Thursday June 12, 2014

Election day in Ontario – LIBERAL MAJORITY

Despite being hounded on both sides by rivals who harped on Liberal government scandals during the longer-than-normal campaign, Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne has steered her party to a majority and a commanding electoral victory, based largely on major gains in the Toronto area, while PC Leader Tim Hudak declared he is resigning.

With all ridings reporting, Liberals were elected or leading in 58 constituencies to 27 for the Progressive Conservatives and 22 for the NDP.

The strong Liberal showing had its roots in the Greater Toronto Area, where eight seats are changing hands — seven of those going to the Liberals. Overall, the results mean the Liberals will be even more concentrated in the GTA.

The Liberals also picked up seats from the Tories in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, Barrie andNorthumberland, while they only lost two: Sudbury and Windsor West.  

The outcome was also slightly rosier for the NDP under Leader AndreaHorwath, who was the first of the major party leaders to be declared elected in their home riding tonight. The NDP vote share was at 24.1 per cent, up 1.4 points from the 2011 campaign. (Source: CBC News)

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Added at 9pm on election night…

Because the polls close at 9pm it’s always a major race for newspapers to report the results and get great coverage in an extremely short span of time. Consider that the presses start running at midnight giving reporters, columnists, copy editors, photographers, and of course, editorial cartoonists a very small window of time to the news out. A great deal of planning goes into this evening, and it often entails late nights, frenzied phone calls, and many curve balls. Polls have played an important part to media as they use them as a guide to determine how this night will turn out.

But not this night.

The polls are showing us that the gaps between all the 3 main parties are incredibly close. So close, that it is very difficult to figure out how the popular vote will translate into a seat count. Well we’ll know soon enough.

Never before have I found myself drawing 5 different cartoons for one election.

The most generic one is one that illustrates the status quo return to Liberal government.

The next likely one is a PC minority.

The chances of the NDP winning a minority is slim in my mind.

Even unlikelier is the chance I think we’ll see a majority government of any party. But here’s the one I drew in case the PC’s win:

Here’s my favourite cartoon. The Liberal Majority cartoon which I’m guessing will be the least likely scenario. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking.

What I didn’t draw is a cartoon in the event Andrea Horwath is crowned Ontario’s new Premier tonight. That just can’t happen on election night. Unfortunately, crazy things do happen on election night. Let’s see what happens.

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TWO DECADES of DRAWING ONTARIO ELECTIONS

LETTERS to the EDITOR

Wynne is no Maleficent