CREDIT: RONNIECHUA (THINKSTOCK)

The past few months have certainly been a wild ride for all of Ontario’s political parties, as well as its voters. That all culminated on June 7 with the Progressive Conservatives winning a majority government, the NDP becoming the official opposition, The Green Party securing their first Ontario seat in Guelph and Kathleen Wynn the former Ontario Premiere, resigning as leader of the Liberal Party.

In the wake of all this, Interrobang spoke with Matt Farrell a professor in Interdisciplinary Studies at Fanshawe College to get his thoughts and expertise on the results of the election.

“My first thought was that, this is an election that the pollsters really got it right…Even some of the seat projections, which is much tougher…had many organizations do a pretty good job of predicting that,” shared Farrell, going on to tell how nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary happened on election day. “What that tells me is that the electorate was very predictable. There was no surprises, there was no big boost in turnout from the under 34 demographic group that the people were anticipating or at least the NDP was hoping for. Everything else held true to form in terms of a typical Ontario election,” Farrell said.

Farrell believed that one of the keys to Doug Ford’s success was the length of time the Liberal party had remained in power, pushing voters to yearn for a new leader of Ontario. “The liberals had been in party for going on 15 years and that’s more or less the attention span of voters…it’s almost as if they’ve got a limit and voters just have enough at a certain point…once voters have enough of you they cast you to the curb and you have to sit in the penalty box for a cycle of two, until you get your stuff back together.” Farrell stated.

Despite the massive decline of the Liberal popular vote by 20 per cent, Farrell does not believe that Ontario has seen the end of a strong Liberal government. “There are a lot of loyal supporters of the Liberal Party here in Ontario...it would take a really seismic shift in either demographics or the electorate to see the Liberal Party disappear. They’re going to have, I suspect, strong support in Ontario going forward, it just might take a couple elections for them to get back up to the strength that they’re used to,” shared Farrell.

In the meantime, the NDP now hold the title of the official opposition to the Progressive Conservatives, an exciting position for a party which has not seen this much recognition on a provincial level since the days of Bob Rae in the early 1990s. When asked for his thoughts on this, Farrell stated that “the opposition in a majority government is somewhat limited. They’ll be the first to weigh in on certain things, …in terms of scrumming with the media [and the] first questions in question period…Given the fact the fact that the Liberals had tact a little bit to the left compared to where they typically make on a campaign, I think that some of the issues will be the same…that the NDP will use to hammer the government with”.

When asked what a Progressive Conservative party will mean for Ontario, Farrell shared that an obvious change will be “a lot of new faces…with the election of a brand-new government and a lot of new MPPs. So, it’ll take some getting used to the different folks that are in the legislator and around the cabinet table. Beyond that we’ll see different priorities. Anytime you see a change in government like this, they’ll be a shift in the projects that they attach a priority to,” he stated.

Although Farrell expects to see a new direction in certain London projects such as funding to the High-Speed Rail or Bus Rapid Transit Plan, he went on to share that London is in an interesting situation as “we have three urban ridings here in London dominated by the NDP with a Progressive Conservative Government”.

He went on to tell that some bigger issues under concern do not show as much of a difference in opinions as one might expect.

“Workers in the health care system tend to support NDP. [This is] also an important issue for the Conservatives because the most frequent users of the health care system [are] 55 and over [and] those [are] a big part of the voting support for the Conservatives. So, neither party really wants to do anything negative with health care and health care of course is very important for the London Region. So, I think that’s something that we can sort of rest easy,” Farrell said.

Much of what the Progressive Conservative Party has planned for the next four years is still uncertain. However, one thing you can count on is that Interrobang will continue to keep its readers informed and educated on all the major political news that comes our way.

The past few months have certainly been a wild ride for all of Ontario’s political parties, as well as its voters. That all culminated on June 7 with the Progressive Conservatives winning a majority government, the NDP becoming the official opposition, The Green Party securing their first Ontario seat in Guelph and Kathleen Wynn the former Ontario Premiere, resigning as leader of the Liberal Party.

In the wake of all this, Interrobang spoke with Matt Farrell a professor in Interdisciplinary Studies at Fanshawe College to get his thoughts and expertise on the results of the election.

“My first thought was that, this is an election that the pollsters really got it right…Even some of the seat projections, which is much tougher…had many organizations do a pretty good job of predicting that,” shared Farrell, going on to tell how nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary happened on election day. “What that tells me is that the electorate was very predictable. There was no surprises, there was no big boost in turnout from the under 34 demographic group that the people were anticipating or at least the NDP was hoping for. Everything else held true to form in terms of a typical Ontario election,” Farrell said.

Farrell believed that one of the keys to Doug Ford’s success was the length of time the Liberal party had remained in power, pushing voters to yearn for a new leader of Ontario. “The liberals had been in party for going on 15 years and that’s more or less the attention span of voters…it’s almost as if they’ve got a limit and voters just have enough at a certain point…once voters have enough of you they cast you to the curb and you have to sit in the penalty box for a cycle of two, until you get your stuff back together.” Farrell stated.

Despite the massive decline of the Liberal popular vote by 20 per cent, Farrell does not believe that Ontario has seen the end of a strong Liberal government. “There are a lot of loyal supporters of the Liberal Party here in Ontario...it would take a really seismic shift in either demographics or the electorate to see the Liberal Party disappear. They’re going to have, I suspect, strong support in Ontario going forward, it just might take a couple elections for them to get back up to the strength that they’re used to,” shared Farrell.

In the meantime, the NDP now hold the title of the official opposition to the Progressive Conservatives, an exciting position for a party which has not seen this much recognition on a provincial level since the days of Bob Rae in the early 1990s. When asked for his thoughts on this, Farrell stated that “the opposition in a majority government is somewhat limited. They’ll be the first to weigh in on certain things, …in terms of scrumming with the media [and the] first questions in question period…Given the fact the fact that the Liberals had tact a little bit to the left compared to where they typically make on a campaign, I think that some of the issues will be the same…that the NDP will use to hammer the government with”.

When asked what a Progressive Conservative party will mean for Ontario, Farrell shared that an obvious change will be “a lot of new faces…with the election of a brand-new government and a lot of new MPPs. So, it’ll take some getting used to the different folks that are in the legislator and around the cabinet table. Beyond that we’ll see different priorities. Anytime you see a change in government like this, they’ll be a shift in the projects that they attach a priority to,” he stated.

Although Farrell expects to see a new direction in certain London projects such as funding to the High-Speed Rail or Bus Rapid Transit Plan, he went on to share that London is in an interesting situation as “we have three urban ridings here in London dominated by the NDP with a Progressive Conservative Government”.

He went on to tell that some bigger issues under concern do not show as much of a difference in opinions as one might expect.

“Workers in the health care system tend to support NDP. [This is] also an important issue for the Conservatives because the most frequent users of the health care system [are] 55 and over [and] those [are] a big part of the voting support for the Conservatives. So, neither party really wants to do anything negative with health care and health care of course is very important for the London Region. So, I think that’s something that we can sort of rest easy,” Farrell said.

Much of what the Progressive Conservative Party has planned for the next four years is still uncertain. However, one thing you can count on is that Interrobang will continue to keep its readers informed and educated on all the major political news that comes our way.