The Cons have a clear majority. Why do they the NDP’s support.
Because NPD (and Liberal et el) voters are Ontarioans too. Even if 16 out of 2o people agree with me it doesn't mean the 4 who don't are wrong.
The smartest thing the PCs can do is extend the proverbial olive branch to NDP and Liberals and ask for help to fix Ontario.
Some people don't look at politics and society through the lens of a political party. They put the interest of society ahead of the interest of a political party.We are now witnessing the usual Liberal behaviour when they get crushed They start flailing about looking for anyone but themselves to blame
The NDP doubled their number of seats and the Liberals were so decimated they didn’t even get party status
In the Legislature for the next 4 years the Liberals will have the same status as the one Green. My hunch is that the Greens could do better than the Liberals in the next Ontario election
But for some their selfinterest/prejudices come before the interests of the society at large. This self interest is preserved by supporting a particular political party.
It has been noticed that Cons usually get more votes than the polls predict. One reason of that could be that people are ashamed to tell another person that they support such a vile party, so they lie to the pollsters, essentially they put on a mask of another party.
Gadar, the Cons are a vile party, but weren't you lol'ing when the Ford majority was declared, for some reason??
If the Conservatives cut the revenues, it gives them more justification to cut spending. This right-wing policy is called "starve the beast." It also allows for decertification of the LCBO locals of the union, and hence less potential political pressure on the Conservatives.
But the workers can always take solace in NDP finishing second, and they can celebrate the end of the Liberal party to compensate for the rights they will lose.
This is the worst result for the NDP. If Horwath can't beat Ford, if the NDP can't win ridings like Kenora and Brant and Sarnia and Scarborough-Rouge River now, when will they?
ONDP got three seats in Brampton! Jagmeet Singh's younger brother now has a seat from Brampton east and is now in Queen's park! They also came in Second in my area Brampton south with a good showing!
You mention 4 ridings, Ontario has 124, so who cares about your 4? The ONDP won some key game changing ridings and came in second for many many more.
Question is maintaining the preferred alternative status to pc come next election
Actually josh what's disturbing is that after being thoroughly decimated last nite, Liberals show zero contritness, and have spent the time both before and since since we knew Doug Ford had won, flinging dung on what turned out to be a very successful Horvath-led NDP campaign. So please spare us more of your nonsense.
Calling finishing second "very succesful" is true nonsense.
Because everybody knows that it doesnt mean f all. Yes it can soothe some egos, thats all it accompalishes.
Gadar, the Cons are a vile party, but weren't you lol'ing when the Ford majority was declared, for some reason??
I am still loling. Now I am loling at the victory speech given by Andrea. And I am also loling at the celebration by NDP and its maybe supporters.
Oh and by the way the deadline of the polls being right passed yesterday, from today they are all biased and trash, except for the ones that show my preferred party ahead.
Calling finishing second "very succesful" is true nonsense.
Because everybody knows that it doesnt mean f all. Yes it can soothe some egos, thats all it accompalishes.
Here's a comment very seperated from reality.
Getting a big chunck of voters to put an X beside your brand is no simple task!!!
ONDP and the NDP have never had it easy in Ontario provincialy or federally. Going from 3rd to 1st I do not think will be ever possible for the ONDP and NDP. It looked like it was last week, but really, not many parties have ever done this. Or anything similar?
If the Conservatives cut the revenues, it gives them more justification to cut spending. This right-wing policy is called "starve the beast." It also allows for decertification of the LCBO locals of the union, and hence less potential political pressure on the Conservatives.
But the workers can always take solace in NDP finishing second, and they can celebrate the end of the Liberal party to compensate for the rights they will lose.
It's been proved over and over again that there was no scenario in which the NDP agreeing to NOT try to move past the Liberals would have resulted in Ford being stopped.
What part of "the Liberals were seen as the party of the status quo and there was no way to rebuild support for the status quo this year" do you not understand?
It's NOT the NDP's fault that Ford got a majority.
Gadar, the Cons are a vile party, but weren't you lol'ing when the Ford majority was declared, for some reason??
I am still loling. Now I am loling at the victory speech given by Andrea. And I am also loling at the celebration by NDP and its maybe supporters.
