Ontario Election 2022

[Jason]

I hope you guys all voted! But if not, there's still time. Polls open until 9 pm. If you're not sure where you go to vote see this website:

https://voterinformationservice.elections.on.ca/en/election/search?mode=postalCode

I don't want to influence your vote with spoilers but chances are we all know who the winner will be. I suspect most aren't going to be happy about it except possibly William. Still, there are some interesting possibilities to make it worth watching. There might be a toss-up for the Official Opposition. And the Greens might win another seat. And the people of Ontario will make the Ontario and True Fool, ahem, Blue party, cry in their beers.

Is anybody going to watch? I paid scant attention to the federal election but I suspect most did since they just voted the same way they did in 2019 and I'm not particularly interested in this one. I didn't volunteer for either and only partially watched results coming in. The pandemic sucked out my enthusiasm for elections as well as the inherent risk in volunteering during one.

Predictions?

[ssfc72]

I won't be watching the election tonight. I will just see the outcome tomorrow morning, when I look at the Google Canada news page.

[Jason]

I won't be watching the election tonight. I will just see the outcome tomorrow morning, when I look at the Google Canada news page.

I don't blame ya'. I've considered doing the same. I know the Not-So-Blue party will almost certainly win but I do want to see if the NDP keeps its Official Opposition status. It seems so unfair to have been on the cusp of government and then go back to third position again.

[Jason]

The CBC website has been running this feature for many elections, going back at least a decade, called Vote Compass. You punch it how much you agree or disagree (and how strongly) with certain policy statements and it tells you where you are on a two-dimensional political parties chart. The statements are taken from commitments made inside party platforms on different themes. It's fascinating. Usually, it confirms my party support but never dead-on and sometimes it places me closer to another party. This time around it was the latter. And the space between the NDP/Greens and Liberals is a lot more than usual. It looks like the Liberals are kind of like NDP-lite.

I think I placed close to the Liberals because I less strongly agreed with the NDP on certain issues which tended to be the Liberal position AND there were several issues I just didn't have enough information to decide on so those similarities weighed more heavily in the outcome.

If you did it earlier in the election before full platforms were out, your results might change a little bit. So try it again and see what you get. Don't worry about trackers by participating. Privacy Badger finds no tracking cookies, or any cookies, for that matter, on the page with the survey.

https://votecompass.cbc.ca/ontario2022

1. What result did you get?

2. Did you agree or was the result unexpected?

If you prefer not to give a clue as to how you voted, just answer the second one as I'm curious about how well it nailed your preferences.

[ssfc72]

For comparison to the 2018 Ontario Election, have a look at this Link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Ontario_general_election#Regional_analysis

Check out the Detailed Analysis figures, about 3/4 of the page down.  Interesting List of all the 29 different Parties that were available to vote for, in that Election.

Looks like there was a dismal turnout of voters, for the 2022 Election.  Only 47 % for the Lindsay voting District.

[Jason]

Yeah, we have quite a variety of parties! Of course, in most areas, you couldn't actually vote for them as they had no local candidates. Did you see the "Note of the Above" party?

[ssfc72]

The Lindsay voting ballot had 7 Parties that you could choose from. :-(

[Jason]

The Lindsay voting ballot had 7 Parties that you could choose from. :-(

Is that a bad thing? Three main parties plus Greens is already 4. In Quebec, they usually have 5 (as a minimum). Provincial elections are worse. Unless it goes beyond 10 or so, I'm cool with it. 95% are going to vote for the mainline parties so it won't be hard to find.

In the recent US presidential election, there were 10 candidates for president, AND a write-in. If I was an American, I put have put Fox in there and he could've been the Leader of the Free World! Talk about friends in high places.

Here's a Mississippi ballot in their 2020 federal election. Note at the bottom it says to flip over for the next page. It says that again on the second page. There are 3 pages!



You can find the full PDF with all 3 pages shown here.

[fox]

In that case, I'm glad I wasn't on the ballot.    I can't imagine what it would be like to be President in the USA with the virulent politics there.

[ssfc72]

I think 4 official parties to vote for on a provincial or federal election would be ideal.
With too many parties to vote for at an election, the voting pool gets thinned out too much.  This would make it harder for 2 parties to get enough elected candidates together, to unseat the elected  party, if it got too bad at governing the province or country.

[Jason]

I think 4 official parties to vote for on a provincial or federal election would be ideal.
With too many parties to vote for at an election, the voting pool gets thinned out too much.  This would make it harder for 2 parties to get enough elected candidates together, to unseat the elected party, if it got too bad at governing the province or country.

It does. That's because of our FPTP system. You only need to win 40% to get a majority government (meaning the will of 60% of the electorate is ignored). The more the vote is split amongst other parties, the less support you need. We can get rid of parties or get rid of the FPTP system. Since we can't get rid of parties, well, I'll let you draw the inference.