From the Whither John Tory thread:
"I'm also wondering if the eclipse of John Tory might give the PCs and excuse to drop the "Progressive" from the name..."
I got a number of messages tonight about how great it is. Was Tory that different from McGuinty? He definitely represented the left of the Ontario Conservatives.
???
Tory ran on the 'left' of his party (not that being to the left of the Harrisites is much to the left at all), but they continued to run things behind the scenes. Tory had to pander to the hard-right from the word 'go'.
In the end, he never gained their support, and never had a chance. Too bad that the party's grass roots that elected him weren't allowed to inch back towards the centre, as they clearly voted to.
Ha ha, John Tory! Looks good on you! I'm always happy whenever any Conservative loses, whether they pretend to be "left" or not.
I know this might mean that the Harrisites will be back, but as LTJ says, they were running the party anyhow. He would have ruled like Harris had he won. They're smart enough to know not to campaign like Harris because the province has a bad taste in our mouths from that time, but they'd rule like him.
I'm not so sure about that. In Canada, if you are the party leader and you win an election, you are boss. Period. If John Tory were to have won the next Ontario election, he would have a free hand to fire anyone he didn't like within his party and pack his government with Bill Davis-type red Tories - if he wanted to. Parties like a winner.
What a disaster for the Ontario NDP. A single digit result.
They might as well close up shop as they are dead in the water. No kidding with brain-dead policies like supporting a separate Cathloic school system.
I don't think it says much about the NDP. The aprty is without a leader right now and re-grouping. And I'm sure plenty of NDP or Green supporters voted Liberal just cause they had the best chance of beating Tory.
I don't know quite how this will affect things. Tory was hapless in the last election but it seemed to be mostly based on his school funding policy as opposed to a dislike of HIM or any great support for McGuinty. I think msot people see him as a nice, moderate guy, not the hard right style like Harris. But that's what it's going back to. All the frontrunners - Hudak, Klees, Elliott - are all on the right of the party.
What a disaster for Tory, geez. How is that even possible?
Maybe it's too bad. Despite his party, he strikes me as a more decent person than Dalton McGuinty. But then I always preferred red Tories with their noblesse oblige compassion, condescending as it can be, to Liberal s who talk left and rule right. The Bill Davis legacy, for instance, is not so very awful when you look at investment in services.
I don't think this is really much measure of the NDP. If I'm not mistaken, the NDP always does really badly in that riding. It's just one of those ridings, you know? It's always between the Liberals and Tories there, isn't it?
It's been a Conservative stronghold for a long time.
LP actually it was a PC seat from 94' yesterday. before that it was a lib seat from 1971 until 1994
part of the riding was Leslie Frosts seat for well a century i think
In a byelection you have no national or provincial campaign to lift you up - its all local. That's why when the NDP chooses to concentrate its resources in a viable riding in a byelection like Outremont or Parkdale-High Park or York South-Weston - we can win. But conversely, we tend to do badly in byelections in ridinsg where there is no NDP base (ie: byelections in Burlington, Markham, and this one yesterday)
Ha ha, John Tory! Looks good on you! I'm always happy whenever any Conservative loses, whether they pretend to be "left" or not.
They're smart enough to know not to campaign like Harris because the province has a bad taste in our mouths from that time, but they'd rule like him.
I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Maybe not today, but 3 years into this world recession there will be an appetite for change and it won't be the NDP they go to. Scarry thoughts.
LP actually it was a PC seat from 94' yesterday. before that it was a lib seat from 1971 until 1994
Actually, it was Liberal from 1975 to 1990 under John Eakins--and then upon Eakins' retirement, the NDP's Dennis Drainville swept in as part of the Bob Rae landslide--44.33% to 25.64% for PC and 21.98% for the Liberals!
That said, I agree that we shouldn't be overstating the "catastrophe" in a single-digit NDP result in a byelection seat like this...
Right, let's celebrate the NDP's fabulous showing. 
Let's face it, in Ontario politics the NDP is a non-event.
A defeat not only for John Tory
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/598103
Either Premier Dalton McGuinty will coast to another majority in the provincial election in 2011. An easy win would make the Liberals lazy and arrogant.Or, if the recession makes McGuinty as unpopular as Bob Rae was during the last economic downturn in the early 1990s, voters may opt for a Republican-style alternative and elect the Conservatives. That's how Harris won in 1995, paving the way for tax and spending cuts and the erosion of public services, from hospitals and schools to universities and public transit.
