Conservatives tend to just vote conservative, regardless who the candidate is, they just feel it's their 'what papa always did' tradition.

Despite Ontario being home to multiple metropolitan cities, those cities are surrounded by many suburbs, rural towns and farmland, and that comprises a large part of the conservative base that Dougie relies on. Of course there is also a good amount of support from conservative business owners, corporate types, and the wealthy within the cities as well.

Dougie also captured a mandate in a Feb 2025 snap election on the back of the tariffs and political turmoil caused by The Orange One to the South. He stood up against Trump, famously popularizing a "Canada is not for sale" hat after the first annexation threats. And, to be a little fair, he did a surprisingly decent job handling Covid, so he has some clout from that too.

That said, he was already doing corrupt shit well before 2025, but now he's pushing the envelope even further because he won't face an election for a while (I guess, not sure what the options are there).

Maybe moderate conservatives are paying attention and souring to him now, but the country has also shifted right, again due to the Overton window moving in the US, but also because of Poilievre shifting the federal conservatives far right, making Dougie look half sane. Oddly we are now in a situation where the Liberal party might attract more conservative voters because Carney too is conservative-lite.

So in summary, the NDP has a lot of work to do, and they're in a terrible position to do it. Jebus help us.

https://www.fairvote.ca/ontario/ for more info but in short:

Ford got 65% of seats with only 43% of votes, but only a small group voted in the last election. That means he was elected by ~20% of eligible voters. More than half of eligible voters did not vote last election.

We have here an electorate system that discards people's vote, discourage people to vote, or straight up disenfranchise them. For all the reasons you might be familiar with, gerrymandering, massive different in number of people in each district, propaganda from local and foreign agents. Also, I don't think the representative from my district lives here, I only hear about them during election time.

Ontario is like most US states. Most don't vote, and the hicks who do vote love populist MAGA politics and were triggered when Ontario had a lesbian Premiere, it was Ontario's Obama panic moment that surged the US right.

We like them Pale, Male, Stale, and without a hint of Kale. Ford has repeatedly stated he is a Republican and a huge supporter of Trump. He's broken all records for fiscal irresponsibility and corruption.

What drives all this is not the numbers from hicks, but the much greater numbers from people who refuse to vote. It does help that the opposition parties have very weak candidates who are also being ignored by the corporate press.

Not answering the question of why these bozos get voted on, but one would be remiss not to mention our dumb and unfair first-past-the-post electoral system.

Yeah I’m from Australia and I haven’t been able to work this out either.

Rob won because his opponent was gay and Toronto couldn't have a gay mayor.

Your average rube wants to stick it to someone even if it means sticking it to themselves at the same time.

I found this to be pretty informative on the matter https://youtu.be/nACJOKV_YYA

Rob Ford has his own gravity field. Ontarians can't escape his event horizon.

At this point he is nothing but dictator Doug to me.