What is your point? And what would you have had the NDP do? Before they rose in the polls, the OLP was 20 points down. Where the ONDP supposed to simply not nominate candidates this year in the name of "stopping Ford"?
Nobody here is happy that Ford has a majority-it's just that there was essentially no way to prevent it. Why can you not accept that?
Why don’t these Liberal supporters ask themselves the question, why didn’t Wynne step down when it was clear for nearly two years that she was an albatross around the Liberal party’s neck, and that there was no way she would lead them to victory.
It has been noticed that Cons usually get more votes than the polls predict. One reason of that could be that people are ashamed to tell another person that they support such a vile party, so they lie to the pollsters, essentially they put on a mask of another party.
No no no! "The Shy Tory effect" is all myth, it's all about voter turnout.
Why don’t these Liberal supporters ask themselves the question, why didn’t Wynne step down when it was clear for nearly two years that she was an albatross around the Liberal party’s neck, and that there was no way she would lead them to victory.
Reportedly, her caucus convinced her not to step down, despite bad polling. It was a bad bet, since it's very hard to get re-elected after 15 years in power. I think they needed a truly charismatic leader, without the baggage, to pull this off.
Nobody here is happy that Ford has a majority-it's just that there was essentially no way to prevent it. Why can you not accept that?
Some analysts say the NDP vote dropped after the PCs and the OLP started running anti-NDP ads. The NDP did not respond in kind. They were not prepared for the attention. You have to fight fire with fire. During the final debate, Horwath herself looked unprepared for Ford's attacks. The party should have seen this all coming. If the NDP run a good campaign *until the end*, and hit back hard, they had a very good chance to win, and unfortunately they wasted their best opportunity in a generation, against a very polarizing right-wing candidate. The ground game wasn't there either, from what I've seen.
gadar wrote, "my preferred party won."
if you are a Conservative what are you doing here?
So, a cursory glance at the results indicates that Ford owes his win, and his majority, to the GTA. Can anyone confirm that this is the case?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-ontario-election-results-1.4697447
Thanks, josh - very interesting.
@Lagatta4
Grant Divine was elected premiere of Saskatchewan in 1981. One of the first things he did was to remove the provincial gas tax On gasoline sold in Saskatchewan. Semi trucks pulverized the highways and didn't pay for any of the construction for the highways because the provincial gas tax was dropped. Eventually they had to reinstate The provincial gas tax because they lost a lot of revenue and our highways have never been the same since.
He tried to privatize the liquor stores in our province but he face so much resistance from the public that he had to back down.
Brad Wall did not go so far as to privatize our liquor stores But he legislated that all future liquor stores are to be privately owned.
gadar wrote, "my preferred party won."
if you are a Conservative what are you doing here?
I never said that. Cons are the furthest from being been my preferred party, not all on the board can say that.
But I think everybody is welcome here though Conservative, progressive, conservative but pretend progressive, Liberal, NDP, Con but pretend NDP.
What is your point? And what would you have had the NDP do? Before they rose in the polls, the OLP was 20 points down. Where the ONDP supposed to simply not nominate candidates this year in the name of "stopping Ford"?
Nobody here is happy that Ford has a majority-it's just that there was essentially no way to prevent it. Why can you not accept that?
So if I dont like that NDP lost, it somehow means that I wanted Liberals to win. If I say that finishing second in a winner take all system doesnt mean anything, that also means that I wanted the Liberals to win. I dont know how you got to that conclusion.
Who says I have not accepted Ford winning. I have been calling a Con majority from day one. Even when people were already celebrating and picking cabinet ministers for Andrea.
What I find nauseating is that there is nothing to celebrate in this result. I dont see a positive and somehow some so called progressives are spinning it to be a half victory.
If beating the Liberals is all the progressives desired from this election, congratulations, you won.
I can care less who the leader of the opposition is, the cold hard fact is Ford is the premier and he is the exact opposite of progressive.
If the Conservatives cut the revenues, it gives them more justification to cut spending. This right-wing policy is called "starve the beast." It also allows for decertification of the LCBO locals of the union, and hence less potential political pressure on the Conservatives.
But the workers can always take solace in NDP finishing second, and they can celebrate the end of the Liberal party to compensate for the rights they will lose.
