Why has the NDP lost ground in Toronto?

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The NDP message doesn't resonate with 80% voters 80% of the time. Almost as many people who vote anybody but Tory vote anybody but NDP. Just like many NDPers vote anybody but Liberal. I think the nDP supporters on this board spend way to much time trying to figure out who spoiled their fortunes, instead of coming to grips with the fact that the message blame on business, the banks and the corporates doesn't work. Heck most in Toronto work for those business, banks or corportations!

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...and the Liberal message doesn't resonate with 75% of the voters and the Green message doesn't resonate with 94% of the voters...

I think there is a legitimate question about why in this election, the NDP had great success in Hamilton, Windsor, northern Ontario and several other blue collar pockets in Ontario - but had a bit of a setback in Toronto that was totally counter to what happened everywhere else.

I think you make a valid point that Toronto is a largely white collar city (or if not white collar then aspiring to being white collar) and it may be that the class-based economic populist NDP message that worked so well in other places - doesn't resonate as well in Toronto.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
[b]I think that there are a few things going on here.

One is that having the so-called green party at something 10% in Toronto reduces the available number of votes for all parties. The NDP vote may be stagnant - but so is the Liberal vote. In fact the Liberal vote took a pretty big hit in Trinity-Spadina and Danforth this time as well.

The one bright spot for the NDP in Toronto was York South-Weston where the vote went up a lot this time.

I think that more and more Toronto is seceding from the rest of Canada in terms of having its own unique voting pattern that is completely different from the rest of Ontario (let alone the rest of Canada).

For the NDP, I think that there are probably two factors that create challenges in Toronto:

1. You cannot underestimate the impact of having a shamelessly pro-Liberal partisan rag like the Toronto Star as the main daily paper - and when day after day after day, the main daily paper reads like it was written by Liberal Party spin-doctors - it has to have some impact.

2. This election more than ever, the NDP under Layton ran a very class-based economically populist campaign. I think that this was the right thing to do under the circumstances and it was instrumental in sweeping northern Ontario and cementing the NDP lock on Hamilton, Windsor etc... and gaining ground in poorer and more blue collar ridings across Canada. BUT, in Toronto you have a population of largely white collar wannabes who just don't relate to that kind of messaging as well. The NDP base in Toronto such that it exists includes a lot of "creative class" professionals and teachers and nurses etc... and a lot of glitterati who like the NDP to be some esoteric pseudo-Green Party. When Jack Layton talks about "the kitchen table, not the boardroom table" - it is a great success in St. John's, Thunder Bay, Hamilton, Thompson and Windsor - bit you can almost hear all the snooty Margaret Atwood types turning up their noses in horror. Incomes in Toronto tend to be a lot higher than the national average too.

It would be nice to please everyone, but in the end, the NDP is first and foremost a party that defends the interest of working class people and if we have to choose between gearing our message towards winning the votes of working class people or winning back Margaret Atwood - I think the former has to take precedence.[/b]

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I think that is quite correct. I also think that the media tends to overstate Toronto's importance in the grand scheme of things. [url=http://election.rabble.ca/post/54866591/quebec-and-cities-save-our-canad... a look at this piece from Alice Klein.[/url] The key regions that the Conservatives have historically relied on for their strength are Quebec and Western Canada, where the Liberals are not in contention anyways, and with the Liberals not winning any seats in and around the GTA, how did they "save" Canada? Look at the large orange patches around Northern Ontario. And if the Conservatives don't win in "cities," how does she explain Conservative successes in Saint John, Quebec, Ottawa, Kitchener, London, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver? Sure the GTA voted Liberal out of fear of Harper, but if you look at the political map in the rest of the country, you just don't see that fear of Harper that you do in Toronto, even though they don't agree with Harper any more. It's nice to win seats in Toronto, but how many seats are in the GTA? 40? The truth is you do not need to win in Toronto to form government, it's a lesson Harper has learned well, and that's why he ignores the city.

