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In their last big chance to make their case to Ontario’s voters before next month’s election, in Sunday night’s provincial leaders’ debate, Kathleen Wynne was cerebral, Doug Ford was all gut, and Andrea Horwath pounded them both from an unaccustomed position as the frontrunner.

Less than two weeks out, polls show Horwath and her New Democrats way ahead of Wynne and her Liberals and surging to tie or surpass Ford’s Progressive Conservatives. In three campaigns, she’s never been the leader the others are trying to tear down.

Horwath clearly planned to take command of the discussion and she executed. She interrupted both her opponents but especially Ford, rarely letting him develop a full thought before she barged in with a “That’s not true, Doug,” or a “Do you even have a plan?”

Ford defended himself against Horwath’s repeated charges that he favours the rich, for instance. “I don’t know who the so-called rich people are —” he began.

But there was Horwath: “You’re giving them twelve hundred bucks a year, you should know them.”

There’s no need to fear a split in progressive voters will hand Doug Ford an easy victory in the upcoming Ontario election, says provincial NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

That’s because she says voters have already made up their minds not to vote for Premier Kathleen Wynne.

In an interview with The West Block, Horwath told Global’s Eric Sorenson that while splits among progressive voters in the past have propelled conservative parties to power both provincially and federally, that will not be the case in the Ontario election because there is no appetite among the public to return the Liberals to power.

“That’s the story that’s played out in a couple of past elections but this time, Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals are already a party that people don’t want governing the province anymore,” said Horwath.

“I believe folks have already made that decision.”