Going in to the last provincial election in Ontario, the most popular partly leader – by a wide margin – was Andrea Horwath, the leader of the New Democrat Party. She consistently outperformed her party in public opinion polls. So if that’s the case, why did her party do so poorly in the election – essentially flatlining at 21 seats?
Answer: because she neglected her party’s base.
See the Toronto Sun:
“The left wing of the party is angry with Horwath for taking them away from their social justice roots.
Since the election, a number of former candidates and campaign managers have signed a petition calling on Horwath to step aside.
Two Toronto MPPs, Peter Tabuns (Toronto-Danforth) and Cheri DiNovo (Parkdale-High Park), have been openly critical of a campaign platform that focused more on populist, pocketbook issues than on NDP core values.”
While it can definitely be argued that “populist, pocketbook issues” have a wider appeal with the voters-at-large than the ideological obsessions of the NDP’s extreme left, it is also true that the vast majority of the people who concern themselves with things like a party’s ‘campaign platform’ are its’ core supporters, donors, and volunteers. If these people are not onside, no campaign can succeed.
As I pointed out before election day, the reason Kathleen Wynne’s poll numbers didn’t tank, in spite of the fact that she is much less personally popular than Horwath, and representing a government with an indefensible record in office, is that she took care of her base - dishonestly perhaps (we’ll see how many Ontario civil servants she will have to lay off) - but she did think enough about them to feed them sweet lies.
As I have repeatedly said: the first rule of politics is to protect your base.
You really should stop wasting your time with The Star. You have to admit they are never right and this time both of you are wrong.
Andrea lost the base because they deserted her en masse to vote for the only party they knew could stop Hudak.
Her big mistake was to keep the Liberals alive for two years so that the outrage and loathing the average voter felt for that party dissipated.
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Posted by: Copinacus | August 08, 2014 at 02:51 PM
Actually, I think we have to stop blaming both Andrea and Tim. They lost for one simple reason - this election was bought and paid for by the Ontario Public Sector Unions. Even if Tim hadn't brought out his 100,000 public sector job cuts plan (foolishly for sure, but honestly and realistically) - I believe the result would have been the same. And Andrea called out the Liberals for their corruption and waste, and was actually quite bold in doing so, (though one or two years late as Copinacus points out), but she was right. A government as rotten and stinking as the Liberals should have been decimated and punted to the sidelines for at least two full terms. But no, they lied to the public and winked at the unions who responded by buying the election for them. I used to believe that buying politicians and elections was the stuff of legend, the old days of democracy perhaps, but we've actually seen it play out before our very eyes.
I am going to carefully watch the upcoming negotiations between the gov't and the teachers. One side is going to have to blink - my guess is that it will be the government. After all, they are in power by the hand and for the sake of those same unions. One day it will blow up in the Liberals faces, of course, but until then, we just have to hang on to our wallets...ouch!
Posted by: JohnT | August 09, 2014 at 10:31 AM
It won't happen quite like that John. Before it blows up in the Liberals faces, the voters of Ontario will finally panic at what is happening, elect a Mike Harris type who will do the dirty work, then after the dirty work is done, reelect whichever party offers them a free ride, which party will then trash the fixer for the next ten or fifteen years as they run the province back into the hole.
You can look it up.
Posted by: Copinacus | August 09, 2014 at 10:41 PM