It'll be interesting to see the poll-by-poll results. Did Tory fare better or worse in the more Conservative areas of the riding? My feeling is that while a lot of Tories probably stayed home, lots of rightwingers actually voted Liberal to stick it to the "liberal" carpetbagger John Tory.
Theyre only ever as popular as Bay Street can afford to make them. Right now 22% phony-baloney majority is the upper limit and as good as they can afford with McGuilty.
This new MP is very likely to serve only one term.
What a disaster for the Ontario NDP. A single digit result.
They might as well close up shop as they are dead in the water. No kidding with brain-dead policies like supporting a separate Cathloic school system.
This By Election was all about John Tory. Not about the NDP or the Green Party or any other party or indepentant. It was a referendum on John Tory. Interestingly enough, It reminds me of a few other Leadership Candidates looking for a seat and then someone drawing conclusions about the minor parties and their Campaigns. This By Election was a referendum on John Tory and he crashed and burned in a safe seat.
Compare this to say, the Disasterous Legacy of Bob Rae. Yet Bob Rae ran in a By Election (We all know he wanted to be the LPC leader then), and IIRC the NDP finished in 2nd, yet the campaign was disasterous. However, the what was overlooked on Rabble was that the Conservatives had and even more disasterous campaign and finished in 4th behind the Green Party.
Come the General Election and..... Bob Rae won again, the Conservatives went from 4th to 2nd and the NDP were third and the GP 4th.
Looking at Elizabeth Mays chance for a seat in London. The Liberals won and the Green Pary got a distant 2nd but ahead of BOTH the Conservatives and NDP. People on Babble again harped on the NDP campaign and their death. Little was said of the Conservatives (Hey I understand its babble), and their place and all hype on the GP brand.
But in the General Election... The Liberals won again, The Conservatives moved up to 2nd and the NDP pushed the Green Party back to 4th place.
These By Elections are wildcards as are many By Elections. But what I have seen, is if the NDP are not strong in a riding in a By Election, they do far worse then in a General Election. And if the NDP is strong in a riding, and a BY Election Occurs, lookout because they can take it regardless of the cushion attributed to the incumbent parties.
The next General Election in this riding will be a battle once again, between the Liberals and Conservatives. However, the NDP will return to within a few % points of the National support. Same is true of the Green Party.
The results of these two parties have to be discarded. Neither is stellar and certainly nothing to brag about. The GP obviously have no base if they had to import a candidate. And the NDP has a base, but it clearly needs alot more work to become effective. But this is Conservative and Liberal Territory. It became very clear from the postings from babbling Jen and Scott P. that it was a two party Race and that John Torys parachute may not open on Eday. It didn't and he went splat.
John Tory was done in more by his own people than he was by the Liberals or anyone else in this riding. I have it on faily good authority that the Landowners crowd were actively working against Tory.
Looking at the NDP result in this riding, or any of the parties actually, and extrapolating to 2011 is not only useless, it is down right stupid. Which is why I am not surprised the Star tried to do it. There is just too much that will go on, including a likely exit of McGuinty by the middle of 2010, to have any idea yet where things will go.
Too bad for Tory that he helped lead the charge against electoral reform in the October 2007 referendum. I've blogged a bit more on the subject.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/gary-shaul/john-tory-hoisted-petard-first-past-post
Yeah, people involved in the MMP campaign told me they were certain the PC's were providing "talking points" against it to their candidates.
Ironically, the two parties that DIDN'T run on abolishing Catholic schools got most of the vote. Obviously the NDP campaign didn't work all that well but if we're looking for voters maybe we shouldn't be fishing in the second smallest pool.What a disaster for the Ontario NDP. A single digit result.
They might as well close up shop as they are dead in the water. No kidding with brain-dead policies like supporting a separate Cathloic school system.
I think the NDP result had a lot to do with the leadership race. Parties throw everything they have at by-elections and when a party can't do that (because they're focussed elsewhere) it shows.
It's too bad Lyn Edwards seemed like a good candidate. She deserved a better result.
OTOH it's been quite a while since we've seen a provincial byelection that's played out as anything other than a two-way race at most--either it's the NDP that gets forcibly also-ranned out of deposit range, or (in the byelections that resulted in three out of four NDP leadership contenders) it's the PCs.
Nearest such thing lately was in Parkdale-High Park, where former city councillor David Hutcheon was a reasonably credible standard-bearer for the Tories (he was still a distant third, but about at par with recent provincial-federal results). But if that doesn't count, the only genuine 3-way or near-3-way byelection race that comes to mind over the past 20 years was the one to replace Bob Rae, where PC Rob Davis held his own versus Kennedy and Miller.
