[LINK] "Andrea Horwath's 'sophomore jinx' has NDP worried"

[rfmcdonald]

The CBC's Robert Fisher comments on Horvath's leadership of the NDP. In the first election campaign, she did quite well, doubling the party's seats in Ontario. This time, though, she seems to have failed.

[. . . I]n the lead-up to her rejection of Wynne's second budget — clearly the biggest gamble of Horwath's political career — there was a deliberate decision to shift the NDP away from the left to more of a centre-left party, with more talk of protecting the middle class and small business and less about the underprivileged or so-called "ordinary Ontarians."

It took her weeks to respond to a Liberal announcement that the minimum wage would increase to $11 an hour — an issue that would have been a slam dunk for past NDP leaders who would likely have called it a "good first step" while pushing for more.

The delay upset a lot of the NDP base in general and elements of the labour movement in particular who, for the record, advocated for a $16 an hour minimum wage.

Horwath has been determined to show Liberal voters she is the real alternative. And she's been able to point to success with her repositioning of the party — not mere "moral victories" at the polls, but, rather, electoral success.

The 2012 byelection win in Kitchener-Waterloo is a perfect example. The riding had a long red-Tory history. But a lot of PC voters there worried about Tim Hudak's "hard-right turn" and instead turned to what they apparently saw as the "real liberals" and elected New Democrat Catherine Fife — who once flirted with the idea of running as a Liberal.