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For one, the more members you have, the easier it is for the critics to focus on their particular files and get to know them particularly well, as opposed to having to juggle them. You also have more people available to select for things like Secerataries to the Minister, etc. Finally, you have more mentorship and support for the new elected members whose presence takes you over the top to form government. You have a stronger team to take charge while allowing the new folks to cut their teeth and move up when they are ready.
Granted to all of that. But I still wonder, does sitting as a caucus critic actually fully prepare someone to go into government and take up a seat in cabinet? In some ways it does...but aren't there always going to be a lot of things you can only learn by actually doing the job?
The short answer to that Ken is YES. One doesn't know what you don't know until you do it. What is helpful is to have super admin staff of those who have operated "in govt", which is why "new govts" often hire or have transition teams composed of those outside of province who have been involved in govt and running the day to day operations.
There is also a need to avoid the hierarchic emphasis on governance. Ministers get advice from deputy ministers who in turn get advice form those working for them. A political party that has the support of the people who work for it also have a tremendous source for advice.
This is true of any organization-- advice and information flowing both ways up and down an organization is critical. This is one reason why clever organizations can use the organization of the workplace to improve their business. While a union has specific and understood interests, they are also an incredible resource for leadership as they reach down to the bottom of an organization. Once you change the culture a little to one more respectful and cooperative you can really benefit from all these resources. One reason why any organization including governments, must be careful about declaring war on their workers.
Nanos has a new poll on vote intention in Ontario:
http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/POLONT-W12-T539.pdf
PC: 33.6
Libs: 31.0
NDP: 28.5
Green: 5.6
If you look at their chart the NDP lione has been steadily climbing for the past six months.
Also shows Cons and Liberals close which is also useful putting the leading position in reach.
Put another way, the NDP in Ontario could get another kick at governing within the next few years.
They better have some good communications people to make sure they don't lose the propaganda war that will start the day of the election. The NDP will never get a honeymoon in Ontario so need to be better prepared for the attacks from day one.
Also the NDP needs to have productive conversations with its friends in Ontario both around expectations that must be realistic and understanding what must be done to avoid betraying supporters. As you move closer to being a potential government you need these conversations to happen because the reality on the ground can move faster than those understandings take to create. A conversation about what an NDP government would look like and what it would do needs to happen now-- that does not mean platforms commitments but it sure should include what people are expecting and what of that is actually deliverable. Then when the party wins next it will be clear what must be done to hold the movement together and avoid the fracturing that happened last time. there was stuff to learn on all sides. The party, the leader and the allies. the leader is no longer our problem but the other two factors remain. People have worked all their lives to make a difference-- they need to be part of whatever happens next and to know that they are being heard and core principles being followed. And they need to be respected, which means when things are being floated by the party they need to be doable and when others float them the party needs to be clear about what it can support. Otherwise the habit of telling people what they want to hear and doing something different/taking supporters for granted will make a fall from grace a generational thing.
For the NDP in Ontario it needs to be able to win, govern without screams of betrayal and when ti eventually loses again it go to official opposition with the ability to come back the next time rather than fall all the way down to barely a party.
Interesting that concern about jobs and the economy has gone down, while concern about healthcare and about high taxes (?) has gone up. The NDP is doing a little better, but the results are still relatively the same as they have been for quite a while. Hard to really interpret this poll.
The general trend in all the Ontario polls has been for the PCs to be flat since the October election while the Liberals are shedding support to the NDP like crazy.
Though in *this* poll, the PCs seem slightly down...
I wonder when you'll start hearing "Dump Hudak" talk from the PC's. A lot of them should, logically, be furious that, in the current situation, their party isn't fifteen points ahead right now.
This poll has them at 30% in March, then 32.1% in April, and 33.6% in May, so they don't seem to be slightly down. Both the NDP and the PCs are up a bit, whereas the Liberals are down. It appears that some support from the Liberals has drifted to both the NDP and the PCs. The NDP is still in third, but with the margin of error, it could be seen as a three way tie.
