I have no idea what's going to happen. Nobody does.
I will merely repeat a few words before the electorate passes their judgement.
1. Based on my discussions with people on the ground and with the central campaign, if the PC Party gets out their vote, they will win.
2. Voting for the PC Party of Ontario is the only way to stop Dalton McGuinty. Doing anything other than voting PC says that you think Dalton McGuinty deserves another term in government, because that is what your vote or lack of vote is contributing to.
3. Polls, more so in this election than in any other, have been proven to be misleading garbage. Within the space of three days there have been polls suggesting a tie, a Liberal majority, and a PC lead. At least one and possibly all of these polling companies are going to end up looking very stupid tomorrow.
4. The PC Party is trying to defeat a two term incumbent Premier backed by a gang of unions. This is extremely difficult under the best of circumstances.
5. The NDP will likely split the vote in interesting ways. Mostly, in ways that benefit the PC Party.
6. John Tory led the PC Party to a frankly disgusting result four years ago, after a frankly disgusting campaign, and despite loud screams for his head (some of which, full disclosure, came from me), he was not removed from office after a leadership review.
7. Quick and easy answers for why we got the result that we will get are likely wrong.
8. Anything other than a massive majority for the Liberals constitutes a victory of some measure for us, given all of the above.
And that's it.
Here's your quick and easy answer:
ReplyDeleteHudak was too wooden to connect with the general population.
The PC platform did not engage the base and they did NOT turnout or help support the party on election day.
Given a choice between essentially similar platforms, the population chose the known evil over the unknown evil.
Hudak failed to differentiate the PC platform from the Liberal platform, failed to espouse and promote conserative principles, and had no loyalty or support from the base.
Note to Hudak: chain gangs are not a conservative principle.
In a way, this loss was worse than Tory's because the race really should have been ours from beginning to end.
"Hudak was too wooden to connect with the general population." Hudak was told to robotically stick to talking points the way Ford did. This did not help.
ReplyDelete"The PC platform did not engage the base and they did NOT turnout or help support the party on election day." But we won seats. Who turned out to elect these people if not the base?
"Given a choice between essentially similar platforms, the population chose the known evil over the unknown evil." The population gave the known evil a minority instead of a majority and gave the unknown evil(s) more seats.
"Hudak failed to differentiate the PC platform from the Liberal platform, failed to espouse and promote conserative principles, and had no loyalty or support from the base." Nobody complaining about "failure to differentiate" can explain how we differentiate without alienating voters who don't care for Mike Harris. Getting 100% of our base to vote for us does not give us enough votes to win.
Here's a question for you: Why did the Manitoba Tories do worse than we did if their platform was so much like the Manitoba NDP's, and our platform was so much like the Liberals?
"Note to Hudak: chain gangs are not a conservative principle." No it isn't. It's a populist policy that would have been at home in Ford's platform.
"In a way, this loss was worse than Tory's because the race really should have been ours from beginning to end." In Tory's case, the race was ours exactly none of the time, while in this case the race was ours for some of the time. So it was not worse than Tory's.