It's been proved over and over again that there was no scenario in which the NDP agreeing to NOT try to move past the Liberals would have resulted in Ford being stopped.
What part of "the Liberals were seen as the party of the status quo and there was no way to rebuild support for the status quo this year" do you not understand?
It's NOT the NDP's fault that Ford got a majority.
Again how do you conclude that I did not want the NDP to move past the OLP. I wanted NDP to win and they lost. I wanted Cons to lose and they won. I dont see a win however hard I try.
What part of I dont give a f who finished second, dont you understand?
Ok, those are fair critiques. I agree with those. The only thing I've really objected to is the implication that Ford got his majority mainly because the NDP vote rose. Here's the thing: The PC's took 41% this time. In 2014, the Liberals took 38%. Therefore, Ford would likely have taken his majority this time even if there'd been no swing from the OLP to the ONDP at all.Nobody here is happy that Ford has a majority-it's just that there was essentially no way to prevent it. Why can you not accept that?
Some analysts say the NDP vote dropped after the PCs and the OLP started running anti-NDP ads. The NDP did not respond in kind. They were not prepared for the attention. You have to fight fire with fire. During the final debate, Horwath herself looked unprepared for Ford's attacks. The party should have seen this all coming. If the NDP run a good campaign *until the end*, and hit back hard, they had a very good chance to win, and unfortunately they wasted their best opportunity in a generation, against a very polarizing right-wing candidate. The ground game wasn't there either, from what I've seen.
Then why do you keep lashing out at unions for preferring the ONDP to the OLP? And what would you have had the ONDP do differently? The OLP was certain to lose from the start and the ONDP couldn't increase its vote or seat totals at all if it didn't run clearly to the left of the OLP. They were never going to beat the PC's by saying "were exactly like the OLP but without the sleaze". And they couldn't even have done anything pro-worker if they'd come out in favor of back-to-work legislation. Once you support that, nothing you could introduce could be pro-worker at all. If it was anything, it was the 1$ beer pledge-a pledge Ford's never going to come through on, btw.If the Conservatives cut the revenues, it gives them more justification to cut spending. This right-wing policy is called "starve the beast." It also allows for decertification of the LCBO locals of the union, and hence less potential political pressure on the Conservatives.
But the workers can always take solace in NDP finishing second, and they can celebrate the end of the Liberal party to compensate for the rights they will lose.
It's been proved over and over again that there was no scenario in which the NDP agreeing to NOT try to move past the Liberals would have resulted in Ford being stopped.
What part of "the Liberals were seen as the party of the status quo and there was no way to rebuild support for the status quo this year" do you not understand?
It's NOT the NDP's fault that Ford got a majority.
Again how do you conclude that I did not want the NDP to move past the OLP. I wanted NDP to win and they lost. I wanted Cons to lose and they won. I dont see a win however hard I try.
What part of I dont give a f who finished second, dont you understand?
quote:
Labour leaders lose the plot
Ontario’s senior labour leadership failed spectacularly this election. Public statements in support of the NDP dribbled in over the past couple weeks, even the last few days of the election. Many union activists were already light years ahead of their leaders in supporting Fight for $15 and Fairness, important strikes at CAMI and among college faculty, and building networks to fight the Tories in the election. But the massive financial and human resources that unions could have put into organizing, educating and agitating, were largely absent.
For all the hoopla over the OFL’s realignment with the NDP at last November’s convention, this amounted too little too late on the ground. There were only three OFL town halls leading up to the election, and no campaign, no strategy, no slogans, no serious education program, no attempt to drive the wedge of class politics into the Tory base. This was the opposite of the 2014 Stop Hudak mass meetings and education work that helped wreck Tory support in union ranks and beyond. This was far more effective than what came out of the OFL convention.