(Then again, in the DPWG byelection that John Tory won, Liberal, NDP and Green were closely bunched together in the second-placeish zone. Trouble was, that was 40 points behind Tory...)
When 24% of Toronto voted for John Tory's party in 2007, in fairness those voters should have elected five MPPs. That's what any decent regional proportional representation system would have let them do. They were cheated by our undemocratic voting system, and that quintessential Toronto Tory along with them.The supreme irony is that John Tory, whose voters needed proportional representation, told them to keep rolling the dice with winner-take-all. Worse, his religious schools plank not only sunk his own election campaign, but hijacked the referendum on electoral reform. When voters even noticed it at all, some asked "would this let a Muslim Party elect some MPPs?" When his parachute failed to open in Victoria-Haliburton, fate gave him his just desserts.
I'm sure plenty of NDP or Green supporters voted Liberal just cause they had the best chance of beating Tory.
There is absolutely no doubt of that.
John Tory was done in more by his own people than he was by the Liberals or anyone else in this riding. I have it on fairly good authority that the Landowners crowd were actively working against Tory.
Not a great surprise.
It was very arrogant of John Tory to run in Haliburton just because he needed a seat. It was a bad fit too, and ironically he lost because he was too leftwing for ultra-conservative Haliburton.
However I don't think his defeat is a victory. The PC's will move right. And that will probably increase the likelihood of strategic voting, which will hurt the NDP.
You know.... John Tory was supposed to kill strategic voting dead. Who would think this guy was scary? Well, it turns out, most people did and voted Liberal en masse to keep him out of office.
Stephen Harper, on the other hand, was supposed to spell the NDP's certain doom. Who would vote NDP when clearly the Liberals were the only party who could stop this right-wing extremist? Well, it turns out, lots of people would.
Ha ha, John Tory! Looks good on you! I'm always happy whenever any Conservative loses, whether they pretend to be "left" or not.
They're smart enough to know not to campaign like Harris because the province has a bad taste in our mouths from that time, but they'd rule like him.
I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Maybe not today, but 3 years into this world recession there will be an appetite for change and it won't be the NDP they go to. Scarry thoughts.
I think voter apathy will continue invalidating FPTP election results in Ontario, and across Canada for that matter. Our's is an outdated and obsolete electoral system that should have been retired long ago. One person must equal one vote. Anything less is barbaric
OH come on Fidel. Changing the electoral system isn't going to change voter turnout or voter apathy.
Go hijack another PR thread, there is always 5 of them to kick around in.
First off, I'd just like to say that if I lived in that riding, I would have voted for Lynn. She showed up at the ONDY karaoke fundraising event and did a very rousing version of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot." It was nice to see that she was still able to keep her chin up in spite of the way in which the by-election results went.
Now that I've said that, I'd also like to point out that someone from the eastern Ontario NDP was at convention this weekend saying that the Lynn Edwards campaign seemed to be picking up on some sort of plot by people within the PC party to sink their own candidate. Like a lot of people here are saying, it seems that the Harrisites were the ones who were doing this. I've tried to comb through the numbers and see how one can make this assumption, but the numbers aren't reliable due to the fact that we're dealing with around 10 000 less voters this time around.
In spite of the fact that the numbers look wonky and that it's hard to make sense of them when your just examining the provincial numbers, I think that the federal numbers start to make things clearer.
Earlier on, people were trying to say that this riding used to be Liberal. That may have been true nearly 20 years ago, but it's starting to look like there has been a change in tide in that region and we're now seeing people voting Tory and Conservative consistently. The Last two federal elections have seen Barry Devolin get his votes increased after being the incumbant by 5 and 7 percent respectively.
If you co-relate those federal numbers to the provincial numbers you'll see that the riding held it's Tory banner in spite of the fact that the Tories were very unpopular provincially in '03. Then, in the next campaign, the Tory in that riding managed to keep her title there in spite of the fact that she had to run on a campaign which was based around an issue that was a big loser with the public. Given the fact that the people in that riding were able to continue to vote Tory in spite of the fact that they ran on the losing side of things twice should tell you that people there are comfortable with voting Tory.
So, assuming that our theory is correct and that this was not a repudiation of Tory values; but rather a repudiation of John Tory, then it would follow that a lot of tories either stayed home or voted for some other party.
With that being my assumption, a few things come to mind. Bear in mind these are all assumptions based on intuition, so I could be way off.
No. 1 - Die-Hard Liberal and Tory voters likely would not have risked voting NDP given the fact that the NDP has been scoring in between 10 & 15 percent provincially and 15 - 17% federally. Everyone remembers what happened the last time everyone protest voted for the NDP (Bob Rae's government).
