Toronto byelection

[GraphicMatt]

I came THISCLOSE to not voting at all, but ended up feeling guilty and voted around 7 p.m. at Lord Dufferin school. It took forever as I wasn't on the voter's list. The whole ballot system is ridiculously inefficient.

 

[nfitz]

It was way too close for comfort for what should have been a complete Liberal slam dunk.

The Liberal support was virutally unchanged from the previous election. However we have an unknown candidate (outside of Manitoba at least) compared to a well known incumbent (Smitherman). Given that mid-term by-elections often see a protest against the party-in-power, and the opposition seems to think there is a lot to protest, then I don't see any reason to loose comfort. Now if I was Hudak I'd be concerned ... there was a major loss of Tory support - perhaps because of the major move to the right-wing since Hudak took over.

HST doesn't seem to have hurt the Liberals (nor did it in the other Toronto by-election recently ... and I'm not surprised; I haven't voted Liberal since coming to Toronto ... but I may be tempted to next time, given all the hysteria that the NDP and Tories have been making out of the HST).

 

[King of Kensington]

Glen Murray may be arrogant, opportunistic, etc. but on paper he sounds very good. Imagine if instead of Murray, Cathy Crowe faced some hack like Tim Murphy. That would have been interesting indeed!

Cathy Crowe did a fantastic job, nearly doubling the NDP percentage of the vote to 33% in a very safe Liberal riding.

A real test of McGuinty's leadership (and of Hudak as well) will be the Ottawa West-Nepean byelection in March.

The big losers of the night were not the Tories though - it was the Greens.

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

I came THISCLOSE to not voting at all, but ended up feeling guilty and voted around 7 p.m. at Lord Dufferin school. It took forever as I wasn't on the voter's list. The whole ballot system is ridiculously inefficient.

Good for you for going out to vote!

Paper may have a few drawbacks but I'll take it over electronic voting any day - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8O43LxV_Xw

 

[Dan416]

There must be some way to make online voting credible and reliable and not fixable. I guess every election is fixable, but for some reason electronic voting seems to scare people. I remember doing online voting for SAC on ROSI when I was at U of T. And no one ever complaned that the results were fixed. Of course, this is more important than a student's administrative council. This is real life(TM).

 

[Tewder]

It was way too close for comfort for what should have been a complete Liberal slam dunk.

So I take it that all the people who voted liberal here support the HST? This is the only conclusion one can draw, or that the Liberals will be sure to draw more to the point. McGinty must be tickled. Then again, no big surprise. It'll be interesting to see what the verdict of the rest of the province will be regarding the Liberals/HST come next election.

 

[Roy G Biv]

So I take it that all the people who voted liberal here support the HST? This is the only conclusion one can draw, or that the Liberals will be sure to draw more to the point.

That's not a fair conclusion to draw. As exemplified by a poster in this thread, many Toronto Centre voters are just zombies who X the candidate above "Liberal".

 

[GraphicMatt]

So I take it that all the people who voted liberal here support the HST? This is the only conclusion one can draw, or that the Liberals will be sure to draw more to the point. McGinty must be tickled. Then again, no big surprise. It'll be interesting to see what the verdict of the rest of the province will be regarding the Liberals/HST come next election.

Oh of course, the HST was totally something the Liberals cooked up all by themselves as a tax grab and not something the federal conservative party gave them billions of dollars to implement. The provincial conservatives haven't even pledged to reverse it. The only party that MIGHT would be the NDP - would you have rather Toronto Centre voted for them?