I’ll say it. The polls killed it here. No surprises in vote share.
No real surprises, except for a Green candidate winning in Guelph. Unless the Liberals don’t get eight seats, which at this point is not a remote possibility. This would greatly cut their funding.
I would have preferred a minority government under the circumstances since all of the parties have very significant problems and none seem fiscally responsible.
I am fortunate enough to live as far from Ontario as one possibly can and still be in Canada. My Facebook comment on the election was thus:
Doug Ford says “I know my brother Rob is looking down from heaven.” No Doug, if there is an afterlife, Rob Ford is snorting coke off a hooker’s tits right now and that is not on the approved list of activities in heaven!
The splitting of the left’s vote has resulted in a Conservative majority.
To be fair in a first past the post system strong majorities only need high 30s/low 40s vote percentages to exist.
I took a look at the 2018 vs. 2014 election.
PC 76 seats 40.49% vs. 28 seats and 31.25% of vote in 2014
NDP 40 seats 33.57% vs. 21 seats and 23.75% of the vote in 2014
Liberal 7 seats 19.59% vs. 58 seats and 38.65% of the vote in 2014
Greens 1 seats 4.60% vs 0 and 4.84%
So the Liberals dropped in support by ~20% but the NDP only rose by 10% as did the PCs. The wings of the Liberal party literally fell off.
Where do I send the sympathy card?
Thanks for summarizing that data. The Conservatives really did win due to vote-splitting on the left, though you sure couldn’t tell from the seat distribution – you have to look at the popular vote to see it. The PCs may have a parliamentary majority, but right now the majority of actual Ontario voters must be disgusted with their new premier-elect.
This might be even worse than the Mike Harris regime. One may recall that among other things, Harris cut social services spending, cut health care spending, laid off hundreds of nurses and closed several hospitals, cut spending on public transit, broke up Ontario Hydro in preparation for privatizing it, and sold off Ontario’s newest highway to a foreign-owned private consortium that turned it into a toll road that charged outrageous rates and terrorized anyone delinquent in paying their bill. And let’s not forget deregulation and privatization of water quality testing, which resulted in E. coli contamination that killed seven people in Walkerton and sickened hundreds. But hey, at least he cut taxes! The voters even received [del]bribes[/del] per-head “tax refund” cheques! And the thing is, Harris had political experience as an MPP and rising star in the PC party going way back to the days of Bill Davis. Doug Ford’s main experience is being a dishonest sleazebag. Also a one-term city councilor, defender of his late brother’s habits of smoking crack with known criminals, subject of a lawsuit from his late brother’s wife for mismanaging the family business and his brother’s estate, and rejected mayoral candidate. Yeah, this is gonna be great! :rolleyes:
BTW, I was mistaken in #178 about the Liberals retaining official party status. I was somehow under the impression that the minimum seat requirement was 6, but in fact it’s 8. Even a lesser disaster would have forced Wynne to resign, but in this case, from an official parliamentary perspective, there isn’t even a party for her to lead.
Elect a clown, expect a circus!
I don’t think it’s going to disappoint on that front!
We are indeed living in interesting times. I keep seeing people elected to high office who I wouldn’t trust to watch my dog.
Ain’t that the truth. The PC’s may have won because they represented the least-bad of three horrific choices. The question is why the voters keep having to choose between godawful candidates. It happened in Alberta, in the last U.S. election, and now in Ontario. Not a decent candidate in any of them.
And the worst part is, they didn’t even need Ford! They had two other candidates who would have been perfectly acceptable, and they decided instead to go with the loudmouthed jackass!
Word.
I had absolutely every intention of voting PC because I assumed they’d nominate a real candidate, like Christine Elliott. Was I wrong.
I don’t think it’s true to imply we always get stuck with bad candidates. Sam Stone cites some examples of elections with generally unlikeable candidates, but we had three perfectly good and distinct choices in the last federal election; maybe Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper or Tom Mulcair were not your cup of tea but all were capable party leaders and had something to recommend all of them. It’s very odd that a legitimate party would nominate someone like Doug Ford, but it doesn’t happen every time or even most times.