Ontario Election: Online conversation heats up for Hudak

Conversation about Tim Hudak and the Ontario PC party heated up earlier this week after the PC party released a pamphlet that was quickly criticized by many as anti-gay rhetoric.

Outside of conversation surrounding the leaders’ debate on September 27^th, Monday marks the single highest number of negative posts discussing Hudak and the Ontario PC party in a single day. Using Meltwater, Edelman E.L.E.C.T. captured and analyzed over 1,300 negative posts on October 3^rd, with a significant portion of them being attributed to the flyer.

Interestingly, coming out of the leadership debate, negative posts about Hudak and the Ontario PC party have continued to climb, deviating from what had previously been an average of about 780 negative posts per day. While the Liberals saw an increase in negative activity surrounding and immediately after the debate as well, the number of negative posts attributed to McGuinty and and his party has declined, returning to average levels of about 650 per day.

For the first time in this campaign, there is a significant difference between the amount of negative conversation about the two leading parties. With the latest polls showing the Tories and Liberals in a dead heat heading in to the final week of the election, it will be interesting to see if this issue (or this shift in sentiment of conversation) will be mirrored by shifts in voter intention.