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Originally posted by Aristotleded24:
[b]

I think that is quite correct. I also think that the media tends to overstate Toronto's importance in the grand scheme of things. [url=http://election.rabble.ca/post/54866591/quebec-and-cities-save-our-canad... a look at this piece from Alice Klein.[/url] The key regions that the Conservatives have historically relied on for their strength are Quebec and Western Canada, where the Liberals are not in contention anyways, and with the Liberals not winning any seats in and around the GTA, how did they "save" Canada? Look at the large orange patches around Northern Ontario. And if the Conservatives don't win in "cities," how does she explain Conservative successes in Saint John, Quebec, Ottawa, Kitchener, London, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver? Sure the GTA voted Liberal out of fear of Harper, but if you look at the political map in the rest of the country, you just don't see that fear of Harper that you do in Toronto, even though they don't agree with Harper any more. It's nice to win seats in Toronto, but how many seats are in the GTA? 40? The truth is you do not need to win in Toronto to form government, it's a lesson Harper has learned well, and that's why he ignores the city.[/b]

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There are 42 seats in the GTA. Newfoundland has 7 PEI has 4 Nova Scotia has 11 New Brunswick has 10 and Manitoba has 14
So the GTA has almost as many seats as FOUR provinces.

Toronto matters.

[ 21 October 2008: Message edited by: cornerstone ]

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Originally posted by Aristotleded24:
[b]

I think that is quite correct. I also think that the media tends to overstate Toronto's importance in the grand scheme of things. [url=http://election.rabble.ca/post/54866591/quebec-and-cities-save-our-canad... a look at this piece from Alice Klein.[/url] The key regions that the Conservatives have historically relied on for their strength are Quebec and Western Canada, where the Liberals are not in contention anyways, and with the Liberals not winning any seats in and around the GTA, how did they "save" Canada? Look at the large orange patches around Northern Ontario. And if the Conservatives don't win in "cities," how does she explain Conservative successes in Saint John, Quebec, Ottawa, Kitchener, London, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver? Sure the GTA voted Liberal out of fear of Harper, but if you look at the political map in the rest of the country, you just don't see that fear of Harper that you do in Toronto, even though they don't agree with Harper any more. It's nice to win seats in Toronto, but how many seats are in the GTA? 40? The truth is you do not need to win in Toronto to form government, it's a lesson Harper has learned well, and that's why he ignores the city.[/b]

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There are 42 seats in the GTA. Newfoundland has 7 PEI has 4 Nova Scotia has 11 New Brunswick has 10 and Manitoba has 14
So the GTA has almost as many seats as FOUR provinces.

Toronto matters.

[ 21 October 2008: Message edited by: cornerstone ]

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Originally posted by cornerstone:
[b]There are 42 seats in the GTA. Newfoundland has 7 PEI has 4 Nova Scotia has 11 New Brunswick has 10 and Manitoba has 14
So the GTA has almost as many seats as FOUR provinces.[/b]

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Compared to 64 non-GTA seats in Ontario, where the NDP had its best ever showing seat wise, along with the 75 seats in Quebec and the large number of seats in the 4 Western provinces combined. Toronto matters, but not enough to make or break a national campaign.

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Originally posted by cornerstone:
[b]There are 42 seats in the GTA. Newfoundland has 7 PEI has 4 Nova Scotia has 11 New Brunswick has 10 and Manitoba has 14
So the GTA has almost as many seats as FOUR provinces.

Toronto matters.[/b]

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So what you're telling us is that 5 million people have [i]almost[/i] as many seats as 3.5 million people?

The amount that Toronto matters is rather heavily discounted, wouldn't you say?

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Originally posted by cornerstone:
[b]There are 42 seats in the GTA. Newfoundland has 7 PEI has 4 Nova Scotia has 11 New Brunswick has 10 and Manitoba has 14
So the GTA has almost as many seats as FOUR provinces.

Toronto matters.[/b]

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So what you're telling us is that 5 million people have [i]almost[/i] as many seats as 3.5 million people?

The amount that Toronto matters is rather heavily discounted, wouldn't you say?

There's a subtler side to "Toronto matters". Perhaps there was a deliberate downplaying of Conservative potential in the 416 (at least as far as the media goes--but even within "official" Conservative circles) knowing darn well that several seats were genuinely within reach...

