Doug Ford is still premier because progressives could not agree on how — or why — to vote him out
OTTAWA-For left-wing Ontarians, the despair - and frustration - is real. The premier they accuse of callous cuts and pandemic failures dominated the provincial election on Thursday and returned to power with an even stronger majority government.
The fact that, of the minority of people who bothered to vote, most cast ballots for left-leaning parties opposing Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives - that's just salt in the wound.
I mean, it's pretty bad, right? In a lot of ways," says Christo Aivalis, a partisan New Democrat in Kingston who analyzes politics through a leftist lens on his YouTube channel.
Despite Ford's commanding victory, Aivalis looks at the election results and sees a majority who wanted a different direction. Almost 54 per cent of ballots were cast for the NDP, Liberals and Greens, versus 41 per cent for Ford's PCs. Yet none of the more progressive parties could translate that into power. Nor could they reduce the PCs to a minority at Queen's Park, or even inspire many people to get to the polls. Elections Ontario pegged voter turnout at 43 per cent - the lowest ever.
There's a whole bunch of blame to go around, but fundamentally there should be a lot of concern from progressives," Aivalis said.
Why couldn't they, on a provincial level, really mobilize the frustration with Doug Ford?"
That might be the big question of the election. To suss out an answer, it helps to look first at structural challenges facing the left-leaning parties.
With similar platforms and campaigns that tried to convince voters to replace Ford's PC government, the three parties split a majority of votes, making it easier for PCs to get a plurality of ballots in many ridings, said Cameron Anderson, a political science professor at Western University in London, Ont. He compared the situation to the 1990s and early 2000s, when the Canadian Alliance and federal Progressive Conservatives competed for votes on the right side of the political spectrum.
It can go both ways," Anderson said. At the moment, the Greens and the NDP and the Liberals ... they're all splitting that vote."
The dynamic will undoubtedly cast attention, and criticism from some quarters, of the province's first-past-the-post electoral system, Anderson added. Under that system, Ontarians elect MPPs based on who gets the most votes in a given riding. Some argue this is less democratic because it can produce disproportional results when support is relatively low but uniform across the province, such as when the Liberals got 24 per cent of all votes but only elected eight MPPs, or 6.5 per cent of seats at Queen's Park.
On the other hand, Anderson said, the system is also more likely to produce majority governments when a single party gets between 35 and 40 per cent of the vote, as Ford's PCs did on Thursday. This brings stability and predictability to the province, which some contend is a virtue of the existing voting scheme.
Some might not feel that's a legitimate tradeoff to have, and that fairness and representativeness is more important, but there are those arguments on the flip side," said Anderson.
Another challenge for Ford's opponents was particular to the moment: there was never a burning desire for change that either flared into intense motivation to vote out the PCs, or that the NDP and Liberals managed to fuel and capitalize on, said Greg Lyle, president of the polling firm, Innovative Research Group.
The lack of a strong appetite for change meant voters didn't congregate around a single party seen as having the best chance to dethrone Ford, said Lyle, referring to the strategic voting" that is often discussed among progressive voters keen to defeat a right-leaning alternative.
The result on Thursday was basically a tie between the Liberals, who got 1,117,051 votes, and the NDP, who received 1,111,318. (The PCs got 1,912,651.)
Lyle noted progressive voters aren't united in their values," and that there is a split between those who want government to focus on redistributing wealth and those who want to emphasize economic growth. This makes it difficult to unite people who would never vote for a conservative party, even if that broad group represents the majority of voters, he said.
This is a fundamental divide, and we shouldn't underestimate it."
The Liberal and NDP campaigns also can't escape blame for the result, Lyle said.
In his view, the NDP had the right idea - try to convince people it's time for real change" that isn't PC or Liberal - but simply failed to convince voters to agree. Part of that can be chalked up to Andrea Horwath's performance as leader, including in the official debates, which didn't spark a surge of enthusiasm for the NDP's vision of change, Lyle said.
Meanwhile, the Liberals under Steven Del Duca had good tactics" like the buck-a-ride transit proposal, but never successfully defined what the election was about in voters' minds.
I still don't know what their ballot question is," he said.
Now that both Horwath and Del Duca have resigned, the parties will have to take stock and figure out how to break out of the current political dynamic in Ontario. For Aivalis, the NDP supporter and political commentator, the key will be crafting strong organization at the riding level.
It was hard to pin (Ford) down in this election. He sort of hid from the media and from the public. I think the only way you counter that is by doing that deep organizing at the local level, and hopefully building some momentum," he said.
According to Lyle, the parties - particularly the Liberals - should bomb the bridge" of Ford's reputation with voters, to push the Tories into a Conservative corner" where more voters are nervous about what they might do with power.
There was a significant enough chunk of these non-Conservatives that liked Doug Ford, that the Conservatives were able to win. And this is an ongoing threat," he said.
The next election has started today."
Alex Ballingall is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @aballinga