Doug Ford speaks at 10 a.m. Friday after getting a second majority.
CBC News broadcasts the new live conference above.
Doug Ford’s journey to win the Ontario election and get a second straight majority actually began on St. Patrick’s Day 2020, the day he declared a state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Until then, Ford’s conservative progressive government had the aroma of a one-term marvel, shrouded in scandals of nepotism and so unpopular that the prime minister was booed at the joyous parade of the Toronto Raptors’ victory. .
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic: 13,000 people died, Ontario closed schools longer than anywhere else in North America and Ford’s promised “iron ring” around nursing homes long-lasting never materialized.
Still, Ford has led its Ontario PCs to a bigger victory than in the last election, with 83 seats, leaving the new Democrats and Liberals in the dust and looking for new party leaders.
How did he and his party achieve this impressive recovery?
A key factor was Ford’s image in more than 200 press conferences during the first year of the pandemic.
Whatever you think about the way a teleprompter reads or its “God bless the people of Ontario” closing, Ford used these appearances to rehabilitate his reputation, and as a result, his degree of approval went shoot.
Doug Ford, with his wife, Karla, by his side, was re-elected Prime Minister of Ontario on Thursday. (Evan Mitsui / CBC)
There is no doubt that his government’s response to the pandemic was flawed and this eventually drew Ford’s approval. There were a lot of voters who wanted out Ford.
But there is no doubt that a significant portion of Ontarians are tired of the pandemic and want to move on. Ford’s party took advantage of this, and its “Get It” message probably resonated with those who “ended up” with COVID-19.
Choose a referendum on Ford
Between these two factors related to COVID-19, this is how it worked: enough public in enough constituencies gave Ford a note of approval to pave the way for an election victory.
The election was in many ways a referendum on Ford. Polls show that few in Ontario are neutral about him after four years as prime minister and so much time under the focus of the pandemic.
The firmness of the numbers of votes during the campaign and the election result of Thursday night suggest that those polarized opinions about Ford were rooted. It seemed that opposition parties could say or do little to persuade people who were already on Ford’s side to turn against him.
Ford answers questions as Health Minister Christine Elliott and Ontario Health Director Dr. David Williams listen during a press conference at the Ontario Legislature in Toronto on March 16, 2020. be highly praised for their daily updates to residents about the Covid Pandemic19. (Frank Gunn / The Canadian Press)
For evidence of Ford’s ability to bring non-traditionally conservative voters to the PC fold, look at where his party won seats.
Places that reliably vote liberal at the federal level, such as Mississauga, Vaughan and Scarborough, were left with PCs. Clearly, a sizeable number of voters who cast their ballots for Ford’s party this time also voted for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals last September.
Even more remarkable, and one thing that should worry the NDP and its next leader, was the success of the PC presentation to the workers. The party managed to capture mountains such as Windsor-Tecumseh and Essex in the heart of the automotive industry, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek in Ontario’s Steeltown and Timmins, a major mining hub.
Steven Del Duca failed to win his seat in Vaughan-Woodbridge and his Liberal Party failed to regain official party status in Thursday’s election. Del Duca announced his intention to resign as leader. (Esteban Cuevo / CBC)
The idea that Doug Ford’s Conservatives are on the side of the workers must be one of the most magical fragments of political alchemy ever made in Ontario. This is the same party that in the months of forming a government overturned a law that gave workers the right to two days of paid sick leave, froze the minimum wage and made it difficult to join a union.
Halfway through his tenure, the PCs realized that treating employees in this way risked exposing the “For the People” slogan that Ford last made as empty words.
The electoral problem this posed for Ford became apparent. Government sources tell me that Labor Minister Monte McNaughton sold the cabinet during the shift, and party strategists began trying to cultivate pro-worker perception last fall. As one PC campaign source told me at the time, there are more employees voting than business owners voting.
Ford’s promise to build Highway 413 brought enough construction unions to its side for PCs to take advantage of that symbolism in additional seats. He also clearly helped Brampton, where they snatched three new seats from the new Democrats.
Voters rejected Horwath, Del Duca as prime minister
In the referendum election between Doug Ford and not Doug Ford, voters looked at the two main alternatives: Liberal leader Steven Del Duca and NPD leader Andrea Horwath. Significantly more people decided that Ford would be a better prime minister than either. His successive resignations underscored the PC’s resounding victory.
Ontario NDP and MPP leader for Hamilton Center Andrea Horwath wipes away tears as she announces her resignation as party leader in Hamilton, Ontario on Thursday. Horwath had contested his fourth election at the helm of the party. (Tara Walton / The Canadian Press)
Horwath’s weeping election night speech was possibly the best he has given in his 13 years as party leader, speaking directly from the heart. The new Democrats had told me in the last few days that Horwath’s time was up and she knew it.
While Del Duca did not shed a tear in his speech, which seemed to sound sleepy from the sad result, he could feel no less pain than Horwath, having led his political team to one of the worst defeats in its history.
Green Party leader Mike Schreiner acknowledged from the top of the campaign that he would not become prime minister. A rare comment from voters during the campaign, and especially after Schreiner’s performance in the debate, was that the other parties would have been much more likely to win if he were their leader.
The result shows that the play-it-safe campaign strategy employed by the Ontario PC Party worked. As frustrating as it was for reporters for Ford to spend days at a time without answering questions, that didn’t matter to the more than 1.9 million Ontarians who voted PC.
Ford has grown in its ability to keep the message going, mainly by not really answering questions from reporters. It used to be that his combative instincts led him to take the bait more often, and his communications assistants looked nervously at his press conferences wondering what might come out of his mouth.
TARGET | Doug Ford’s Victory Speech:
Doug Ford’s victory speech
Ontario PC leader Doug Ford talks to supporters after securing a decisive second majority.
The big question is what will Ford do for the next four years with this even bigger term. Will it be taken as a license to return to the elbow style of his first year in power? Or he will heed Horwath’s message in his speech: “Respecting voters means listening to everything they tell us.”
It is rare for a prime minister to get a majority in his first election victory to get an even bigger majority in the second election. The Dalton McGuinty Liberals did not. Mike Harris’ PCs didn’t.
In fact, an examination of the records shows that only one Ontario Prime Minister did so during the last century. Leslie Frost’s PC won five more seats in 1955 than in 1951, but even that has an asterisk: the size of the legislature grew eight seats between elections.
According to the historical electoral tendencies of this province, a defeat of the PC would have been an anomaly. In the last century, Ontario voters have only once sent a packaged government after a single term: this was Bob Rae’s NDP in 1995.
Turns out Doug Ford isn’t a one-term marvel, and he’s anything but Bob Rae.