Further failures to coordinate and join forces in united campaigns was evident in the crucial issue of Hydro. While the Tories railed against hydro rates and captured popular anger against the Liberals, CUPE and OPSEU ran parallel anti-privatization campaigns. OFL did nothing. This reflects the crisis inside labour, where affiliates focused their energy and resources on a destructive civil war. Resources and time for effective organizing and campaigning were squandered.
quote:
Missed opportunities
Many of the NDP election promises made this year were only made in the past few months, giving millions of people little time to grapple with them amidst all the right-wing media hysteria and lies about costs, or tax hikes, or racist nonsense about refugees flooding hospitals. It is not enough to simply have ideas in a platform, there has to be a strategy to build the support for those ideas on the ground outside of a campaign period. The absence of a longer-term strategy by the NDP meant little was done to build local NDP organization beyond its urban and northern strongholds and into the suburban and rural ridings where the Tories built their majority.
quote:
Building mass action through basic organizing
The Ford Tories will face plenty of legal and legislative challenges. The courts, however, won’t defeat the Tory legislative agenda. Nor will the NDP opposition at Queen’s Park. Even filibusters can be waited out – Harris did this many times and won. Waiting four years for another election is not an option. Under the Harper majority there was a lot of waiting around for the 2015 election, and not nearly enough effort from organized labour to build a fightback campaign while he was in power.
If we’re serious about building an opposition rooted our collective power, we have to fight the government by building towards mass action and the goal of creating a serious political crisis for the government. This was basic idea at the core of the fight against Harris, but escalation beyond city-wide general strikes and mass marches – the Days of Action – was off the table for labour leaders. Harris called their bluff. We need to learn from this experience in our new fight against the Ford Tories.
It starts with the basics. Flyering, petitioning, lunch hour and after work meetings, are all essential to building up an opposition. Our organizing work always needs a hook, or what organizers call an “ask”: something to pull people into like a picket line, a march, or rally. If someone is extra keen, ask them to stick around and help with flyering or petitioning, or give them a petition to get signed and check in with them later.
quote:
With this in mind our first task in Ontario is to build for the Decent Work rally on June 16.
Nobody here is happy that Ford has a majority-it's just that there was essentially no way to prevent it.
Sure there was a way. The NDP could have gotten more votes and won more ridings. The NDP had victory in its grasp and lost it in the final week of the campaign. In particular, it failed to capitalize on Wynne's concession the weekend before the vote.
I'm not claiming to have all the answers as to how the NDP could have won, but I'm not one of the people who was paid to run the campaign.
It has been noticed that Cons usually get more votes than the polls predict. One reason of that could be that people are ashamed to tell another person that they support such a vile party, so they lie to the pollsters, essentially they put on a mask of another party.
Or they might not give a shit about stupid online polls.
Or they might not give a shit about stupid online polls.
I doubt it. These days, every single internet forum (except for rabble) is filled with extremely childish and insulting Trump imitators. That's the Ford Nation base.
The reason the NDP slipped in the dying days of the campaign was that the effective ads against some of the candidates that were being run against them.
The Next Four Years: An Ontario election post-mortem
quote:
Focusing on the future
Meanwhile, the opposition parties will undoubtedly be taking stock of what just happened and what it means for their future.
Liberals will be in search of a new leader and may find temptation in veering toward more right-wing ideology—like the kind that informed the decision to privatize Hydro One. But let there be a lesson in the politics of privatization: Kathleen Wynne was a fairly popular premier until her government decided to hand majority shares of Hydro One over to the private sector.
Both Liberals and the NDP would be wise to also consider how much their proposals to protect workers and to expand social programs resonated with the general public.
The majority of voters chose other parties that were offering more, not fewer, public services. The majority didn’t vote for cuts. They just didn’t win the seat count in this first-past-the-post electoral system.
A lesson for any government that wishes to be activist, to move the needle on progressive social policy: don’t wait until the year before an election to lead the way. Don’t act like you’ll have more than one mandate to make a difference. Be bold.
Now is not the time for progressives to accept incremental improvements to the status quo or to simply switch into reactive mode. We must lead and protect.
Maybe the PC's also had a better get out the vote campaign? I volunteered for the federal NDP in the 2015 election and we used an ancient communication system compared with the Conservatives and Liberals. In this election the PC's also had a bigger war chest to spend on getting out their vote.
Then why do you keep lashing out at unions for preferring the ONDP to the OLP? And what would you have had the ONDP do differently? The OLP was certain to lose from the start and the ONDP couldn't increase its vote or seat totals at all if it didn't run clearly to the left of the OLP. They were never going to beat the PC's by saying "were exactly like the OLP but without the sleaze". And they couldn't even have done anything pro-worker if they'd come out in favor of back-to-work legislation. Once you support that, nothing you could introduce could be pro-worker at all. If it was anything, it was the 1$ beer pledge-a pledge Ford's never going to come through on, btw.If the Conservatives cut the revenues, it gives them more justification to cut spending. This right-wing policy is called "starve the beast." It also allows for decertification of the LCBO locals of the union, and hence less potential political pressure on the Conservatives.
