Tim Hudak is scene outside Queen's Park on June 24, 2009, ahead of his selection as Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader.Yvonne Berg
By-elections are not always accurate in predicting a political party's standings after the next general election.
For instance, in late 1984 the opposition Liberals under David Peterson lost two of their Hamilton-area seats to the NDP, the incumbents tempted to run federally by the lure of John Turner. Many thought the Liberals were doomed to another 42 years in opposition because of these by-election defeats.
But things turned around for Peterson because of two massive shifts in the political climate. First, Brian Mulroney defeated Turner to win the first Conservative majority government in two decades. Second, Bill Davis retired as premier, replaced by the affable but error-prone Frank Miller.
Ontario has long sought alternation of its federal and provincial governments. With the PCs in power in Ottawa, Ontarians were open to changing parties at Queen's Park.
And Frank Miller was incapable of bridging the major gap with the Ontario PC Party, the divide between rural conservatives and suburban moderates. His tartan jackets and small-town attitudes allowed the urbane Peterson to seize the suburbs and form a minority government.
That said, by-elections are important.
Reform candidate Deb Grey's 1989 win in Beaver River foreshadowed the collapse of the PC Party in 1993. Without "time for a change" momentum or Free Trade to unify the Mulroney coalition electorate, a massive splintering along geographic lines was a very real threat.
The Victoria-Haliburton by-election in 1994 was a key indicator of the rise of Mike Harris. The combination of sophisticated vote mobilization techniques and divisive wedge issues ushered in a new - and more brutal - era in Ontario politics.
The victory of the Liberals in Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Aldershot in 2000 also presaged the end of the Harris era. Division no longer worked as it once had, and the Liberals out-matched the Tories in organizational muscle in the 905.
Greg Sorbara's victory the next year in Vaughn-King-Aurora showed the PC Party's lock on the 905 was gone, and that big changes were looming.
What is surprising about by-elections since 2007 is how strong they have gone toward the Liberals.
The long-time Tory stronghold of Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes (basically Victoria-Haliburton under a new name) was lost by John Tory to the Liberals.
St. Paul's was won decisively by the Liberals against a star PC candidate, with Tim Hudak betting the farm on the HST as an issue.
Toronto Centre was again won decisively by the Liberals, with Tim Hudak feverishly working to lower expectations.
But now Hudak faces two tests: he absolutely must show no vote decline in Leeds-Grenville; and he must decisively win Ottawa West-Nepean.
First, Leeds-Grenville. This is one of the safest PC seats in Ontario, and a great litmus test of Tim Hudak's viability in rural Ontario. There are almost a dozen rural seats currently held by the Grits, from Essex in the southwest to Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry in the east.
Any roadmap to victory for Tim Hudak involves significant gains here, with at least eight of those ten seats mandatory to form a wide rural base for a PC majority.
To prove he can win these types of seats, Hudak must first show he can hold his own rural seats with gusto. Even a slight decline in vote in Leeds-Grenville is worrisome.
But the real test is Ottawa West-Nepean.
There are only ten rural seats up for grabs for Hudak in the next election. Running the table in rural Ontario won't even force the Liberals down to a minority government. It is imperative that Hudak make huge gains in the fifty suburban seats in Ontario.
The good news is Hudak has only a handful of these seats - Thornhill, Whitby-Ajax, Burlington, and a few others - so there is lots of room for growth.
The bad news is he needs a massive breakthrough here to win a majority; peeling a handful of suburban seats from McGuinty's coalition won't be good enough even with a burst of new rural seats.
So the yardsticks in Ottawa West-Nepean are distant. Hudak must decisively breakthrough in the Ottawa suburbs - as Manning did in 1989, as Harris did in 1994, as McGuinty did in 2000 - if he is going to signal that he has a shot at forming government.
After all, this is about as bad as its going to get for McGuinty, barring an unexpected scandal or second dip to the recession. The Liberals have been stuck in neutral for almost a year thanks to the eHealth scandal and the process of developing a new agenda.
But the Premier is clearly signaling a new plan is in the offing to provide him the momentum to the next election.
Hudak will get more airtime as we get closer to the election, but McGuinty will also be far more politically focused and ruthless.
And the two political earthquakes that put David Peterson into office - Ontario-federal alternation and a rookie Premier - are running against Hudak right now. Stephen Harper doesn't look to be leaving any time soon, although it's not impossible he will be gone by the fall of 2011, and Dalton McGuinty will be a grizzled and disciplined veteran of four election tours by 2011.
Indeed, if the young PC leader is to make his breakthrough, this is the time.
People have come back from endless by-election misery. Just ask David Peterson.
But Tim Hudak shouldn't be facing misery, and that should be making the PC grassroots wonder if they made the right call last year.
Would the suburban lawyer/mother of three Christine Elliot have been a better pick for winning the type of seats they need?
Only time will answer that question, although we will get a preview on Thursday.
(File photo: Yvonne Berg for The Globe and Mail)