The votes have been counted, and Ontario has a Liberal majority. The Liberals won with 59 seats, the PC Party ended up with 27, and the NDP who triggered this election ended up with 21 seats which was the same before the election.
As a result of the NDP bringing down the government, it cost taxpayers 88 million dollars, and a Liberal majority. PC leader resigned last night, and has asked the PC party executive to meet so they can decide the next steps. So what went wrong for both the PC party and the NDP, and what went right for the Liberals?
Both the PC's and NDP felt that with all the scandals involving the Liberals, they had a chance to form government. What they did not calculate was the fact that Wynne was not McGuinty, and she's a very well liked leader who's started the process of cleaning up the mess left behind by McGuinty. Cleaning up a political mess does not happen overnight. Just ask Mike Harris who had to clean up the mess left by the Bob Rae NDP in 1995. Ontario was very hard hit during the recession, and we have not fully recovered. All western governments had to resort to deficit spending and adding debt to create jobs and maintain our social programs. The Federal Conservatives have not had a balanced budget since 2007, and have added close to 180 billion to our national debt. They have also ran massive deficits since the recession, but my Conservative friends fail to see that.
This election like the 2011 election was Hudak's to win, and he blew both. While I give Hudak credit for being honest about what he was going to do, that was his downfall. Any respectable campaign and policy manager would tell you that you don't make the firing of 100,000 government workers over 4 years a part of your platform. These 100,000 people are voters who have families, and they will not vote for you. Another issue was the creation of 1 million jobs over 8 years. This platform piece was written by Tea Party members of the Republican party, hence the nickname "Tea Party Tim". The people of Ontario are proud people and the last thing they want to see is our policies being written by Conservative Americans.
NDP leader, Andrea Horwath ran a lousy campaign. It was because of her that we had this election, and it took her party over a week once the writ was dropped to get their act together on the campaign trail. The budget which was introduced by the Liberals which lead to their defeat, was a budget catering to the NDP. Had the Liberals only won a minority, and they did promise to re-introduce the same budget what would the NDP do? Well that's something we don't have to worry about as the Liberal have a majority. The problem with the NDP is that they decided to move from being a far left party to more of a centralist party, and that failed for them, and left a wide opening for the Liberals to fill that void. Hudak did the right thing by stepping aside, and Horwath should have done the same thing.
Both the PC party and the NDP need to rebuild their brands, and they will have 4 years to do so. My advise for the PC party is to elect as your next leader a more centralist type of person who can connect with voters. Don't come out with these wide eyed ideas, and don't have really politically stupid people running your party and campaigns. For the NDP you need to go back to your grass roots, and return to being a true socialist party. Don't try and reinvent yourself as a centralist party with progressive ideas. It did not work in this election and it won't in the next.
As for the Liberals, you have finally put the ghost of Dalton McGuinty behind you, and now you now need to govern. Don't abuse your majority position, you need to keep your promises including balancing the budget by 2017/18, investing in public transit, health care, and education. Keep your noses clean, and don't repeat the mistakes made by McGuinty.
