Saturday, October 08, 2011

Election Night Coverage and Other Thoughts

Who in the CTV and Global braintrust thought it would be a good idea to have former Ontario premiers and other hacks from the various political parties as analysts?  Their reactions to how things unfolded was totally predictable spin, quite useless in explaining what we were watching unfold Thursday night.  After watching that for 30 minutes I turned it off and only went back a few time during the evening to check the seat ticker.

Predictably the Liberal "analysts" stated it was a good night for the Liberals while the Ontario PC and NDP "analysts" stated it was a lousy night for the Liberals and a great night for their parties.  Indeed, listening to Ernie Eves, I was almost believing the Ontario PC Party was winning on Thursday night.

Cutting through all of the spin here is what we are left with.  The Liberals won the election.  They won a minority government but they only came up short of a majority by one seat.  That is it.  Everything else that was said on Thursday night was spin, speculation and conjecture.

How all of this plays out in the coming months and years remains to be seen. 

Things could go badly for the Liberals.  There is no denying that is a possibility but they are not the only party that has to worry about the future.

Pay attention to the Ontario PC Party.  Virtually all of their gains came from rural ridings, which is the base for Randy Hillier and his band of Tea Party wannabees.  It will be interesting to see what happens if they decide to flex their new found muscle within the Ontario PC Party and how Tim Hudak responds to that.  Any sign of internal dissent would not be good news for a party that may face a snap election at any time and if the more radical instincts of the Hillier wing of that party begins to seep into the Party's policies it could frighten alot of urban voters enough to hold their nose and vote for the party that is currently in the best position to keep them at bay, namely the Liberals. 

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