Ontario 2014 (June 12th)

[politicallefty]

What exactly makes Toronto Centre so Liberal? It appears to be the case in both federal and provincial elections that the Liberals perform very strongly there and the NDP is considerably weak. Looking at the 2011 federal election shows that riding to be an anomaly. Even then, the NDP couldn't hold the Liberals down to a single-digit margin. It would seem to me that that kind of seat should really be an NDP stronghold. And yet, in this provincial election, the NDP finished behind even the PCs (even looking past the NDP's rather poor performance in Toronto).

(Interestingly, as an American, I've actually heard of current Toronto Centre MP Chrystia Freeland prior to her being elected to that seat. She's appeared quite a few times on Bill Maher, most recently in January.)

As far as the provincial result, it doesn't look that surprising to me. The OLP seems to have a very strong leader in Kathleen Wynne. From what I've seen of her, she seems to be extremely likable, which should never be underestimated. I watched her victory speech and I found her performance to be very impressive. (I actually didn't know she was a lesbian until that speech when she pulled her wife on stage.) It's only too bad she isn't in federal politics, as I'd really like to see her be the Prime Minister of Canada.