By Pepper Parr
June 3rd, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
The beautiful thing about the form of government we have is that once the ballots are counted and the result are clear – we accept the results and get on with letting the new government do its job.
Burlington residents are represented by three constituencies: Burlington, Oakville North Burlington and Milton.
Burlington results:
Burlington
Oakville North Burlington
Milton
wow. just like your internal pollster predicted !!!
A couple of other results:
* The NDP/Greens will never get their wish for proportional voting
* Unless the NDP and Liberals figure out how to combine their forces (and it shouldn’t be to hard if the prize is have a progressive government in power) they will remain a distant third, forever.
* Federals Liberals and NDP are heading that way, or they will face the same fate.
Compare the 2022 provincial election results in Burlington with those of 2018 and some interesting trends emerge.
In 2018, the PC’s won 25,500 votes, and 40% of the vote. This time around they won roughly 22,200 votes and 42.5% of the vote. However, the Liberals went from 15,000 votes to roughly 15,400 votes and garnered less than 30% of the vote. The NDP vote totally collapsed. They went from 18,000 votes in 2018 to just over 9,200, and 28% of the popular vote to 17.6%. 63,737 residents voted in Burlington in 2018. I would be interested to see what the final tally is this time round.
The key messages:
1) a lot of residents didn’t bother to vote. I went by two polling stations during the day at schools and there was little traffic.
2) the private sector union vote went solidly PC. Witness the gains in Windsor, Hamilton and Brampton.
3) electors haven’t forgotten, or forgiven, the Liberals for the mess created by Kathleen Wynne.
4) the NDP is increasingly tied to special interests and public sector unions. They have continually failed to make inroads with moderate voters who don’t like and don’t support their policies or style. Even with a superlative local candidate like Andrew Drummond they couldn’t hold their vote.
5) given the lack of viable alternatives offered by either the Liberals or NDP the electorate opted for the status quo.
The Liberals need to find a much better leader, and not one tied to the Wynne government’s sorry legacy. They also need smarter policies, not $1 a day transit fares that are untethered to reality and amount to little more than half-baked promises. The NDP need to hit the re-set button and hard. WOKE messaging, critical race theory, EDI “happy talk” and “word salads” don’t resonate with voters who want practical policies and viable alternatives. That’s why they lost the private sector union vote. Jobs matter.
As for the PCs, they really need to engage their base and start listening to the public. Add the residents who didn’t vote, supporters like me who parked their vote with New Blue, and the potential of two new energized leaders by the time 2026 rolls around, and the future isn’t entirely smooth sailing.