NDP and Liberals tied
Toronto Provincial election - May 29, 2012
NDP 33% (+8)
LIB 33% (-4)
PC 29% (-4)
GRN 4% (same)
18-34
NDP 55% (+33)
LIB 25% (-12)
PC 11% (-21)
GRN 6% (same)
35-44
LIB 37% (+1)
NDP 35% (+1)
PC 25% (-3)
GRN 2% (same)
45-54
PC 36% (+11)
LIB 31% (-4)
NDP 28% (-2)
GRN 4% (same)
55-64
LIB 36% (-5)
NDP 30% (+11)
PC 30% (-7)
GRN 4% (same)
65+
PC 38% (+1)
LIB 34% (-3)
NDP 24% (+4)
GRN 4% (-1)
Male
PC 34% (-3)
LIB 30% (-7)
NDP 29% (+9)
GRN 5% (same)
Female
NDP 38% (+9)
LIB 35% (-3)
PC 24% (-5)
GRN 3% (same)
Drive
PC 36% (-2)
LIB 33% (-4)
NDP 25% (+5)
GRN 3% (-1)
Public Transit
NDP 43% (+15)
LIB 34% (-7)
PC 19% (-8)
GRN 3% (same)
Bike/Walk
NDP 47% (+8)
LIB 33% (-4)
PC 11% (-26)
GRN 9% (+3)
Approve of Rob Ford
PC 58% (same)
LIB 23% (-2)
NDP 15% (+3)
GRN 2% (same)
Disapprove of Rob Ford
NDP 47% (+11)
LIB 40% (-8)
PC 7% (-4)
GRN 5% (same)
That, of course, will probably buy McGuinty some PC support for the next few months. It's gonna be damn hard for Hudak to justify bringing down the Liberals when the PC's are in third place.
Dunno what the sample size is; but still, *that* is astonishing...
where's the link to this poll - I don't see it. ty
i hate the goddamn liberals too. There are no jobs in Toronto!
Adma, its 64 sample size
Jan, here link
http://forumresearch.ca/forms/News%20Archives/News%20Releases/63853_Toro...
As I now understand this most recent poll was done by Forum Research and it covers the Toronto area - correct?
Thanks for the link IPP. It would be helpful when publishing polling results to state who the pollster is, and what area it covers.
This was a poll of the City of Toronto (416) - its worth compafring those numbers to what the actual results were in Toronto last October:
Liberals 47%
NDP 27%
PC 22%
So that means the Liberals are down 14 points in Toronto while the NDP is up 6% and the PCs are up 7% compared to the October election.
Yup
Here Environics May 23-25
PC 37% (same)
NDP 28% (-2)
LIB 25% (-2)
GRN 10% (+4)
http://www.environics.ca/uploads/File/Environics-Research---Ontario-Vote...
Forum Research - june 4
PC 36% (+2)
NDP 30% (-2)
LIB 28% (+1)
GRN 4% (-1)
http://forumresearch.ca/forms/News%20Archives/News%20Releases/02523_Onta...
Recent article in the Globe shows the NDP gaining (now polling 2nd), the Liberals losing ground (polling 3rd), and the PCs staying the same as the last election (now polling first). The prediction of seats won if an election were held today was 52 for the PCs (two short of a majority), 29 for the NDP, and 26 for the Liberals. Also Horwath has very high approval ratings.
Those numbers are unlikely to work out like that. The Ontario Liberals have too many strongholds to end up with that few seats.
Having said that, McGuinty is now the longest-serving Liberal Ontario Premier in modern history. The ride certainly isn't going to last forever. At some point voters are going to want a change.
Today's stronghold can be tomorrow flotsam going down the toilet bowl. The federal Liberals supposedly had all these "strongholds" but when their popular vote in Ontario last May fell to 25% - that translated into just 11 seats. If the Ontario Liberals were to drop from 38% to a province-wide popular vote in the 25-28% range - they would lose a TON of seats.
McGuinty should just merge his party with the PC's and be done with it, Debater. If you're pro-austerity, it really doesn't matter whether you're "moderately progressive" on anything else. Both the OLP and the PC's put Bay Street before human needs.
