’s fourth place finish being too small to put any of the other three candidates over the top. The first ballot (B1) results are:

Hudak: 3511
Klees: 3093
Elliott: 2728
Hillier 1013

TOTAL: 10345

Now, for the second ballot (B2), Hillier’s supporters will have their second choices counted and the last two months indicate that most of those choices will be for Hudak. Under the best scenario for Tim Hudak’s team, all of Hillier’s ballots go to Hudak, which would put us at:

Hudak: 4524 (43.73%)
Klees: 3093 (29.90%)
Elliott: 2728 (26.37%)

This still keeps Hudak just over six percent away from victory, and in reality, some of Hillier’s supporters would rather see Klees or Elliott in the big chair first. While it is possible for Elliott to survive the second ballot, she would need 365 points or 36.03% of Hillier’s points to overtake Klees, presuming the rest of Hillier’s points are allocated to Hudak; in other words, we’re going to a third ballot (B3) between Hudak and Klees.

Under that scenario, the best Hudak could hope for is that he would only need 649 points from Elliott’s supporters, or 23.79% or her B1 points. I bet at this point the Hudak folks are wishing they weren’t so hard on the federal Finance Minister’s wife anymore since that is a reasonable number to overcome, but it is definately in murky territory given the nasty animosity the Hudak and Elliott campaigns had against each other over the past three months. It is also, again, an ideal for the Hudak campaign and they’ll likely require between 25-30% of Elliott’s points to put them over the top.

As much as Hudak’s team is probably a little worried with these numbers currently, Klees’ team should be only cautiously joyful as the best they could hope for on B2 is 4106 points (presuming all of Hillier’s points go to Klees), leaving him with 39.69% at the end of B2. In that scenario, he’d enter B3 requiring 1067 or a modest 39.11% of Elliott’s points from B1, but again, no one is expecting more than a quarter of Hillier’s points to be allocated to Klees at best.

Still, this one ain’t over yet folks, unless you’re Hillier or Elliott!