By Stephen White
June 3rd, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
OPINION
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.
Stephen White is a life long resident of Burlington who teaches at Sheridan College and consults in the Human Resources sector
This Opinion piece has zero credibility. The Conservative bias drips from the page. Doug Ford is like an episode of Seinfeld. He represents nothing but himself. As for the words “Woke” and “Critical Race Theory” , such words never crossed the lips of anybody in the NDP. They are words uttered by people on the extreme Right, like our Tucker friends in Ottawa. I don’t even know what “Woke” means. Come on Burlington Gazette, you can do better!
The PCs were elected on essentially the same outcomes. They are the least bad of what is on offer, and not even that for less than 50% of eligible voters.
The PC’s won with the general message of “get it done” for people.
The other parties narratives present like they are all about building some “better” world where everyone lives in an apartment, uses transit, takes virtual reality holidays, their jobs are decided by race or gender and everyone talks only carefully to another person for fear they trigger them and end up in human rights court. It appears this vision is not yet universally popular.
The other major parties don’t message that they care if anyone actually wants to live in this world and any protest on any of these points gets you called names or an explanation of why this “must be”.
There is nothing positive in these platforms to the day to day live of the voter. Your commute gets worse, your neighborhood is at best beset with construction or worse some one builds a 30 story building in you back yard, price increases or rationing on everything from gas to visits to the pub.
Endless focus on people in need which everyone in a rich society wants taken care of cannot totally block out the practical problems of the day to day middle and working class.
Why does anyone think you can be elected on such a platform?
Excellent points Greg. Our position is the craziness of the Liberal position that someone who lost their seat in the 2018 election could lead them to victory in 2022. Further, the story that Horwath was interested in running for Hamilton Mayor having lost 3 elections at that point was a clear indicator that NDPers would be looking elsewhere. Surprised they got the seats they did.