Now it makes sense:
Ontario residents are less likely than other Canadians to follow political news or stories about world events, according to a new survey.
The November 2012 web survey of 2,200 Canadians, done by Léger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies, found that 57 per cent of Ontarians say they follow world news, 45 per cent follow news about Canadian politics and just 37 per cent follow news about provincial politics.
Keep that figure in mind: 37% follow provincial news. Coincidentally 37% is the popular vote captured by the McGuinty Liberals. If we were to draw a Venn diagram of Ontario voters, how much overlap would there be? Another number to keep in mind is 49.2%. That's the voter turnout in 2011. So if 37% of the people pay attention to provincial news, but 49.2% of the electorate votes, that means that about 12.2% of the voters went into the polling booth not knowing a damn about what they were doing.
Did we mention that a hundred thousand votes separated the Tories and the Grits?
Or that Mike Harris won a greater absolute number of votes in 1995 and 1999 that Dalton McGuinty won in 2007 and 2011?
Just some numbers for you to mull over the long weekend.
Combine the LoFo voter with the fact that most of the MSM is progressive and unionized then you get a dangerous cocktail mix at election time.
Interest in municipal politics is even lower. Again that gives the government unions a powerful leg up to get out the vote in their favour. That’s why the unionized Red Star’s journalists are so adamant on getting union leveler Rob Ford out of the Mayor’s Chair.
Turning to immigrants driving down voter interest...who can blame them? Compared to the hell holes they escaped, politics here is a virtuous picnic. Having said that, there are many immigrants who are more appreciative about their right to vote than 3rd generation Canadians.
The scary thing about LoFo voters is that Obama, McGuinty and Justin can appeal to them because these politicians simply identify someone to blame (Bush, strawmen, Harris, Harper, whoever) and then even when these politicians are governing they still are able to disconnect themselves from the very problems for which they are now responsible. They convince the LoFo voter that the job of fixing all the problems is still a work in progress.
Even after 3 terms as Premier, McGuinty perpetually blamed the Tories. All issues were still the fault of the Tories. McGuinty was never cause, he was the fixer. These progressives are never responsible for their mess; they are always campaigning to fix it. The LoFo voter and the progressive MSM all sit and nod in agreement.
Posted by: nomdeblog | Friday, February 15, 2013 at 08:47 AM
Folks in my riding don't vote by party. They vote for the 'nice' guy who's done a 'good' job in the past. You can point out every party platform failure until you are blue in the face. When it's time to mark the ballot they see the same name over and over again and guess who is voted in? The party affiliation is not even an issue. The face could be on a blue sign, a red sign, or an orange one. It matters not! So how on earth do you deal with that?
Posted by: Chris in Ontario | Friday, February 15, 2013 at 11:27 AM