Ontario Liberals giddy that women distrust Hudak a little more than they distrust McGuinty

The McGuinty Liberals needed to change the channel (redirect focus away from their dismal record) and to shore up the progressives they’ve conned into voting for them in the past if they were going to stop their free fall and get back into the election race.

So not surprising they’re all over  the latest CTV/Globe/CP24 Nanos Poll and especially giddy at the thought that Ontario women, particularly progressive women, fear and hate Tim Hudak.  You’ll likely see a lot of Liberals referencing this article, but I doubt you’ll see any of them citing these lines (since it would be very interesting to see what progressive women think about character assassinations in politics):

Nevertheless, the lack of trust for Mr. Hudak indicates that Liberal attacks on him are causing voters to question his character, said pollster Nik Nanos.

“The Liberal attack ads have been a little more of a character assassination,” Mr. Nanos said.

Some other observations about the said poll on voters’ views on trustworthy leadership.

A couple of general comments. Nearly 20% (21.5% women, 15.9% men) polled didn’t find any of the leaders trustworthy and 14% were undecided, meaning that one-third of the electorate are thoroughly uninspired by the political leadership available to them.That’s a sad statement in itself.

Some specific comments on the results for women.

The obvious starting point is why are Andrea Horwath’s numbers not higher. True that both McGuinty and Hudak saw a drop in trust from women when compared to men and that Andrea saw a rise in trust from women, Andrea’s overall numbers are still lower than the boys. An interesting question.

I don’t think it’s as much Andrea Horwath (she’s done well in approval and leadership ratings in other polls), it’s more that Liberal fear mongering and character assassinations have had a two-pronged effect. They have hurt Hudak and have unsettled the swing and progressive voter to run into the arms of the devil they know.

It will be interesting to see if this blip holds  and whether progressives voters will overlook gutter politics out of fear.

It’s still early, and we saw in May how positive politics can become infectious among progressives, but for now I’d say negative politics 1 positive politics 0.