But the workers can always take solace in NDP finishing second, and they can celebrate the end of the Liberal party to compensate for the rights they will lose.
It's been proved over and over again that there was no scenario in which the NDP agreeing to NOT try to move past the Liberals would have resulted in Ford being stopped.
What part of "the Liberals were seen as the party of the status quo and there was no way to rebuild support for the status quo this year" do you not understand?
It's NOT the NDP's fault that Ford got a majority.
Again how do you conclude that I did not want the NDP to move past the OLP. I wanted NDP to win and they lost. I wanted Cons to lose and they won. I dont see a win however hard I try.
What part of I dont give a f who finished second, dont you understand?
I know my english is bad being the second language and all. But where did I even insinuate that the unions should prefer OLP? The trouble here is we see what we want to see. You have concluded that I wanted OLP to win, whereas I wanted the Cons to lose. They are two different things.
I never lashed out at the unions yet you imply that I have done it more than once.
I was pointing out that some are celebrating it as an achievement for NDP and by extension progressives. And when Ford and company start attacking workers rights, NDP coming second wont be of much help to them.
It's possible to believe these two things at the same time
1) That it sucks that the PC's have a majority(something NONE of us wanted).
2) That it's good that the NDP made major gains(something which is not the cause of #1).
We all get it that what Ford is planning to do to workers is a tragedy. But the NDP is not the cause of that tragedy. It's not as though Ford would have been stopped if ONLY the NDP had said "don't vote for us in the 905". We simply can't assume that such a thing would have made any significant difference.
For the forseeable future, the chances of stopping Ford at the next election will hinge exclusively on the NDP being built up to be able to beat Ford outright, as they had a real chance of doing. Four years of people arguing that the NDP's status as official opposition is illegitimate won't do anything to get the PC's out, as it won't be possible for the OLP to recover from this result in only one election, IF EVER.
As to the 905, the key will be in presenting ONDP ideas as radical AND practical-NOT in moving the party far enough to the right to make the differences between ONDP and OLP meaningless. There's no large group of people who'd swing to the ONDP next time if only it repented its platform from this year.
It's possible to believe these two things at the same time
1) That it sucks that the PC's have a majority(something NONE of us wanted).
2) That it's good that the NDP made major gains(something which is not the cause of #1).
We all get it that what Ford is planning to do to workers is a tragedy. But the NDP is not the cause of that tragedy. It's not as though Ford would have been stopped if ONLY the NDP had said "don't vote for us in the 905". We simply can't assume that such a thing would have made any significant difference.
For the forseeable future, the chances of stopping Ford at the next election will hinge exclusively on the NDP being built up to be able to beat Ford outright, as they had a real chance of doing. Four years of people arguing that the NDP's status as official opposition is illegitimate won't do anything to get the PC's out, as it won't be possible for the OLP to recover from this result in only one election, IF EVER.
As to the 905, the key will be in presenting ONDP ideas as radical AND practical-NOT in moving the party far enough to the right to make the differences between ONDP and OLP meaningless. There's no large group of people who'd swing to the ONDP next time if only it repented its platform from this year.
It's possible to believe these two things at the same time
1) That it sucks that the PC's have a majority(something NONE of us wanted).
2) That it's good that the NDP made major gains(something which is not the cause of #1).
We all get it that what Ford is planning to do to workers is a tragedy. But the NDP is not the cause of that tragedy. It's not as though Ford would have been stopped if ONLY the NDP had said "don't vote for us in the 905". We simply can't assume that such a thing would have made any significant difference.
For the forseeable future, the chances of stopping Ford at the next election will hinge exclusively on the NDP being built up to be able to beat Ford outright, as they had a real chance of doing. Four years of people arguing that the NDP's status as official opposition is illegitimate won't do anything to get the PC's out, as it won't be possible for the OLP to recover from this result in only one election, IF EVER.
