Social media is a fact of life in 21st century politics. A couple of Liberal candidates have been caught making inappropriate comments. Today Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne was dogged by questions from the media about her handling of those comments and candidates.
One of the candidates, David Mossey, is running against Tory leader Tim Hudak in Niagara West –Glanbrook. Some time ago Mossey shared a photo on his Facebook page of two, uhm, women’s bikini-clad backsides let us say, and, for good measure, he tossed in a comment. All of it showed questionable judgement. Wynne says everyone, no matter the party, needs to be aware of the power of social media to spread information – good and bad. “What you say in the internet atmosphere hangs on there for a long time,” she said. Wynne said she’s talked with the guilty candidates and is satisfied with their apologies. Some are asking if that is good enough. Shedding Mossey as a candidate might have been the smarter call. The Liberals are not going to beat Hudak anyway and it would have signalled that Wynne won’t tolerate that kind of behaviour.
The Progressive Conservatives are using social media to get out their partisan line. They’ve posted a rant from Communications Director Will Stewart, where he gives his review of week one. And all the parties are using Twitter to get their message out and to rebut claims made against their policies.
Today CP24/CTV released an IPSOS survey of how Twitter is being used in the election campaign. The survey of week one, May 2 – 9, first tallied the number of mentions each party got on Twitter. The Liberals (39 per cent) and Tories (38 per cent) are in a virtual tie with the NDP trailing at 23 percent. IPSOS found the conversation on Twitter changed through the week and it seems to have followed the headlines. The tweets the first couple of days were all about why the election was called then things quieted down before revving up with the Tory job promises. I’m not sure what it all means – I wonder if the Twitter universe on Ontario politics is really a couple thousand very engaged Twitter fans talking to each other. But Mike Colledge at IPSOS says it is difficult to make any assumptions about what all this Twitter chatter will mean on election day. He goes on to note, “One thing is for sure – with 37 per cent of Ontarians talking politics and policy online there is a discussion taking place that the political parties may want to listen to.”
If you want to get a flavour of the Twitter conversation that is taking place, a couple of hashtags that will keep you busy are #onvotes and #onpoli. What I notice is that everyone is pumping their own agendas and that includes the media tweeting out the latest bits of news for you to watch and read. IPSOS will review the Twitter universe every week for CP24 during the campaign. It will be interesting to see how the mood changes as the election approaches.
A key moment for the campaign (bet on a big Twitter election talk bump that night!) will be the leaders’ television debate. Still no word on a day for that but it is the one event that the party campaign “playbooks” can’t control and can’t predict. The debate is nothing new for Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak and the NDP’s Andrea Horwath. It will be Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne’s first time so the Liberals may set aside a little more preparation time for her.
Wynne and Hudak kept up the jobs, jobs, jobs theme today. Wynne’s speech to a Toronto audience again made the case for a steady hand on the tiller, warning that the economic recovery needs the support of an activist government. In Ottawa, Hudak took the exact opposite line. He told his audience that less government, eliminating the debt and lowering corporate taxes will get Ontario’s one million unemployed back to work. I’m not sure where Hudak got the one million unemployed numbers from. Last Friday, Statistics Canada released the unemployment numbers for April and it showed 555,000 looking for work. That’s not good but it’s not a million.
But Hudak is not stepping back from his commitment, repeated at each and every campaign stop, to reduce the size and role of government. It leaves Wynne with the task of defending the other side of the coin - big government. For many voters that big government translates into big salaries, big pensions and jobs that don’t get cut. If voters conclude that Wynne is offering more of the same it could get more Ontarians asking if it is time for a change. Remember the CP24/CTV IPSOS poll last Friday showed 72 per cent of voters supported a change in government. One of the change options, the NDP, seems to be on the edges of the debate right now. Andrea Horwath’s promises, repeated again today, to take the HST off your hydro bill and to bring down the cost of car insurance, are pocket book issues to be sure, but seem to be on the margins of the bigger debate about the kind of government that Ontario needs.
