Ontario municipal elections, (October 27, 2014) - Master thread

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old Communists now vote FN

No.

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old Communists now vote FN

No.

This is the perception I've been reading, sorry its the newer generation rather then the old guard...
"What’s more, the party (FN) now achieves support among a generation which might have once been expected to be out protesting against it, polling best among young people and the working class. Many of the latter represent a significant loss for the Left, and particularly the far-left party of Jean-Luc Melenchon"
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/front-national-s-success-france-shows-protest-votes-can-no-longer-be-easily

Well, obviously journalists (especially foreign ones) have absolutely no clue what they're talking about, especially as it concerns the FN's electorate. They're always looking for a way to sneak in their favourite myth about 'extremes meeting extremes' or some kind of 'populist alliance', or they just grasp at straws and/or build totally implausible/blatantly false theories. That being said, nothing in what you quoted actually says that the FN is gaining from the far-left/PCF. Please, for the love of all that is good, don't trust journalists (foreign or domestic) with their flimsy electoral 'analyses' or anything of that kind.

If you look at serious academic literature on the topic, all agree that the 'Commies voting FN' theory is total junk and that the actual direct transfers, at any point in time, from the hard left to the far-right are very small to statistically insignificant. Of course, 2012 was somewhat different in that Panzergirl's electorate was rather different from the Panzerdaddy electorate pre-2007 and Mélenchon's vote was actually very spatially different from the traditional PCF vote when you looked at the details, but I've seen nothing which leads me to believe that the literature may be outdated. (Partial) Correlation of FN support with historic PCF support does not equal causation. This is not to deny that there is something called gaucho-lepénisme, but even that is often misconstrued as just left-wingers voting for the far-right, when in fact the phenomenon is far more complex than that, and should more accurately be known as ninisme as Nonna Mayer very aptly branded it as in 2002.

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Drug user replaced by drug dealer. Excellent!

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I just voted. Here was your beloved moderator's ballot today:

Mayor: Jim Watson (the incumbent) - he's boring, but competent enough and the other candidates were crazies and/or nobodies. I have nothing against wasting your vote on an also-ran, but I didn't find anybody good enough to throw my vote at (I briefly considered voting for the Carleton student with the mustache, but meh).

City Council (Innes Ward): Jody Mitic - the former 2013 Amazing Race runner-up, which is the main reason I voted for him, but I also like him as a person and his ideas were good (he may or may not be the most progressive candidate). My ward has a retiring incumbent so there are some 9 candidates (iirc), and all but one have signs and all more or less promise the same thing (for a suburban ward such as this one, this means competent pragmatism/more transit/keeping parks green and the usual pablum for moderate suburbanites), although some of the other candidates seem to focus a bit more on taxes too (Laura Dudas, Fred 'pedostache' Sherwin, François Trépanier). I have no clue who will win, although I suppose the general idea that it's a 4-way race (Mitic, Dudas, Sherwin, Trépanier) is correct although some other candidates have some property lawn signs (one Teresa Whitmore, who is promising 'experience' on basis of having been a local politico in Belleville, lol). Except for a random guy called Andrew Modray, who appears to be a right-wing nutcase, all candidates seem sane.

School Board: Sandra Schwartz. Went to my high school, has a kid there now - given that I don't give a sh**t about school board politics, that's good enough for me. It's an open seat with 3 candidates, and the other main one seems to be endorsed by the unions.

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Jim Watson is making it hard for me to not vote for him.

Is there a more left-wing candidate in the race that we know of? The main opponents (eg those who at least have a website) seem to be various shades of conservatives and generally nutty.

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I really love how CBC Toronto was quicker to project Tory as the winner in a close race than CBC Ottawa was at projecting Watson's reelection.

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In lovely news, Jody Mitic is running away with the lead in Innes Ward - 37.1% vs. 16.3% for Trépanier and 15.8% for Pedostache dude.

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In lovely news, Jody Mitic is running away with the lead in Innes Ward - 37.1% vs. 16.3% for Trépanier and 15.8% for Pedostache dude.

And now he's projected elected. Victory!