As to the 905, the key will be in presenting ONDP ideas as radical AND practical-NOT in moving the party far enough to the right to make the differences between ONDP and OLP meaningless. There's no large group of people who'd swing to the ONDP next time if only it repented its platform from this year.
The reason the NDP slipped in the dying days of the campaign was that the effective ads against some of the candidates that were being run against them.
I dislike this type of analysis becuase you only control your side and not the other. This suggests that nothing culd have been done and there is nothing to learn.
I have been thinking about what the NDP could have done and it seems clear to me that there may have been options and we might not know all the answers.
First question: did the NDP spread money in a way that left them nothing for a final blitz of ads? If so then this is a mistake as the NDP if theya re doing well always get the attacks in the last week.
Second question: Why did the NDP not go on the attack saying what a dangerous thing it would be to reward the Conservatives for not costing a platform -- why did they not have a real blitz of ads asking what Ford was hiding about his intentions to cut?
At the end of the campaign where the NDP produced a known and quantified plan, the scare campaign was against them rather than the party that ran a secretive platform saying they were going to cut millions in efficiencies.
It is possible that the NDP lacked the close in the campaign and that they did not know to go on the attack. I think this lost them the campaign as good as the rest of it was.
Would progressive Ontario voters want Jagmeet Singh to do as "well" in Ontario as Horwath did? And usher in another Con majority government federally? I don't think so. It was a failed experiment. The NDP can't win 905.
The NDP won 11 seats in the 905 in this election. The Liberals won 0 seats in the 905. Where on earth does this statement come from?
How many additional seats, if the Liberal support have gone to the NDP to block Ford, would the NDP have taken away from the PCs? Enough to swing the election is my hunch! That is why Liberals are ones responsible for allowing Doug Ford to win.
In recent Ontario elections before this one, groups like Working Families Ontario implored New Democrats in all but NDP incumbent ridings to vote Liberal. In this election, their web site [ https://workingfamilies.ca/ ] was not updated from April 29/18 onward. (I note that late April/early May is when the Liberals fell behind the NDP in several public opinion polls.)
I agree with several earlier comments that it would be unreasonable to presume every Liberal would have voted NDP if that voter had to choose to vote for someone other than the Liberals. But numerous opinion polls showed that Liberal voters’ “second choice” was three times more likely to be the NDP than the PCs. So, let’s do the following:
a) 20% of Liberal votes cast stay Liberal (some people will stick with their party “come heck or high water”)
b) 60% of Liberal votes cast are "reconfigured" to the NDP instead of the Liberals
c) 20% of Liberal votes cast are "reconfigured" to the PCs instead of the Liberals
Following these formulae, the following ridings (reported from west to east) would have changed in the following ways:
RidingName / 2018NDPVotes / 2018PCVotes / 2018LibVotes / PCMargin // ReconfiguredNDPVote / ReconfiguredPCVote / ReconfiguredLibVote / ReconfiguredNDPMargin
Kitchener Conestoga 16,319 / 17,005 / 6,035 / 686 // 19,940 / 18,212 / 1,207 / 1,728
Kitchener S-Hespeler 15,741 / 16,519 / 6,335 / 778 // 19,542 / 17,786 / 1,267 /1,756
Cambridge 15,639 / 17,793 / 11,191 / 2,154 // 22,354 / 20,031 / 2,238 / 2,322
Brantford-Brant 23,459 / 24,080 / 5,439 / 621 // 26,722 / 25,168 / 1,088 / 1,555
Brampton West 14,451 / 14,961 / 7,013 / 510 // 18,659 / 16,364 / 1,403 / 2,295
Brampton South 12,919 / 15,652 / 7,212 / 2,733 // 17,246 / 17,094 / 1,442 / 152
Mississauga-Malton 12,350 / 14,712 / 7,812 / 2,362 // 17,037 / 16,274 / 1,562 / 763
Etobicoke-Lakeshore 18,997 / 22,198 / 14,046 / 3,201 // 27,425 / 25,007 / 2,809 / 2,417
Scarborough Centre 13,031 / 15,021 / 8,684 / 1,990 // 18,241 / 16,758 / 1,737 / 1,484
Scarboro. Rouge Park 15,261 / 16,224 / 8,785 / 963 // 20,532 / 17,981 / 1,757 / 2,551
Ajax 15,130 / 19,078 / 12,607 / 3,948 // 22,694 / 21,599 / 2,521 / 1,095
Peterboro.-Kawartha 20,745 / 22,939 / 15,029 / 2,194 // 29,762 / 25,945 / 3,006 / 3,818
Ottawa West-Nepean 16,415 / 16,591 / 14,809 / 176 // 25,300 / 19,553 / 2,962 / 5,748
(I wish I knew how to do a proper chart in this formatting.)