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Originally posted by Lard Tunderin' Jeezus:
[b]So what you're telling us is that 5 million people have [i]almost[/i] as many seats as 3.5 million people?

The amount that Toronto matters is rather heavily discounted, wouldn't you say?[/b]

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Yup it's called Special Clauses. PEI gets four seats when it should only get one for its Electoral Quotient. Manitoba gets 14 when it should only get ten.. etc.

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Originally posted by cornerstone:
[b]
yup DVW being one of them. If the Conservatives had run a "Red Tory" instead of the used car dealer they could have won.[/b]

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Never going to happen. Not because a Red Tory isn't highly electable there, but because the Harpercrits would never tolerate anyone who might dare try to defend Toronto in cabinet.

Upon reflection, two things here...

(1) All things considered, for all of Dion's woes, the Liberals had a solid Toronto campaign package in place, and didn't run into the kinds of Klander-klanger situations that plagued their '06 campaign. And of course, it helped that Toronto produced all those leadership candidates in the interim--and all the more so with Bob Rae now "officially" in the Liberal camp, which wasn't the case in '06 (didn't he contribute to the earlier Peggy Nash campaign?)

(2) For all of Layton's merits as a "Toronto" leader, he's been a Potemkin front for a nagging lack of overall 416 infrastructure; and the fact that Davenport and Parkdale-High Park are more competitive than they've ever been isn't enough--by and large, the NDP still feels like a more haphazard, marginal, erratic, depleted force than it was a generation ago. I remember as recently as the Broadbent era that the party carried a lawn-sign "respectability" even in obvious also-ran lost causes a la Etobicoke Centre--those days are long gone; or else, attempts to rekindle it can seem like overzealous astroturfing, or too much of that energy's been coopted by the Greens, etc.

When it comes to a potential Toronto strategy, something I'm keeping in mind is Michael Prue's ability to stay buoyant in the provincial Beaches-East York while Maria Minna inexplicably holds on tight federally--indeed, thanks to his past East York mayoralty, Prue does best in the Minna-friendly north. In fact, Prue is a throwback to the long lost days when New Democrats were a sane, viable option on municipal councils in "the boroughs"--I kinda wonder whether a hypothetical federal goal for a 416 breakthrough might be the "Prue Democrats", the local version of the middle-class, normalizing demos which have kept Hamilton's seats in the NDP fold...

Leave aside Stock's choice of label and there is more of a certain kind of voter in the cores of Canda's 3 big cities.

And it is not entirely a class or demographic difference- although the higher concentration of certain kinds of occupations is part of it. Some of it also is the difference in values od people who live in big city cores.

So as Stock said, while the proportion of big city votes votes going to the Greens may not be high... that does have an effect.

While there have been mentions in this thread to the Liberals 'Toronto strategy'- I think that has been only to the explicit / 'formal' and policy/program side.

The whole creative side to Liberal positioning for the last 2 years- even before Dion became leader- has been with very few exceptions [and all of them fitful] as if the next campaign was about big city cores and competition with the NDP.

If they are going to put all their eggs in that basket, it is going to have an effect. So they did pretty well in Toronto and Montreal- while watching the house burn down in the rest of the country.

That chart paints an revealing picture of NDP support.
No need to give up on Toronto still - theres potential left around the city.
If it helps I could point out that NDP did better North of the 401, where it was always invisible.

And you were right only about 3 Toronto ridings - the 4th one, YSW had improved in its showing.

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York-South-Weston 28.0 21.3 +31%

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And you were right only about 3 Toronto ridings - the 4th one, YSW had improved in its showing.

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Actually, YSW is on the 401 and only became part of Toronto in the latest amalgamation and is not what one would call 'inner city' like Toronto-Danforth or Beaches-East York. YSW even has a significant manufacturing sector.

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Originally posted by adma:
[b]When it comes to a potential Toronto strategy, something I'm keeping in mind is Michael Prue's ability to stay buoyant in the provincial Beaches-East York while Maria Minna inexplicably holds on tight federally--indeed, thanks to his past East York mayoralty, Prue does best in the Minna-friendly north. In fact, Prue is a throwback to the long lost days when New Democrats were a sane, viable option on municipal councils in "the boroughs"--I kinda wonder whether a hypothetical federal goal for a 416 breakthrough might be the "Prue Democrats", the local version of the middle-class, normalizing demos which have kept Hamilton's seats in the NDP fold...[/b]

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I have a theory, which would be fun to get deconstructed/attacked/validated, that is a riff on this.

