Canada Ping!
Posted on 05/02/2014 9:28:22 AM PDT by Hieronymus
Ontario is heading to an election after Andrea Horwath announced Friday she will team up with the Progressive Conservatives to vote down Premier Kathleen Wynne’s budget.
“I have lost confidence in Kathleen Wynne and her ability to deliver,” the NDP Leader told a packed press conference at Queen’s Park. “I can’t in good conscience support a government that people don’t trust anymore.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
Ping
Wynne`s budget made Bob Raes` look like a curmudgeon penny-pincher .
Unfortunately, the corrupt and criminal neo-marxist left will probably win
Gotta love a system where Conservatives might actually gain seats because the Far Left decides to have a hissy fit that it’s not getting everything that it wants.
If the Conservatives had any skill at all, they would be able to pull off at least a minority government. The NDP really had to pull the plug to claim that a vote for them is not a vote for the liberals—having supported the minority government for the bulk of a full term, this vote would have given the Conservatives a weapon that even they might manage to use.
In a three-way race, a vote for one of your opponents can be a vote for you.
In the last Ontario provincial election, the Liberals got a majority government with just 37.62% of the popular vote. The Progressive Conservatives (no, we don’t call it the Oxymoron Party; but, perhaps we should) got 35.43%, and the social democratic NDP got 22.73%.
If the PC party just holds on to their share of the vote, and the NDP picks up a couple of points at the expense of the Liberals; the PCs could form government. (Of course, it all depends on the distribution of the vote by riding.) IOW, a leftward tilt in the vote could produce a right-leaning government. With the right distribution of votes by riding, it could be a majority PC government. That’s how the Liberals got their majority last time — the difference is that it would only take a 2 percentage point shift from centre-left to further left to produce a right-leaning government. Expect lots of loud moaning and hand-wringing if this happens.
Canadians are used to making these sorts of calculations — we call it “strategic voting”, whereby you sometimes have to support your second choice, to keep your third (or fourth) choice from winning. It’s all part of the “fun” of a multi-party, first-past-the-post system of elections. Les Québécois are past masters of that game.
I meant to add to my post #6 that the PCs will probably want to focus their attacks on the Liberals — to help the NDP swipe some of the Liberals votes, and also to pick up a few votes from right-leaning Liberals. Both the NDP and the Liberals will try to convince centre-left voters that they need to support them, to keep the right-wing hoards from trampling over everyone.
Canada Ping!
I just looked at your home page, and saw the Maple Leaf flag — I should have known. My posts above probably weren’t telling you anything you didn’t already know. I hope some other readers got something from them.
There aren’t that many Americans conversant in Canadian politics, so explanations are welcome. (I’m actually a Yank, but have spent most of my time since ‘92 in Ontario.)
I’m listening to Wynne right now. If I were her, I would have let the other two parties actually vote the budget down, but it’s her call. June 12th.
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