What happened to the P.C.’s?

The disastrous showing by the Progressive Conservatives has taken its toll. And Grimsby’s Tim Hudak announced he’s stepping down as leader of the party: “I am proud of what our team has accomplished and I am optimistic about our party’s future. But I will not be leading the Ontario P.C. party in the next election campaign.”

Hudak will stay on as the MPP for Niagara West-Glanbrook. And he emphasized that even though he’ll no longer be party leader, Kathleen Wynne will be held accountable if she doesn’t deliver on the changes she promised.

The big question many of us are asking across Ontario today is “How did it happen? ” How did Tim Hudak’s Conservatives lose an election in which their main competition was tired government laden with endless scandal? Not only that — but how did the pollsters get it so wrong? The election was supposed to be ” too close to call ” — yet ended in a huge Liberal victory.

Eric Grenier is with the website ‘threehundredandeight.com’: “The polls didn’t get it wrong — they didn’t get it right, at the same time.

Eric Grenier isn’t a pollster. He’s a blogger. A statistician, And, a shrewd political analyst. He was one of the few people predicting that Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals could win as many as 60 seats. He says the polls weren’t terribly wrong — but some of the assumptions behind them were: The P.C.’s vote did not turn out as much as expected which is actually quite unusual because normally, the polls underestimate P.C. support, Conservative support. The polling industry is changing because of old methods of reaching people are changing.”

One of the things that’s making it more difficult for pollsters? These. In their homes, people used to answer their land-lines. Now, if you see a number you don’t recognize — you don’t answer.

Mirza Baig: “Far too often, people think of social media as just another channel — a playground. They’re not taking it seriously enough.”

Mirza Baig and his company Mash Media used social media to track hashtags and Twitter comments on the internet. They estimated that the Liberals were going into the vote with about 37% of voter support — one of the higher estimates. By the end of the night, the Liberal numbers showed support at 38.7 percent, and 59 seats. A majority government, and well within the three percent margin of error, using traditional polling methods.

Mirza said: “These apps are communications channels. I think pollsters need to clue in on that now.”

Well, if that’s the answer to the mistakes made by pollsters — what on earth could be the answer, to the Tories stunning failure. To almost everyone — the Liberals appeared to be a wounded government — begging to be put out of its misery.

Nelson Wiseman: When you’ve got the police coming out against you — and you’re a Conservative, you’ve gotta start worrying.”

But the Tories — didn’t. And that — says Wiseman, shows just how far out of touch they were — with Ontario voters: “The only ones who bought it — says Wiseman — were the hard core Conservative base. And in the end — that wasn’t nearly enough.”

Mirza Baig says the political polling game will have to change sooner rather than later. By not paying attention to social media, or giving it little credence, pollsters are missing out on a large segment of the voting population. A segment that is going to continue to grow as the next generation of voters begins to go to the polls. He says you won’t get them on a land line. You might not even get them on a cell phone. But social media he says, is the one channel of communication, that they are constantly using.