There used to be a lot of New Democrats in the "Prue mold" - not so much "middle-class" but just practical "meat and potatoes" politicians who appealed to the vast chunks of "uncool" Toronto. In the West End, in particular, many of these NDP politicians were Italian. This came to a crescendo in 1990 when we elected tons of inner-suburban New Dems on a populist platform of cutting auto insurance rates and property taxes: Anthony Perruzza, Tony Rizzo, David Warner, Ed Philip, Tony Silipo even (gulp) George Mammolitti. Five years later these New Democrats returned to voters without having delivered on their economic populist proposals. The Toronto NDP survived in places where the Rae government's socially progressive accimplishments (pay equity, employment equity) resonated but in the rest of the City we were wiped out.

That had a few effects:
- The NDP in Toronto was increasingly in a rearguard action - fighting to defend what we had. This meant resources and energy went into the "downtown" ridings we held and the rest of the City was left to it's own devices. With David
Miller's defeat in York South Weston that left us with: Trinity Spadina, Beaches Woodine, Riverdale, Fort York and Dovercourt.

- The political culture in these "downtown" ridings was different from the rest of the City. So, in addition to getting more resources, the ideological space of the Toronto NDP was increasingly taken up by "downtown" thinking. In other words, less populist, less bread and butter, more "academic".

- This was exacerbated by the absence of voices of Caucus who could speak for, understand, advocate and speak to voters in East York, Etobicoke, York, etc.

- The problem exacerbated itself with each election as we saw ourselves reduced to fewer ridings that took more and more resources to hold.

As a result of all this, and other problems, in vast chunks of Toronto there is no riding association to speak of and while people would consider voting NDP there is either no viable candidate or no viable organization backing that candidate. As a result of that the "centre" is not hearing about the issues that will move these voters towards the NDP. The cycle continues.

Sorry to end on a cynical note, I will return.

ETA: I think I'll make a "positive post" later but rather then taint it I'll add another observation here.

The "NDP Caucus" at City Hall once worked closely with other New Democrats and had representation in areas when New Dems were losing provincially and federally. This is still true today with New Dems like Anthony Perruzza, Maria Augimeri, Howard Moscoe and to some extent Adam Giambrone.

That relationship started fraying during when Rae government at Queen's Park started to tank in popularity. NDP Councillors running for re-election distanced themselves from the party - since it was such an anchor. The turmoil of the Harris years didn't help much. People were polarized as pro or anti Harris and, particularly in light of the unpopularity of the NDP, people switched to the Liberals. In 1999 even Jack Layton and Olivia Chow endorsed an Indpendent over the NDP candidate.

Time eventually started to wash away the bitter memories of the Rae years, to the extent that an admitted New Democrat was actually elected Mayor (albeit as part of an explicitly non-NDP coalition).

This has led to a new problem: the "NDP Caucus" at City Hall is not particularly linked to the NDP. They are, in fact, a "David Miller" Caucus that has no particular loyalty or shared strategic goals with any wing of the NDP. Some councillors help their local New Democrats but, as a block, the team at City Hall doesn't work with the NDP federally or provincially and, in fact, seems to be more interested in preserving Liberal hegemony. Hence, Miller's strategic refusal to criticize McGuinty during the last provincial campaign and to, in fact, relieve pressure on the province by implementing municipal tax hikes. Hence, Miller's [url=http://www.thestar.com/article/502107]praise for Dion's anemic infrastructure plan[/url] which was revealed in a leaked document to be [url=http://www.nationalpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=813331]"exactly the same"[/url] as the Harper plan that Miller criticized.

[ 30 October 2008: Message edited by: 1948 ]

Looking back on this thread, it repeats itself 3 times. Was it imported on 3 different occasions? Did this happen to all of the threads imported from the old babble site?