Reflections on the 2018 Ontario Election

Well, I will admit that I was not expecting quite that result. Only the most optimistic amongst us conservatives in Ontario thought that the Progressive Conservatives were headed to a strong majority victory in the 2018 election with Doug Ford at the helm, and someone as personally likable as Andrea Horwath as our main opponent.

The polls mostly had us neck and neck in voter support, with the socialist/progressive New Democrats and moderately centre-rightish PCs exchanging small leads for half the campaign. The Ontario Liberals, who have governed the province practically uninterrupted since 2003, saw the bottom fall out on their campaign as they sank from 2nd in the polls to a distant 3rd as the NDP surged and the PCs sank. A lot of projections figured that the governing Liberals could see themselves reduced to as little as one seat, others around 3 or 4, making a majority government from either the PCs or the NDP inevitable.

What I figured was going to happen was that Ontario, being Ontario, would once again blink on election day. It's a province with a history of voter anger being dampened in the final days of the campaing as jitters about major change set in. A small PC lead in the polls in 2011 suddenly saw the Liberals win a minority government as voters got cold feet about change in government. Polls all over the place in 2014 saw the Liberals unexpectedly win a solid majority, and a considerable margin in the popular vote. The Progressive Conservatives since the 1940s had governed Ontario for over 40 years uninterrupted, only losing to a Liberal-NDP coalition in 1985. The federal Conservatives, despite being within striking distance of the governing Liberals in 2004 in Ontario, suddenly saw themselves fall way short here as voters got shy about suddenly changing governments. It took the federal Tories three more elections to win a majority of seats in Ontario.....then lost them in 2015, reverting back to the safe comfort the electorate has with Liberals.

Which is why I found the final results of the 2018 election so bizarre. Some polls picked up a sudden spike in Liberal support in parts of the province going into the final couple days. This reinforced my opinion that a lot of voters would blink in the voting booth, being jittery about handing power to an unpredictable blowhard like Doug Ford, or Team Horwath's mystery bag of omnishambles candidates. I really figured Ontario would blink, handing the PCs a weak minority government, give the Liberals about 23-26% of the vote and about 15-18 seats, and inevitably result in a coalition NDP-Liberal government.

Turns out that I was wrong. Instead, the PCs performed better than polls suggested, winning 41% of the vote and 76 seats out of 124, including huge victories in the communities surrounding Toronto, as well as the Toronto suburbs themselves. The NDP did weaker than most polls projected, winning 33% and 40 seats. The Liberal "surge" I figured would happen on election day didn't happen outside of downtown Toronto, and they got the 19% polls suggested, and held 7 seats.

I began to reflect on why this happened. Being the political junkie that I am, I always try to understand the dynamics of an electorate so that I can better figure out where things are shifting in the future. There were a few conclusions I have arrived at, and you're welcome to disagree.

1. This was a change election, but in more ways than one. The first and foremost consideration that Ontarians seemed to have is that the Liberal government simply had to go. An approval rating in the teens and over 70% wanting a change in government is pretty much a death warrant for an incumbent government. The Liberals, after about a week, weren't even on the radar anymore. Ontarians made up their mind that the government was going to change. However, the real battle that ensued was a change to....what?

2. The culture war played a huge part in how people voted. I can't remember who it was, but some pundit on the news called the Tory landslide in the suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area a "revenge of the commuter". An enormous amount of these people live in the communities surrounding Toronto, but commute to work in the city. A great many of them were upset at having to pay higher and higher costs to commute, as the government was sucking higher fees, higher taxes, and higher carbon taxes out of their wallets. Middle class commuters were getting tired of a government that was pulling more money out of their income to fund infrastructure projects that were dramatically over budget, rarely realized, and saw most of the money going to other wasteful government schemes. They resented this, and they just wanted someone in office that was going to take less money from them.

The enormous price tag being attached to the looming government programs such as universal basic income, free prescription drugs, childcare, and free tuition were adding increasing weight to the government's out of control deficits and debt. People were watching, and feeling the squeeze, as government continued to apply higher taxes and fees, on everything from carbon, to property taxes, to car taxes, gas taxes, and even to simply use government services. People were becoming completely fed up with having to pony up more tax money to the government so they could buy support from every Tom, Dick, and Jane with their hand out. You can especially see this in municipal politics, where people are getting angrier and angrier about rising property taxes to pay for more virtue signalling government schemes, where the government is highly unlikely to see a return on its investments....except in votes. As a result, when the Liberal vote collapsed, voters were faced with a choice between a Party that wanted to put the brakes on this mess, and completely examine the necessity of all the spending.....and a Party that wanted to put the foot hard on the gas and drive right off the economic cliff. It was about 41% of the electorate telling the other 33% "I'm tired of paying for your freebies right now, so fuck off".

A good example to illustrate my point was people getting angry that the NDP was proposing that we should simply stop making seniors pay property taxes....because muh fairness....by getting the rest of us to pony up the cash. Anybody under the age of 65 that I spoke about this with was absolutely baffled as to how the NDP could propose something so stupid, and so costly to the rest of society. The more the NDP came out with proposals like this, the more that centrist middle class voters got annoyed.

3. The New Democrats failing to vet candidates came back to haunt them. Speaking to people during the election, I found a trend. A lot of people concerned about the lacking qualities of Doug Ford were reassured by the collection of qualified candidates running for him. He may be aloof and buffoonish, but he'll have skilled ministers directing government policy. The NDP's team....scared the shit out of people. It was clear that the NDP had, until May of 2018, no realistic ambition of winning the election. As a result, some really big lunatics came out of the woodwork as candidates. One candidate stupidly thought that the poppy glorified war and wanted to abolish Christmas, and was also a self-described Marxist (she also reacted to defeat by lashing out at the people who didn't vote for her, class act). Another candidate who agreed with the idea that people should bleed their poppies of red. Another candidate who glorified Hitler in a Facebook post. One wanted a $150 per tonne carbon tax, which would have rocketed up the cost of gas by a minimum of 35 cents per litre, and drive up the cost of heating one's home and paying for groceries....because fuck the poor, apparently.

One was a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who wanted an investigation into former President George W. Bush.

One was a professional activist who wrote a handbook on radical protest, endorsing property destruction and trespassing.

Multiple were staunch opponents of resource development, and wanting to shut down all such projects...which would dramatically increase poverty in already struggling northern Ontario

These people were fucking nuts, and many Ontarians hated Ford, but were scared shitless of the New Democrats who could make it into Horwath's cabinet.

In the end, this election was more or less about saying "enough already" to the road Ontario has been down since 2003. The road of higher taxes not really reflecting better development or services. The road of higher costs of doing business creating dwindling opportunity for young people and lower skill workers who still have bills to pay. The road where working class people were dismissed condescendingly by their government for years because they wanted their taxes spent more wisely, and wanted their government to be less cavalier about driving low skill work out of the province. Work is still work.

Ontarians were given two options. One was "money in your pocket and better job growth", and the other was "here's how I want to spend EVEN MORE of your money".

I think that 41% of Ontario, including me, thought about this and went "I don't like Doug Ford....but fuck this bullshit."