No. 2 - If I had to guess what the cross section of voters who show up to vote on a by-election e-day looked like; I'd guess what'd we probably see is a disproportionate amount of people showing up who would have voted Liberal or Tory regardless of the issues on the table.
No. 3 - If this assumption is true, then how do we explain the fact that the Greens managed to hold their own and didn't flock to the Liberals to help oust the Tory? Part of me wonders if this wasn't the de facto Tory second choice for protest voting, but another part of me is not able to discount the fact that the Greens may have actually fielded some sort of coherent campaign. Anyone with some sense of objectivity out there want to shed some light on what was going on in the Green's camp?
If all of this is true, then I think a lot of the people here are probably right when they say this riding will likely go back to the Tories in the general election.
So who is going to replace John Tory?
Tim Hudak? Randy Hillier? Peter van Loan?
That doesn't matter.
What's important is that John Tory lost and Dalton McGuinty won.
Yahoodee.
The Progressive Conservatives believe Hudak is the front runner. However, there is a movement towards electing a women. They believe that a women can do a better job of dismantling McGuinty.
Or are they just watching Andrea do exactly that... and thinking, that they might be displaced next election?
So, its either going to be far right, or maybe a woman.
What a blow to the psyche of John Tory, who couldn't get elected in a province that has a number of riddings where they'd elect shit on a stick if it called itself Conservative.
Oh man.
josh, it wasn't Harrisites, it was the Hillier crowd. Think Reform then move a bit right.
The NDP would have been much better off to see Tory win and then have that crowd walk away and form their own party or whatever. That is the unwritten story of 1990 by the way, the slight jump in alternative right wing party votes. Now they will stay in the tent, leaving less room up the middle for the NDP against a waning Liberal party.
I don't thik that there is any evidence that the Hillier crowd was preparing to form a new rightwing party that would have run candidates in the next Ontario election.
You're plugged into the rural grapevine are you there Stock?
I have never read a single article speculating that Hillier was going to form a new party and run candidates against the Tories and Hillier himself seems to have been a loyal Tory who did campaign for John Tory in the byelection. If you have contrary information I'd like to hear about it.
Stockholm, this is old news.
Here's a Liberal release from 2007. It never got much pick-up which led me to believe it's all unsubstantiated.
There is the public face and the behind the scenes face. Surely you know that Stock after all these years.
This was not the kind of stuff that would have been in papers. But I can tell you there was massive unhappiness with Tory. Had he won and stayed on the possibility of splinter action was real and openly talked about in rural circles, the kind of circles Queens Park reporters would not be in on.
If you believe that Liberal press release John Tory was in cahoots with Hillier and co. - as opposed to them plotting to form a new party.
josh, it wasn't Harrisites, it was the Hillier crowd. Think Reform then move a bit right.
The NDP would have been much better off to see Tory win and then have that crowd walk away and form their own party or whatever. That is the unwritten story of 1990 by the way, the slight jump in alternative right wing party votes. Now they will stay in the tent, leaving less room up the middle for the NDP against a waning Liberal party.
I think you're half right BA. But I disagree that Tory winning would have been an NDP advantage. McGuinty has already started positioning his party right (publicly, instead of just behind the scenes). Whatever rump of Red Tories there are left in the Ontario PC's lost their internal power struggle a long time ago. John Tory was about optics, nothing more. The Harissite/Reformers - after the failure of the optics of a perceived red tory "leading" them - will now put in one of their own.
Is this "bad" for the NDP? IMHO, no. We are about to watch a replay of federal politics play out in Ontario. McGuinty, remember, was elected leader precisely because he was the most Right Wing Liberal running (think Iggy). Now that the mask has almost complete dropped off, progressives in Ontario who traditionally vote liberal, will have to think really hard about who really represents them. All the talk is about Horwath. Hillier et. al got their way in their party. If done right, the centre left is opening up for the ONDP to make real inroads.
The talk of an Ontario reform party was real enough (Think Land Owners Associations), and still may yet happen.... (not likely but possible) If the upcoming P.C leadership turns into a bitter enough rivalry between Reform types and Harristes, and the Hillier crowd is not happy with the leader.
Yeah that makes sense.
There is already an Ontario Reform party and it was this crowd that shares membership in landowner groups. They were trying to woo Bill Murdoch at one point. I don't think it will make much difference in the end for the NDP, and of course we will never know, but like many other things in life, Tory losing is neither all positive or all negative.
