This will be my last post before the election. I am on vacation until July 1st so may not give a post mortem until then although if there is a business centre at the hotels I am staying at, I will try to give one. It appears the NDP surge has leveled off so at this point I think a PC majority is more likely than an NDP majority but its still close enough depending on how things go in the final days, it could go either way. I am guessing it will be something like PCs around 70 seats, NDP around 50 seats, Liberals around 5 seats, but I could see the PCs getting as high as the high 70s while as low as 50 seats and the NDP as high as 65 seats while as low as 40 seats while for the Liberals 12 seats is probably their best case scenario, while zero is their worst. In terms of popular vote, I suspect both NDP and PCs will be in the mid to upper 30s while Liberals around 20% but again could be a bit higher or a bit lower. Regardless of the outcome this has been a very depressing election.
I clearly believe the Liberals have overstayed their welcome and I am glad they will be defeated, although I do not wish to see them wiped off the map as I don’t think having a left/right polarization is healthy. They need a time out, but shouldn’t be decimated so badly they never ever return to power. The PCs have a strong team and many capable cabinet ministers, however that doesn’t change the fact that I still believe their leader Doug Ford is clearly unqualified to be premier. Hopefully if he wins he delegates as many responsibilities as possible to others and if his approval rating starts to tank, hopefully the party dumps him quickly. If he is unable to achieve a majority, he needs to go as leader ASAP so the party can rebuild and prepare for the election after. Hopefully if the PCs lose, this will be a lesson to stop choosing who appeals most to the base and instead choose who appeals most to swing voters. For the NDP, win or lose this will be a historic election as they will have a much larger caucus than they had before. Still their platform is bad news for the economy and they have a lot of radical candidates so handing over power to them is extremely risky. Better for them to form the official opposition and then hopefully next time around they at least have a more realistic platform and more capable and serious candidates. I would never support the NDP, but I realize the PCs won’t stay in power forever and no guarantee the Liberals will come back so I do hope they moderate.
In terms of endorsements, I won’t give one as although I always urge everyone to vote and still believe those who live in Ontario should, clearly none of the parties inspire me. There are some PC candidates as per earlier post who I feel deserve to be elected and now that Wynne has conceded, there are even a few good Liberal MPPs who probably do deserve re-election. But at the end of the day, my advice is to look at party platform and local candidate and decide what is best from there. How I would vote if I still lived in Ontario would depend a lot on what riding I lived in. If I lived in Newmarket-Aurora, I would happily vote PC as I think Christine Elliott is one who deserves to be an MPP, while if I lived in Etobicoke North I wouldn’t as I don’t believe Doug Ford should be one. I would probably in most cases vote PC since they are closest to me philosophically, but not in every riding and as mentioned earlier I somehow hope they can win, but Ford loses his own seat and when someone steps asides for him in a safe riding, he loses that too so that way Ontario can have a PC government without Doug Ford as premier.
afiscalconservativepointofview 