RED/BLUE DIVIDE, NORTHERN VERSION:

Liberals fear rural losses (IAN URQUHART, 9/20/06, Toronto Star)

There are 25 rural ridings in southern and central Ontario, and they normally lean Conservative at election time. But in the 2003 provincial election, the Liberals won 16 of them, which helped to give them a clear majority province-wide.

Yet in the federal election earlier this year, the Liberals won just two of those 25 seats.

It is always problematic to extrapolate results from one level of government to the other, but the loss of those seats in the federal election has caused the provincial Liberals to sit up and take notice.

A similar outcome in the 2007 provincial election would bring the Liberals perilously close to a minority if not an outright defeat.

The opposition parties certainly hope so. The Conservatives, in particular, are trying to capitalize on a feeling in the rural ridings that Premier Dalton McGuinty and his government are urban-centric.