Ontario To Be Made Great Again
Populism invades Canada as Doug Ford – brother of the flambouyant former mayor of Toronto – is elected Prime Minister and his Progressive Conservative Party wins a majority.
After 15 years in the political wilderness, Ford led his Progressive Conservatives to victory in Ontario’s provincial election Thursday. Less than half an hour after polls closed the victory was called for Ford.
A higher than predicted popular vote and new electronic vote counters — a first for Elections Ontario — made for a very quick result after voting ended at 9 p.m. The victory was declared in record time, less than 30 minutes after polls closed.
“A new day has dawned in Ontario: a day of opportunity, a day of prosperity and a day of growth,” Ford said after taking the stage at his party’s headquarters.
The premier-elect threw tradition out the window on election night and was the first leader to make an election night speech. His decision to go first meant that Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s concession speech wasn’t aired on most television networks.
“We’re going to turn this province around,” Ford told the crowd of party faithful. “We will make sure Ontario is the greatest place on earth to live, to do business and to raise a family. And we will make Ontario once again the engine of Canada.”
The Liberals had been in power for quite a while, so a changing of the guard was due. Even so, now Alberta has an NDP government and Ontario a Progressive Conservative one. In both cases, though, the majority political orientation was split. In Alberta, the PCs and rightwing Wildrose Party combined for over 50% of the vote, whereas here the Liberals and NDP combined for over 50%. Election systems matter.
The Conservatives won a majority because the liberal, left, and center vote was divided between the NDP and the Liberals. This isn’t going to stop the Cobservativez from governing like they have a majority.Report
The political overlap of the Liberals and the NDP tends to be massively over-stated. They are very different parties who have different support bases and ideologies and there is a reason they’ve never merged.
Put another way, you can’t just add together the two parties and claim it as the anti-conservative vote. There are many Liberal-Conservative swing voters who wouldn’t consider voting for the NDP at all and there are many anti-Liberal voters particularly in rural/small city areas who swing between Conservative-NDP.
Looking at the results, the PCs probably would have easily won a head to head election against either the Liberals or NDP in this electorate. That isn’t so much a reflection of a conservative lean but just how badly Wynne has governed and the perceived need to finally give her and her inner circle the boot. On top of that the NDP weren’t doing very well at selling themselves as a party of government, too many of their riding candidates are the kind of unacceptable kooks that stand for election for parties not expecting to get into government and there was a lot of concern about whether they had the bench strength to form an effective cabinet government.
Notable element of this election was that the visable minority vote as a whole roughly paralled that of the wider electorate. An important element of the Brothers Ford’s political success has been in getting suburban immigrant communities to believe that they represent their interests.Report
See also the NDP in Alberta.Report
I think the NDP government in Alberta had a bit more of the vote splitting among ideologically similar parties going on. Which is why, now that the Wildrose and Alberta PCs have re-merged (in a way that the Ontario Liberals and NDP really couldn’t), we’re probably doomed to a premier Jason Kenney in a couple of years.
As @brent-f points out, there isn’t really a lot of common ground between the Ontario NDP and Liberals. At least not notably more between them than between the Liberals and PCs.Report
At the time of the Alberta election, there wasn’t that much ideological overlap between the Alberta PCs and the Wild Rose either they had become quite distinct camps. The WR being rurally based and primarily social conservatives with a smattering of libertarian-ish types. The PCs by then had pretty much lost their entire right flank to WR defections and was pretty much the party of business and the establishment, primarily based in Calgary.
There is a temptation to view the natural political coalitions as an Amerian style, two relatively equal groups one on the left and one on the right, but that’s rarely how it actually works out. There is really no reason that everyone on the “right” or the “left” is supposed to be in alignment and working towards putting the same government in place.Report
There was enough overlap that the two parties didn’t last three more years as separate entities. That is more than exists in the case of Ontario.
If the Ontario Liberals and NDP merge before the 2022 elections, then deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my prognosticatin’ hat.Report
The strange thing is, for all the talk I’ve heard about this election in the last few days, I haven’t heard anyone comment on the fact that the Liberals are now barely a party in Ontario government, while the NDP have surged to official opposition party status. It seems at least a bit noteworthy.Report
Another good thing- since we’re about to legalize marijuana, having someone with experience selling drugs leading the province could only help.Report