Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Kathleen Wynne's Done Good

Full disclosure.  It's A Forum Research poll.  That said, I can't but like the underlying message:

...the Liberals would again win 53 seats in the 107-member house with the Tories taking 36, down from 37 in the most recent election and the NDP with 18, up from 17 in that vote.

One odd (to me) result:

 ...the New Democrats have tapped into one possible election-winning issue: reducing auto insurance premiums by 15 per cent.

Last Friday, Forum polled 1,033 people and found 58 per cent supported Horwath’s plan to trigger a vote if Wynne does not move to cut rates. Less than a third — 33 per cent — disapprove of the NDP threat and 11 per cent didn’t know.
Frankly, the last thing on my mind is auto-insurance rates, and I've always figured I was pretty typical in this regard.  Weirdly enough, the OFL's Sid Ryan seems to have got this one wrong too.  I guess Ms. Horwarth has better populist instincts than either of us. 
Another interesting result from Forum:
Not exactly surprising.  I've heard pro-teacher sentiments from people I'd of thought would be unsympathetic   But it tells you have far we have come from the 1990s when stirring up anti-teacher and more generally anti-union sentiment was a big part of the PCPO's political strategy.  These days Hudak plays the same cards and comes up snake-eyes.



2 comments:

Unknown said...

but the auto insurance rate issue is largely bogus. In fact the governments of all stripes have drastically cut benefits for the past 20 years to keep rates from going up, so you need a pretty serious injury to recover anything. And the minimum insurance has not increased for 30 years, so your chances of getting anything adequate in a *very* serious accident are small too, if you only carry that (or if you are so seriously injured as to claim against the other driver who has the minimum.)

of course no one *likes* paying insurance premiums, so the weak-minded and superficial will follow Horwath - but she hasn't actually analyzed insurance company profits (which are largely driven by investment income) to make her demands. It's all hollow populism. Not encouraging...

crf said...

Remember when the Federal NDP brought down Martin's government because its budget didn't include some health-care issue the NDP cared so much about and then didn't bother to mention again? (If you can't remember, it was because it was a fake issue.)

Maybe Horwath can try the same schtick, except with auto insurance premiums. People will really love her then. Just like Jack!

Go Andrea!