General Politics Discussion

[tomh009]

It was surprisingly close in Cambridge, and Kitchener South Hespeler is just a disaster, but I'm genuinely surprised by Kitchener Centre. The vote splitting is cause #1 there, but it really looks like Mike didn't grow his voting base over the last few years. That's a surprise to me because he genuinely seems like the hardest working guy in Parliament - and I can't help but add this to my list of footnotes about how working hard and being a genuine person really doesn't matter in politics. You won't get electorally rewarded for it, so why bother?

Mike really is a super guy, but no effective national party behind him. He was boosted last time by Raj Saini withdrawing too late, leaving the Liberals without a candidate. Given that those were kind of "borrowed" votes, I think he did well to maintain a nearly identical vote share to 2021. But the Conservative vote share jumped from 24.5% to 34.3%, and that was too much to overcome.