The switch I describe would have given the PCs a bare 63-seat majority -- leaving one of the next three seats (being Burlington, Mississauga Centre, and Mississauga-Erin Mills) to have been picked up by the NDP to have denied the Tory majority and given the Liberals the balance of power. Kathleen Wynne campaigned in many ridings in the closing days where she thought she could stop Liberal bleeding, but stood little chance of success -- her final event was in Burlington, where the Liberal incumbent came third.
When it came to encouraging Liberal voters to "vote strategically" to stop the Tories, those who had called for this strategy with great force in previous elections were silent in this election.
Interesting analysis Robo. Thanks for doing it.
All I saw in the tail end of the campaign were the Liberals trying as much to stop the NDP as stop Doug Ford.
The Liberals knew they didn't have a chance, but the Liberals wanted to ensure more than anything else that the NDP did not get a majority government.
Robo the problem here is you are using hindsight. In a strategic vote initiative you do not have that. So you would have to also count the Liberal seats that might not have gone Liberal and may have gone Conservative if Liberals had all done this.
This is the same mistake Liberals do after each election -- they target Conservative seats and pose this what-if quesiton. They do not count what the mistakes in guessing which party is ahead would do. So in the end if you ahve a widespread strategic vote in one direction, you would have the Conservatives lose seats wherever the guess was correct and actually gain seats where it was wrong. Liberals never count this when looking backwards. It is just as bogus to do that from an NDP perspective.
So polling showed that the NDP should have been ahead in Ottawa South for example. If people had conflicting strategic vote instructions the Conservatives could have won the seat. This has happened to the NDP in the past as has been discussed here.
I was not advocating strategic voting. I have not advocated strategic voting on this site. I was answering the question posed by NorthReport in an earlier posting (which I cited at the start of my posting). The only way to answer this question was to look with hindsight to what occurred and what would have occurred based on the basic formulae I described. I did not think that answering somcone's question was a problem.
What’s more important having a job or minimum wage?
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/06/12/what-made-ontarians-vote-for-doug-ford.html
Would progressive Ontario voters want Jagmeet Singh to do as "well" in Ontario as Horwath did? And usher in another Con majority government federally? I don't think so. It was a failed experiment. The NDP can't win 905.
The NDP won 11 seats in the 905 in this election. The Liberals won 0 seats in the 905. Where on earth does this statement come from?
Social Justice 101, you're still under the delusion that the OLP could have beaten the PC's in the 905 this year. The massive collapse of OLP support in the 905 proves that is not possible. The OLP couldn't even have won MORE seats in the 905 than the ONDP did this year. Please just accept that already and focus instead on beating the Right next time. And please stop attributing the swing from the OLP to the ONDP to homophobia when you know it was only swings to the PC's that could be attributed to voters having an issue with Wynne's sexual orientation.
As was the case everywhere else in Ontario, the OLP was totally discredited in the eyes of the voters of the 905. There was no possible scenario for the 2018 provincial election in which the Liberals could have won more seats in the 905 than the NDP did. It wasn't the NDPs fault that the Liberals are currently a totally discredited party in Ontario, and the NDP couldn't have saved any significant number of Liberals in the 905 by withdrawing from the field in those ridings.
What matters is coming together for the future. That means dialog and positive strategies, not a toxic, useless fixation with trying to discrediting the gains made by the more-progressive party this year and pushing, as you seem to be pushing, for an effort to try and force that party back down and force the less-progressive and badly-discredited party artificially back up.
Now that we are firmly in the digital era, does the NDP really need to distribute advertising brochures any more?
https://mobile.twitter.com/JeffBlay/status/1006529059625422848
I was not advocating strategic voting. I have not advocated strategic voting on this site. I was answering the question posed by NorthReport in an earlier posting (which I cited at the start of my posting). The only way to answer this question was to look with hindsight to what occurred and what would have occurred based on the basic formulae I described. I did not think that answering somcone's question was a problem.
