Looks like you were on the ball.
Thank you for the kind words. Yeah the final total percentage of Lib 38, PC 33, NDP 23, Grn 5 was pretty close. The projection seat numbers I am guessing was way off due to sites looking at likely numbers that as I thought from the beginning was a total bust and never made sense in the first place. Taking as small sample size and making it smaller by just listing "angry voters" as likely voters is as odd a formula. It's like just listening to angry talk radio callers and making a prediction on that. Ipsos looked the worse with the big PC lead and then the odd 30% NDP surge claim. I personally have found Ipsos not to be as credible since the Ipsos guys wrote the silly book called "The Big Shift" which they claim that a single federal Conservative majority is proof of a big shift to conservatism. Since then they been pushing the RW slant.
The other big loser of the day is Hudak and the Conservatives, what I think we saw was a rejection of hard rightwing politics. The odd thing is he didn't have to do it. American politics, Republican have to go hard right to get the nomination and then have to make a sharp turn to the centre. For some reason Hudak did a full-right turn when he didn't. It also showed the rash that was known as Ford nation is down to a village (if that) I know RWers are quick to blame unions and everybody else, his supporters (media and callers) constant union-bashing didn't help much either when later on he tried to portray himself as a soft-tory. I've said right before the election, a number that caught my eye was Hudak unappealing at 60% compared to Wynne 45%. When the opposition is viewed that negatively, there's a problem with the brand.
Not as much of a loser, but in reality maybe even a bigger blow than Hudak (who we knew would choke) is Horwath. Sure she has the same seats as before. But she went from being queen-maker to irrelevant third party. I seriously think if she just held her cards until the term is over she could have made a very good case to left-of-centre Ontarians that after a Liberal third term, an NDP choice would be best to defeat Hudak. Even if Hudak got a minority government in 2015 she could have formed a coalition with the Libs and become Premier, that all went out the window when she called the election. Lefties all panicked, played it safe and supported the safe choice in the Libs and viewed Horwath as a risky sell-out.
The last of the losers has to be the mainstream media in general, wrong in their endorsement (except for the Star) Wrong on the issue that ended up being important with the voters. Wrong in how they read the polls. Here's the problem with news people reading poll, they look at it as interesting/entertainment, it should be looked at as a science. They see ONE poll with NDP 30% and go "Wow lets run with it" which of course is irresponsible and what you should do is cross-reference with other polls to see it it have any match to it at all. PS if any mainstream media organization wants to reach me for my services, drop me a PM and I won't yell at you too badly lol