Debater: The Liberals have not gone below 30% in an Ontario election in decades. Specifically 40 years. The most recent reference available for the Liberals at below 30% comes from 1971 when they got 27.8% of the vote. The legislature had 117 seats, ten more than now. The Liberals got 20 seats.
I won't suggest that a 40 year old result in a different demographic and time is a fair comparison. What I will say is that the Liberals below 30%, if it happened in a general election, is pretty much uncharted territory. In fact things could be much worse.
For a third place party in a first past the post system to get a proportion of seats in the legislature even close to its popular vote as is predicted here would be a remarkable achievement. the idea that the Liberals could get 26/107 seats from third place with only 28% of the vote, I would suggest is on the optimistic side. if the Liberals were to get only 28% and be in third place I think a fairer seat total expectation would be closer to 22-24 seats.
That said, I am not convinced that the Liberals will only get 28% of the vote in the next election. First polls often lowball an unpopular governemtn as those wanting change are more motivated to do a poll. Secondly, I suspect that the Liberals are as likely to grow a few points in the campaign as stay the same as McGuinty is a good campaigner and the Cons have not run a good campaign in a long time and seem unable to stop themselves from scaring people. still I don't think the Liberals would be very happy with what they would get at 30-31%. It is worth noting that 31% gave the Conservatives 26 seats in the last election.
The Liberal vote in Ontario is very seat-efficient at high levels, but could be very seat INefficient at low levels. The Tories are strong in rural and exurban seats and their vote is very very low in the inner cities and parts of the north. The NDP is strong in the north and the industrial cities and almost non-existent in rural areas. If the Liberals fell into the 20s and third place behind the PCs AND the NDP the Liberals would suddenly find the electoral map very, very cruel as they would be a distant second to Tories in the rural and exurban seats and distant second to the NDP in all the NDP strongholds and Liberal MPPs would drop like flies - with most of their suburban GTA seats going Tory and the NDP sweeping them out of places like Windsor, Niagara Falls, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and much of the City of Toronto.
When you are a party that has support in all regions it means that when you do well you run the tables and get huge number of seats, but when you do badly you come in second everywhere and end up with almost no seats. Remember the federal PCs in 1993? 17% across canada and TWO SEATS
I agree with that assessment although not the comparison. The federal Conservatives faced a split and defection to the Reform party.
A better warning for the Ontario Liberals comes from their neighbour Manitoba. I will write a brief electoral history of the Liberals for the last 50 years so you can see what I mean.
From 1932 to 1953 the Liberals were the governing party averaging more than double the seats of the closest opposition party. In 1958 they lost a close election to the Conservatives who won with a minority only 7 seats ahead of them. They were only 6% behind. For the next 50 years the Liberals have been unable to govern. In 1959 the Liberals lost 4% of the vote and lost almost half their seats. In 1962 the Liberals recovered their vote to 36% only 8 points behind the Conservatives only to find they gained just 2 seats and sat barely more than a third of the seats the Conservatives held. In 1966 they closed to within six points of the governing Conservatives only to win just one more seat to sit at 14 to the Conservatives 31. But their nightmare was just starting. In 1969 the NDP came to power in Manitoba for the first time. The Liberals managed 24% of the vote and just 5 seats out of 57 - not even 10% of the seats. They came in second in 16 seats, sometimes to Conservatives and sometimes to New Democrats. Sharon Carstairs brought them back after years of near death to opposition in 1988 winning 35% of the vote but still not enough for government, bested by the Conservatives by only 3 percent and 5 seats. In 1990 the Liberals established themselves firmly as second place finishers winning in a tight three-way election. The Liberals at 28% got 7 seats while the NDP less than one point ahead managed 20. In 1995 the Liberals slid back to 24% getting only 3 -- less than 5% -- of the seats. For the next three elections in 1999, 2003 and 2007 the Liberals barely hung in with about 13% of the vote and 1-2 seats. In 2011 they were reduced to under 8% of the voters winning only their leader's seat.
This is the nightmare scenario for the Liberals-- establish a pattern of running second to the NDP in one part of the province and second to the Cons in another until you are so weak that you can't even manage the popular support anymore.