The problem is still that you answered the question with only some outcomes on the table. You can only usefully answer the question if you apply the same logic without knowing which party is ahead to all ridings. As I said it would not just overturn some Conservative victories but also some for the other parties. If you do not recognize this then you end up repeating the same titled bias that is behind the strategic voting attacks on the NDP -- just this time against the Liberals.
I do not think this process seen in hindsight is a good way to look at it unless you recognize that people did not know which party was ahead and so the advice would go across all seats where this is not known.
Otherwise you only get the answer for how those with a crystal ball ought to apply their vote strategically.
What’s more important having a job or minimum wage?
This logic is akin to arguments against a strike.
Ultimately a minimum is where you draw that line.
Now that we are firmly in the digital era, does the NDP really need to distribute advertising brochures any more?
https://mobile.twitter.com/JeffBlay/status/1006529059625422848
The point is good -- although there are uncomfortable questions like the minimization of content to the point that you no longer have informed people. The Conservative ads had so little content and were extremely deceptive.
But perhaps the other point is that the Conservatives understand we are in a new world where truth is not relevant and everything part of a campaign is advertising.
Partisan messages used to have more content than the slogans these partisan messages have been reduced to.
This is happening becuase the population accepts it. More detailed descriptions and defences of policy only ever happened becuase they were demanded as necessary. Now, it is down to "may the cutest 3 second slogan, from the party that can buy the most ads win."
In election campaigns parties that use the KISS (keep it simple stupid) method usually do well. When they are all over the map voters tend to tune them out, whereas if there are a couple of hot button issues that a political party keeps refering to every time they hold a presser, voters tend to remember that, such as the six million dollar man, and I think that worked in Ford's favour this election. And usually pocket book issues are the decisions make in the ballot box, which I think the PCs articulated better to the voters than the NDP. The middle class is disappearing. The NDP needs to reconnect with its working class roots as that is where they belong, and that is a winning strategy for them. Unfortunately my hunch is that as many worlking class people voted for Ford as they did for the NDP. Somehow the NDP has to find the winning formula so that voters realize they are on their side. And the NDP vetting of candidates neeeds to be made more effective, as the history of some NDP candidates made it easy for Ford to run damaging ads against them.
The problem is still that you answered the question with only some outcomes on the table. You can only usefully answer the question if you apply the same logic without knowing which party is ahead to all ridings. ...
I do not think this process seen in hindsight is a good way to look at it unless you recognize that people did not know which party was ahead and so the advice would go across all seats where this is not known.
Otherwise you only get the answer for how those with a crystal ball ought to apply their vote strategically.
There is no way to answer any question without considering "only some outcomes". That is the nature of analysis. No one can consider every outcome in a single analysis (let alone something appropriate in length to a message board) -- there are far too many outcomes to postulate.
Again, I was not advocating that people vote strategically. If your position is that, one week afte the election is over, it is not permissible to ask what would have happened if people had voted in a particular different way, then I have to disagree that that is not an acceptable thing to wonder about. In fact, I think that the best time to wonder about "what ifs" is shortly after an election has happened, not in the run-up to the next election. I cannot imagine that anything in my answer would have any impact on anyone's future plans to vote strategically, in an election 4 years from now.
In the days after an election, NorthReport asked what would the results have been a few days ago if X had happened. I did the number crunching to give one version of X happening. Elections results always are seen "in hindsight" -- election predictions are made in foresight (of wildly varying degrees of accuracy, mostly imperfect). Are you suggesting that no one should ever look back at an election's results and wonder "what if" or just ask a question?
In the days after an election, NorthReport asked what would the results have been a few days ago if X had happened. I did the number crunching to give one version of X happening. Elections results always are seen "in hindsight" -- election predictions are made in foresight (of wildly varying degrees of accuracy, mostly imperfect). Are you suggesting that no one should ever look back at an election's results and wonder "what if" or just ask a question?
I agree that this was a perfectly straightforward and rather interesting projection of a "what if" hypothetical, which is apparently all the author intended it to be. I waste my time on similar projections all the time, just for my own amusement, and I see nothing at all wrong with it.
