I put 2$ on PC in this county

It’s always an interesting race when good ol’ Sid is in the race. This is another one i’ll be watching

I’ll be rooting for Sid, but this one will continue to go PC.

It’s too close to call at this stage of the race; however, I feel the momentum has shifted to Sid Ryan. Come on, come on, NDP supporters in Oshawa, come on out & vote on election day, Oct 10th….kick Ouellette out of office!

Looking at this with more dispassion, you have a long-term incumbant against a srong NDP candidate but with an equally strong Liberal provincial-wide campaign taking place.

While the local grit campaign is lacking, they may pick up a few votes as a result of the Liberal identificaiton with opposition to faith-based school funding. The NDP vote will top 13,000…the closer the Liberals ocme to 10,000 determines if the PCs can hold the riding. I will hazard a guess that Ryan will prevail by 600 votes or so…Nb that of all three parties, the PC vote is the most solid at this stage.

Oshawa has been an anomaly since 1967, when the NDP (barely) won their first seat in the riding, snatching victory from the traditional PC vote.

In the 40 years since, VOTE SPLITTING has generally determined the outcome of the local election. This, despite how well or how poorly the Leader’s campaign (in any party that eventually governed) was.

This means that ‘winner take all’ in Oshawa has historically been divided between the NDP and Conservatives.

2007 is no exception. The local Liberal candidate, Ajax resident Faelyne Templer, is running an unintentionally near-stealth campaign, with a noticeable drop in signs (all on public property — none that I can see on peoples’ lawns), a quiet door-to-door campaign, and no apparent leaflet drops as of yet. This looks like a campaign that’s been run on a tight budget.

This is quite a different scenario than 2003, 1999 or 1995. Previous elections saw much stronger local Liberal candidates, and that’s key if the NDP and Sid Ryan are to avoid giving the riding to PC Jerry Ouelette by virtue of the vote splits.

This situation (a quiet Liberal campaign) is similar to the 1999 election when the NDP ran their own low-key, unknown candidate, Colleen Twomey. The Liberals came in second that year (a rarity), topping the 3rd-place NDP candidate, but falling far short of the mark.

But 1999 was an anomaly. Typical elections see the Liberals running in third place. They haven’t been contenders in Oshawa in three decades — but they have split the centre-left vote with the NDP and have at times ’stolen’ what seemed like NDP victories.

A CBC poll during the 2004 Federal confirmed that 34% of committed NDP voters switched to the Liberal candidate at the very last minute expressly in order to block a Conservative victory.

But all they accomplished was a vote split that sent the Conservative to Ottawa.

The provincial 2003 election saw a similar scenario, with the NDP’s Sid Ryan (13,500 votes) falling only 1,000 votes behind the PC victor (14,500 votes), while the Liberal candidate walked away with a 3rd place finish, but 9,300 votes. A clear case of the Liberal being the spoiler.

Oshawa’s voters don’t realize that it’s a 2-way race between the PC and NDP candidates because they’re paying attention to the provincial campaign.

So with a quiet Liberal campaign, and some dissatisfaction with 12 years of near-invisibility from the PC incumbent coupled with a total rejection of faith-based funding (and a cynical view of Tory’s deathbed turnaround), the vote split might be less of a factor in 2007. This would mean a victory for Sid Ryan and a return of Oshawa riding to the NDP fold for the first time since 1990.

As long as voters here keep splitting the vote in every federal and provincial election between the NDP and the Liberals, they will keep electing the Conservatives. In the past several elections, each party has gotten about 1/3 of the vote. Will it be different this time? For the NDP to win, fewer people would need to vote Liberal. Is that happening here? It may be difficult to predict this riding until election night.

Sid winning? Four losses not enough and now Buzz says don’t vote for him. He’s so desperate that he is putting signs up on public space along Winchester Road that are in other ridings! Feels like 5 for 5. Jerry has done a great job why change.

To Arundel,

Sid is by far the best candidate to represent Oshawa, and in fact if it weren’t for Buzz Hargrove Sid would have been elected already. Buzz ruined him in the last Federal election when he told everyone to vote “strategically”, and even then it was close.

As for the PC incumbent Ouellette “doing a great job”…not sure what job he did, except make himself the great “invisible man”.

I suspect the angry property taxpayers of Oshawa beg to differ about his so-called “great job”…as do the students, as do the elderly without proper care (less than $5 a day), as do working families who got shafted with the ‘Health Tax Levy’ (oh, yes, that’s right the massive shaft about a so-called tax which he said his government wouldn’t bring in).

Sid was the candidate who was immediately at the side of GM workers when they were layed off recently, and when they closed down 1 of the shifts earlier this year. Sid Ryan is the one who’s constantly advocating for the poor, the downtrodden, the senior citizens, students, and families. He’s an activist, he’s outspoken critic of the ‘McGutless’ Liberals…

…and as your great riposte you have what exactly?? huh genius? then you have what to say ??

a few signs that may have been posted 12-feet away from where they belong? Is that what you got buddy? Wake up and smell the coffee…’cause there’s a warmth in the air in October…and it ain’t just the sunshine…it’s an orange tide on Oshawa.

Sincerely,

Betty-Anne.

Ouellette by a margin of 3,000 votes – Sid is once again headed for the bridesmaid category – 5 for 5 – close but no cigar! JACK!

According to the current projection on this site its a dead heat between the NDP and the PCs. And the PC campaign is floundering. I predict 5th time is the charm for Sid Ryan. He certainly deserves it.

re: Sid Ryan. Everything is good, except the fact his political agenda seems ‘anti-nuclear’, in a region which has multiple nuclear power plants and nuclear engineering program.