Ontario Election: No Change from 2003

Ontario lost today's provincial election. The only people to blame in this are the stupid Canadians. Those who would hand the Liberals another majority even after they've lied and stolen from you. This has been the most disgraceful election campaign I have ever seen. Ontarians voted clearly and they're saying: we want four more years of corruption, we want four more years of oppressive taxes, we don't care about the real issues. This election has shocked political analysts due to it's bizarre twists which morphed it into a one issue campaign about.

Now that I've lambasted you for being morons and gotten my sour grapes out of the way, lets turn to analysis. Results sit at 70 seats for the Liberals, 26 for the PC, and 11 for the NDP. The popular vote mirrors polls taken earlier in the month with 41%, 31%, and 17% respectively. From the last election, the Liberals lost one seat while the PC and NDP saw some small gains. The Green party did not win any seats but saw major gains in the popular vote, 8.3% up from 2.8%. Liberals actually lost traction in the popular vote from 2003, down five points from 46%. I've rounded off the percentages to the nearest whole number for simplicity's sake. We're basically where we were four years ago. No major changes. Once again, we see Toronto tipping the scales in favour of the Liberals, which gives them an unfair advantage in my opinion. I believe this us due to high numbers of recent immigrants (those who arrived from the Trudeau years to present) in these areas, who have traditionally voted Liberal.
The surge in the popularity of the Greens is also something worth considering. I believe they will continue to pull support away from Liberals provided the environmental movement maintains it's momentum. They likely won't effect the PC and NDP though, as this election has shown. These particular parties appeal to business and labour respectively. The environment is not traditionally an area of major concern for these two groups. The Greens strike a balance between the Liberals and PC ideology wise. They are not a single issue party, though environmentalism is a major bargaining chip.
As for turn out, I was watching the riding by riding results pop up on the TV. Results as a whole aren't available yet. 60% seems to be the average, though I consider this quite low. I would prefer to see at the very least 66% (two thirds) of voters turn out. In my opinion, an election cannot truly be legitimate if it doesn't get that amount of people turning out, since 40% is still a sizable chunk of the population. I believe it all boils down to people being too lazy. At the very least, you should spoil your ballot if you don't like any candidates. Spoiled ballots are counted, even though they don't effect the outcome. They still work by sending a message than you don't approve of anyone.
My own riding or Halton was a bit of a scare, originally reporting a Liberal victory, but it is officially a PC one. Halton has become a political football in recent years, especially after the Turner incident at the federal level. We're still without a federal MP in my opinion, since Turner is not legitimate.

One of the big things was the referendum, the first since the 1930s. Fortunately, the status quo has been maintained with 63% in favour of the First-Past the Post system compared to 37% for the Mixed Member. On this subject, I believe that Ontarians were poorly informed about the question. The pamphlet issued was of poor quality and TV ads only informed Ontarians to "understand the question" rather then explaining to them what it was about. I believed the media utterly failed on informing the public about the issue. The mixed member system is a complicated system. Despite the other problems relating to corruption which I mentioned a few months back, I believe it to be simply too complicated. I've seen textbooks that dedicate several pages to just explaining the basics of this system. It's Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is usually the best. Also, it would not lead to better democracy under our current system, since the smaller parties would still have no real power. Everything works in theory, but mixed member would have simply created more headaches than it's worth. If you truly do want to make Ontario more democratic, you would have to scrap the parliamentary system entirely and replace it with a US-based republic, or go with the full proportional system. The latter of which is used in a lot of European countries, but is prone frequent to political deadlocks.

So what does the next four years hold. I expect more of the same. Ontarians have shown that they're highly resistant to change. I believe McGuinty's first win was purely the result of strong dissatisfaction with the Harris government. I expect the turmoil from that last 20 years will start to cool down. Will this mean a "big red machine" is on the horizon. Perhaps, though it's far too early to call that. McGuinty is also riding on a time when the economy is relatively strong. If he continues more of his crap and we enter a recession, it may spell the end for him. Fortunately, this time he won't be able to break his promises, considering he made none to begin with.
As for John Tory, I think it would be best for him to resign as PC leader. He held to the religious school funding issue, even though he did not even have majority support in his own party. While his change of heart on the issue does show he listens to majority, the issue as a whole only provided cannon fodder for McGuinty. If he could not get the majority of his party to agree to it, the issue should have been dropped before it became public. That's a poor way of doing things. It would be wise for the PC party to elect a leader who is a veteran MP rather than a newcomer. Especially considering that Tory had already lost a major election campaign to become Toronto's mayor.
I would like to see Howard Hampton stay on as NDP leader, since I feel he was the only strong leader out of the three major parties, and the only one willing to discus real issues. He is certainly a far cry from the weak leadership of Bob Rae